The Sphere Project

Executive Summary

Recognising the continuing need to improve the quality of assistance provided by NGOs and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to people affected by disasters, and to improve the accountability of agencies to their membership, their donors and their beneficiaries, the SCHR and InterAction, propose to develop a set of minimum standards in the core areas of humanitarian assistance. We intend to base these standards on the recognition and elaboration of a set of rights - drawn from existing law, conventions and practice - relevant to all with a legitimate claim to be assisted by the humanitarian community in disaster situations. These basic rights will be highlighted in a humanitarian charter for people affected by disasters.

The project objective is to develop a humanitarian charter and an associated set of minimum standards. This will be pursued in collaboration with leading NGOs, interested donor governments and UN agencies. The project will also begin the process of disseminating the resulting product for formal adoption within the international humanitarian system, although it is probable that a second phase project for further development and dissemination will also be required. If deemed necessary, this Phase II proposal will be formulated within the first 9 months of the current project.

Project goals

Goal 1: To develop a humanitarian charter for people affected by disasters, in style similar to the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGO Code of Conduct.

Goal 2: To compile, from existing material and current best-practice, a set of minimum standards covering minimum and relative essential goods and services, implementation of assistance, and stake-holder accountability. Where necessary, the project will draft new standards if no suitable ones presently exist.

Goal 3: By sharing the process of developing the charter and implementation standards widely within the international humanitarian community, to ensure that the resulting products are acceptable to the community and that a high degree of ownership is felt towards them.

Goal 4: To formulate and embark upon a strategy for the widest possible dissemination and adoption of the charter and implementation standards throughout the international humanitarian community. This may require a second phase of activities organised under the auspices of the SCHR/InterAction collaborative mechanism.

Timetable and budget

It is envisaged that the programme will take one year to complete, starting in July 1997. The total budget, including the cost of seconded staff, will be $592,000. If a Phase II development and dissemination project is required, a proposal will be formulated within the first nine months of this project.

Background

Humanitarianism is in essence, concerned with the universal right of all people to live without being subjected to violent, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or conditions. These rights confer moral, if not legal, obligations upon all governments and aid organisations - including the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and all NGOs - which seek resources for humanitarian purposes. There is widespread evidence, that these humanitarian rights are being denied more now than ever before -- particularly amongst those fleeing conflict and violence, whether as refugees or internally displaced populations. Accounts of disastrous mortality and morbidity rates in a number of recent major emergencies indicate that the claims upon humanitarian agencies are being fulfilled in a highly erratic manner.

Humanitarian relief is given to save and protect life in accordance with the norms of universal human rights and international humanitarian law. It concerns the application of external resources to address a local resource crisis that imminently threatens lives. Humanitarian relief is a process of addressing the effects of such crises rather that the causes - natural, economic or political - of disasters. Relief is what we provide -- shelter, food, water etc. The provision of relief can be characterised as humanitarian when it is given solely on the basis of impartially assessed need. Humanitarian relief is neither designed nor able to address all the causes of human distress and suffering. Although other forms of action may be required, these fall outside the scope of humanitarian relief, and thus outside the scope of this project.

In the past decade demand for humanitarian relief has increased massively. There has been a proliferation of agencies offering assistance, an increased degree of competition between these agencies, an increase in the channelling of substantial funding from government sources into independent relief agencies, and growing evidence that demand for humanitarian assistance is outstripping available resources.

Therefore, the humanitarian system must now, more than ever before, demonstrate effective and efficient resource allocation. It must also be able to make a more objective and coherent case for additional resources when these are required.

The publication of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGO Code of Conduct represents an important step towards the development of universal norms and standards for the delivery of humanitarian assistance by signatory agencies. Now that the Code has been widely welcomed by NGOs - more than one hundred have registered their support for it -, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and by governments[1]^{it is time to move forward with a technical
elaboration of the Code. The case for and urgency of this need is most clearly
articulated in the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda.}

The difficulties inherent in this project should not be underestimated even though its scope is deliberately limited to core assistance tasks. Although we recognise that the way one carries out assistance can have a powerful effect on protection, standards pertaining to humanitarian protection are not directly tackled in this project. In addition, there are many other dimensions of emergency relief, such as education, which we do not propose to tackle for the time being. However, the experience gained in pursuing this initial project may encourage the development of standards across a broader spectrum of activities and processes in the future.

Whilst much work has already been done in defining minimum standards and good practice, the impact and usefulness of this work has been limited by the lack of agreement over methodologies and application. In addition, agencies have been reluctant to commit themselves to standards which may, for legitimate reasons (e.g., limited resources, logistics, or access), be impossible to meet. However, this should not prevent agencies from making a transparent commitment to 'state of the art' humanitarian standards. It is likely that these will change over time, but this offers no justification for not establishing standards in the first instance. Once standards are agreed upon, agencies will be able better to meet the needs of people affected by disasters. Over time, the established minimum standards will be evaluated and updated to incorporate new knowledge of minimum accepted levels of goods and services.

Ongoing work

The SCHR/InterAction Sphere Project will not be developed in a vacuum. It will need to take account of, and in some cases work closely with a number of related initiatives. These include:

‹ InterAction is developing a Field Protocol to be used by US PVOs to help them work together in the field. They are also developing a short common training curriculum for relief health workers.

‹ In Europe, MSF has taken a lead over the past decade in developing standard response packages. Equally the International Federation has developed a series of Emergency Response Units which standardise equipment, training and management issues across a range of relief sectors.

‹ A technical grouping involving UN, Red Cross & Red Crescent and NGO personnel has been developing common standards on medical issues, such as a list of essential drugs in disaster response.

‹ A similar grouping led by Oxfam and UNHCR has been developing standards in water and sanitation.

‹ Two European based NGO umbrella organisations, ICVA and VOICE, have advocated professional standards, and expressed a desire to assist in the elaboration of these.

‹ In the UK , People in Aid, is developing a common set of standards in the field of human resource development.

‹ Within the donor community the British DFID, Danish DANIDA and Swedish SIDA have all expressed concern over the need to develop "performance standards" for the agencies they fund. The DFID is now leading a small interagency group dedicated to this end.

‹ Within the DAC of the OECD there are moves to develop common financial reporting standards for humanitarian agencies.

These various new initiatives will eventually supplement (or perhaps replace) a large body of existing knowledge and policies that prescribe good practice and minimum standards. In almost all instances new science and policy formulation is unnecessary. Achieving a universal commitment to selected standards with global application, requiring in many cases a choice between contenders for best practice and minimum standards, is the major challenge.

One of our concerns is to both help integrate these various initiatives and to add value to this work through extending ownership, buy-in, and commitment to more clearly elaborated humanitarian standards.

Applying standards

Standards, of course, require proper application if they are to have any real validity. This is only likely to be achieved through an institutional framework where, training, peer review and some form of regulation is possible. Whilst the interests of aid workers may be protected through professional associations (as proposed in the UK context by People In Aid) and the interests of the 'industry' can be advanced by trade associations (such as the SCHR and InterAction), the interests of beneficiaries (and frustrated ‘claimants’) are rarely directly heard. Indeed, the almost complete absence of strong and articulate organisations of people affected by emergencies has led to the proposal for an independent beneficiaries or claimants 'ombudsman' to be created.

Whilst this present proposal focuses on developing Minimum Standards, we recognise the need to accompany such work with a commitment to comprehensive training based on these standards, and to the development of methodologies for ensuring knowledge of and compliance with the standards. SCHR and InterAction are committed to carrying forward joint initiatives in the training and compliance fields to complement the present standards project. It is envisaged that an appropriate Phase II development and dissemination project will be designed within the first nine months of the present project implementation period.

A two-tier approach to standards

SCHR and InterAction believe that a two-tier approach is needed in the development of standards. To elaborate technical standards, which agencies should seek to implement, without reference in any way to the rights or aspirations of the assisted beneficiaries and claimants risks becoming a self-serving exercise concerned more with agencies' accountability to donors, than the rights of people affected by disaster. We therefore believe that any set of "industry" standards must first be prefaced by a set of "consumer rights"; a beneficiaries or claimants charter, which highlights what, under existing international law and declarations, a person should have a "right" to in a humanitarian crisis.

An Humanitarian Charter

The production of a Humanitarian Charter for people affected by disasters, providing clear statements - derived from existing accepted universal rights - would provide the basis for a great improvement in transparency and accountability of the humanitarian system. In particular, it could set out the standards against which monitoring and evaluation systems can adjudge impact and agency performance. It could also facilitate the work of organisations of people affected by humanitarian emergencies, and the humanitarian ombudsman, should such an institution be established. Such a 'charter' could and should dovetail with the InterAction and People in Aid initiatives and with other initiatives coming out of the Human Rights Commission, to derive universal minimum humanitarian standards applicable in all conflict situations.

Minimum "industry" standards

To allow agencies to implement their relief programmes in a way which respects such a charter, a set of standards based on recognised relief practices are also needed.

Essential sectors

Such a set of standards would cover the four essential sectors of relief assistance:

‹ Nutrition and Food Security

‹ Water and sanitation

‹ Medical services

‹ Clothing, shelter and settlements, including the selection of emergency relief sites.

Other sector programmes such as education or training which take place during relief operations may be examined in later stages of this project.

Relief programme management issues

Many previous attempts at deriving standards have focused exclusively on the end point delivery of assistance. We believe we have to go further and set down guidance for how such assistance is delivered, covering issues such as procurement and distribution systems.

Equally we have to be concerned with actions after delivery. We have a responsibility to be accountable to the affected people, to ourselves through programme monitoring, to our donors and, through learning and evaluation, to future programmes.

Minimum performance standards therefore need to cover:

‹ What the agency should deliver, or ensure is available, as a minimum for survival of people caught up in disasters.

‹ The methodology by which relief is made available to beneficiaries, e.g. needs assessment, procurement , distribution etc.

‹ The quality of what the agency should deliver, or ensure is available, relative to the norms of the country where the victims are being assisted, i.e. standards relative to local conditions.

‹ Cross cutting issues such as local culture, gender and environmental concerns.

‹ The forms of accountability the agency offers: to beneficiaries and the local population, to donors, to its own staff and membership and to future operations (in the form of evaluations and a commitment to continuous improvement).

The relationships among these four areas and the differing types of standards that might be developed, are shown in Table 1, at the end of this document.

As Table 1 suggests, within this package of standards a number of different approaches may need to be taken. For some parts of the relief system one can define "best practice" i.e. a set of norms which an agency should aspire to. For other parts definitions can be more rigorous, setting absolute minimum standards for basic life sustaining systems. Finally, where normal practice in a country is above that of the absolute minimum, guidelines are needed to help agencies define the quality of assistance they should be aiming at.

Project objectives

The project objective is to develop a humanitarian charter and associated set of minimum standards in collaboration with leading NGOs, interested donor governments and UN agencies, to both disseminate the resultant products widely within the international humanitarian system and to encourage their formal adoption and practice by relief agencies and their donors.

Project goals

Goal 1: To develop a humanitarian charter for people affected by disasters, in style similar to the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGO Code of Conduct.

Goal 2: To compile, from existing material and current best-practice, a set of minimum performance standards covering minimum and relative goods and services, implementation of assistance, and stake-holder accountability. Where necessary, the project will draft new standards where no suitable ones presently exist.

Project management

Project sponsorship

This project will be conducted under the auspices of the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response (Oxfam International, Save the Children, Caritas Internationalis, World Council of Churches, Lutheran World Federation, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, CARE International, and Medecins Sans Frontieres International) in collaboration with InterAction. The project will be managed under the guidance of the SCHR/InterAction Humanitarian Standards Project Management Committee. The project will seek to form a wider reference group, including for instance, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), ICVA and VOICE.

This is an ambitious and potentially contentious project and clearly the agencies involved will need to keep tight control of it to be able to keep the programme on course. Out-sourcing to either institutions or individual consultants will lessen this control, although there may well be a place for such relationships in the more specialised sectoral work. Thus, most of the work will be carried out by agency staff specifically seconded to the project. Five seconded Sector Mangers will manage the work of elaborating technical standards in the four designated areas. (Food and Nutrition being split into two subsets, each with its own manager.) They will report to a full time Project Manager who will in turn report to the Project Management Committee, made up of representatives of the sponsoring agencies.

Project Management Committee

The Project Management Committee shall be made up of one representative from each of the sponsoring agencies (SCHR members plus two InterAction representatives). The representatives should be competent in both the operational and policy areas of the agencies work. The purpose of the management committee is to give overall guidance to the Project Manager and to periodically review work on the project, reported back to them by the Project Manager. The Project Management Committee also has responsibility for securing the necessary funding and seconded staff to carry out the project.

It will be the responsibility of the Project Management Committee to approve the final product of the project and recommend its formal adoption by each agency. Finally the Committee will be responsible for ensuring a co-ordinated and successful launch of the final product.

It is envisaged that the Project Management Committee will meet at least four times during the life of the project:

‹ To agree on detailed project proposals prepared by the Project Manager.

‹ Twice during the project to review work.

‹ To sign off on the final product.

Project Manager

The Project Manager will be responsible to the Project Management Committee, although will report to the Federation Disaster Policy Director on a day to day basis. The Project Manager will be required to design the overall scope and working methodology of the project and to set the timetable for the work. He/She will be responsible for recommending an editorial, publishing and dissemination process to the Project Management Committee. Sector Managers will report to the Project Manager who will be responsible for guiding their work and ensuring its timely execution.

In the early stages of the project, the Project Manager will have a key responsibility for liaising with other operational agencies, donor institutions and research bodies to build up a knowledge of the work to be undertaken and a sense of commitment to it.

During the main body of the project, where most of the work is being carried out by the Sector Managers and their teams, the Project Manager will be responsible for ensuring that information is shared among the sector teams and that the Project Management Committee is kept regularly informed of the project's progress. During this stage of the work the Project Manager will also be responsible for the initial drafting of the beneficiaries or humanitarian charter and for ensuring that the Project Management Committee is kept fully up to date with the development of the charter.

As the sectoral teams near the end of their work, the Project Manager will be responsible for ensuring that their material is correctly edited so that it can be published in line with the wishes of the Project Management Committee.

Finally, the Project Manager will have a responsibility to ensure that operational agencies, donors and research institutions consulted and contacted for support during the project receive copies of the final product and are encouraged to adopt it as a working set of guidelines.

Sector Managers

For each technical sector, generic terms of reference are proposed below. Each Sector Manager would be required to reformulate, in greater detail, the terms of reference for that specific technical area. Through this process, areas of possible inter-sectoral duplication and potential disagreement would be identified for discussion in the first planning workshop. Sector Managers will be appointed from amongst the sponsoring agency staff and these staff then be seconded to the project for the middle six months of the project's work.

Generic Terms of Reference

Goods and services:

‹ Propose absolute minimum per capita requirements for the basic maintenance of life.

‹ Propose a formula for the calculation of relative standards of rights and needs differentiated by, and appropriate to, the socio-economic and geographical context of the humanitarian relief intervention.

Delivery:

‹ Propose best-practice in the procurement, both international, regional and local of equipment, and consumables needed in the sector.

‹ Propose best practice in how the service offered in the sector should be delivered to those in need, including due consideration for targeting of assistance, and practicality of accountability (see below).

Accountability:

‹ Propose best-practice to maximise accountability to all stakeholders: people affected by disasters, agency staff and management, donors, future operations.

Cross cutting issues:

‹ Propose best practice in how the service offered in the sector should take account of current thinking on important cross cutting issues such as gender and environmental concerns.

Working methods:

The Sector Manager will be responsible for identifying and contacting a team of experts from a range of suitable operational agencies and research institutions to assist him/her in this work. These team members will not be paid for their work but will be encouraged to contribute as part of the process of getting a broad range of agencies to buy-in to the work.

The Sector Manager and team are expected to survey existing work in their field and draw upon it rather than carry out fresh research. (In most fields technical guidelines already exist, although usually not widely disseminated.)

The Sector Manager will be expected to travel as necessary to liaise with peer groups, and to hold at least two working meetings of the team he/she puts together for the work.

It is expected that Sector Managers will work full time on this project for a period of six months.

The Sector Manager should keep the Project Manager informed of the progress in their sector and solicit views of other Sector Managers on the development of standards.

The draft standards and guidance for the sector should be presented by the Sector Manager to the Project Manager at the end of the six month period.

Target audience:

In drafting the material the team should bear in mind that their potential audience are not only technicians and specialists in that field. Rather it is believed that the main audience lies within the management staff that plans and implements humanitarian relief operations plus the donor institutions who fund them and other agencies, particularly those within the UN family, who work alongside them.

Publication production

The final charter and standards will be edited and prepared for publication within the production facilities of one of the sponsoring agencies. The option of publishing under a commercial publishing house will also be explored.

A professional editor will be contracted to prepare the final publication. This person may be seconded from one of the sponsoring agencies or if necessary hired from outside.

NB: Because of the size and complexity of the nutrition and food security sector, it will employ two sector managers working together. This is reflected in the higher costs for this sector.

Funding

It is envisaged that major bilateral and multilateral donors would wish to be associated and participate financially in this project. Those associated with the joint evaluation of the Rwanda emergency may be especially keen to support this. However, to enjoy a greater sense of ownership for the SCHR and InterAction, it is proposed that a funding strategy should be pursued that achieves donor diversity and Red Cross/Red Crescent and NGO participation. Members of SCHR, along with InterAction, will make an initial commitment to the project of no less than $15,000 each in cash as starting capital for the project.

Project threats

There is a real difficulty with defining minimum standards which are both universal and practical. In some areas of the world the 'normal' levels of service provision and life chance indicators may fall below the thresholds which expert opinion define as an absolute minimum in the context of a humanitarian emergency. This may well serve to highlight the so called 'silent emergency' of chronic poverty, and should be welcomed as a bridge between the development and relief domains. Such a bridge, that links standards and universal rights, could be very powerful.

Other groupings of agencies are also concerned with the same set of issues, though tackling them from different perspectives. Some focus on technical specifications -- particularly in the field of medical assistance. This work is complementary to the project described here. The SCHR/InterAction work should be derived from existing wisdom and thus build upon such technical work rather than ignore or duplicate it.

Agencies and organisations not directly involved in the Sphere Project may view this work as a threat, seeing the SCHR/InterAction preaching to them. We have to be clear that our prime objective is to improve our own standards and to be inclusive in the way we carry out the project, not exclusive. We would hope to be able to work closely with other leading operational agencies, notably southern NGOs and the ICRC.

Donor governments and agencies may feel that it is inappropriate for the operational agencies to set their own standards and may feel that the providers of resources - the donors - should set the standards for how their resources are to be used. This is why we have to work closely with the donors from the outset, and also ensure that we collaborate with relevant UN agencies, particularly UNHCR, WFP, UN-DHA, WHO and UNICEF.

Table 1: Standards Matrix

		Nutrition & Food Security	Water & Sanitation	Medical Services	Clothing, Shelter, Settlements & Site Selection
Rights	Absolute minimum	Minimum standards	Minimum standards	Minimum standards	Minimum standards
	Relative guidelines	Quality guidelines	Quality guidelines	Quality guidelines	Quality guidelines
Delivery	Procurement	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice
	Distribution	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice
Accountability	Beneficiaries & Potential Beneficiaries	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice
	Agency staff & Management	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice
	Donors	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice
	Future operations	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice
Gender	Guidelines	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice
Environment	Guidelines	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice	Best practice

Table 2: Work Plan

	Month 1-3	Month 4-6	Month 7-9	Month 10-12
Project Management Committee	Individual review of initial detailed project proposals received from the Project Manager. Meeting to agree on project proposals.	Two meetings to review work in hand		One meeting to sign off on the final product and agree on publication and launch activities.
Project manager	Full time project design and promotion for the project. Appointing of Sector Managers. Drafting of the charter	Management of Sector Managers. Design of the editing, publication and dissemination process.	Completion of Phase II Project Proposal	Finalising of the charter. Editing of the sector guidelines. Agreement on the charter and guidelines from the Management Committee. Publication and dissemination of the charter and guidelines.
Sector Manager		Pulling together of team. Review of existing work. Identification of useful work and existing gaps.	Drafting of guidelines and standards for handing over to the Project Manager.

[1]The Code was welcomed by the 147 states attending the 1995 International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.