In Honduras, the Sphere working group launched the Spanish edition of the 2004 Sphere handbook. Over 50 people attended the event, including donors, NGOs and government officials. The group also held both a national and a regional consultation on the future of Sphere.

In El Salvador, the Sphere working group was invited by the government agency in charge of disaster response to present Sphere in the legislative commissions of the National Assembly. In April the group held a consultation meeting on the future of Sphere.

A Sphere Training of Trainers course organised by the Sphere India working group will take place in Bangalore this month. The course will be facilitated by Christophe Lanord and Juan Saenz, both independent consultants who have previously facilitated Sphere Project ToTs. The working group has also held consultation meetings on the future of Sphere.

The French and Spanish editions of the 2004 Sphere handbook, Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response, are now available. The French edition can be purchased through Oxfam Publishing in the UK ( ). To purchase the Spanish edition, please contact Intermón in Spain ( )
Both the French and Spanish versions of the handbook are downloadable from the Sphere website.

The translation of the 2004 handbook into Arabic is underway, and we hope to have this edition available in September. The production of the Arabic edition is being partially funded by the IFRC and several red cross/red crescent national societies. Further details on how to purchase the Arabic handbook will be given in the next newsletter.

In addition to the translations of the handbook funded and managed by the Sphere Project, several groups of organisations have initiated translations of the 2004 handbook into other languages on their own initiative. So far, these translations include: Farsi (co-ordinated by the International Consortium for Refugees in Iran); Vietnamese (co-ordinated by Oxfam GB and IFRC); Japanese (co-ordinated by the Foundation for the Welfare and Education of the Asian People.)

 

In collaboration with the Sphere Project, the Forced Migration Online team, at the Refugee Studies Centre in the UK, has made accessible online most of the references and reading materials in the subject bibliographies of the revised 2004 edition of the Sphere handbook, Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response. These include chapters on Water/Sanitation, Food/Nutrition, Shelter and Health, as well as Minimum Standards Common to all Sectors.