Humanitarian standards consultation report now published

Consultation in Richard Toll, Senegal. Photo: Glenn O’Neil.

The JSI process is a groundbreaking collaboration between three leading standards-setting initiatives: the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP), People In Aid and the Sphere Project. Its goal is to achieve greater coherence between humanitarian standards in order to better assist people affected by disaster or conflict.

The global stakeholder consultation focused on four key thematic areas: the use and accessibility of standards, their implementation, compliance and verification mechanisms and future needs.

Through one-to-one interviews and focus group discussions around the world as well as an online survey, the JSI stakeholder consultation involved over 2,000 people from 350 organisations in 114 countries.

Lois Austin and Glenn O’Neill, the independent consultants running the consultation, generated evidence from a wide range of actors across the humanitarian sector and are “confident that the resultant findings represent a robust and representative view of the humanitarian sector”.

It should be noted that, at this stage, the recommendations included in this report only reflect the views of the consultants.

On the basis of this report, the JSI Advisory Group has produced a series of recommendations. Building on these recommendations the JSI Steering Group will meet for two days in May to determine final recommendations. The Boards of the three initiatives will consider these inputs when they gather in mid May to make decisions on the way forward.

The final outcomes of the JSI process will be presented at the Geneva Standards Forum on 27 June 2013.