Sphere Board affirms ‘coherence dialogue’, welcomes new member

Meeting 17-18 November in Washington, D.C., the Sphere Board affirmed its commitment to the current dialogue involving a grouping of standards-setting initiatives within the quality and accountability sub-sector. It set directions to advance the dialogue further.

The Sphere Board “welcomes the progress made” and “remains committed to the process,” stated Chair Erik Johnson in a 19 November letter to People In Aid and the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP) International. These two initiatives, together with the Sphere Project, are engaged in a process to strengthen collaboration launched in July 2011.

The Sphere Board proposed to carry out “evidence-based research to consult our stakeholders to address the issue of standards coherence as a matter of priority,” said Johnson in its letter. The Board also suggested inviting other major quality and accountability standards-setting initiatives to participate in the process.

For the Sphere Board, the outcome of the ‛coherence dialogue’ remains open. “Convergence is one approach to create more coherence for our users, and convergence can take many different forms, including a ‘single standard’ and a unified structure, as suggested by HAP,” wrote Johnson. However, the Sphere Board stressed the need “to be creative and consider a wide range of outcomes including the above.”

The Sphere Board invited People In Aid and HAP International to participate in joint Board meetings, beginning in May 2012.

RedR International joins the Sphere Board

The Sphere Project Board accepted RedR International as its 18th member. RedR International is a federation of national accredited RedR organizations with members in Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and the UK. Its mission is to relieve suffering caused by disasters by selecting, training and providing competent and committed personnel to humanitarian programmes worldwide.

“RedR International is very pleased to join the board of the Sphere Project,” said RedR-UK’s Chief Executive Martin McCann. “Since its inception in 1997, Sphere has become one of the most effective drivers of positive change in global humanitarian response,” he added. McCann will be RedR International’s representative on the Sphere Board.

“RedR has trained and deployed professional, experienced aid workers to every major disaster since 1980, and ensured appropriate knowledge of and adherence to Sphere standards since 1997,” said Sphere Project manager John Damerell. “RedR’s capacity and experience in disaster response, considerable outreach and training expertise will benefit the Sphere Project as a whole.”

For McCann, “RedR’s vision of a world in which sufficient competent and committed personnel are available and responding to humanitarian needs goes hand in hand with Sphere’s work to ensure that all possible steps are taken to alleviate human suffering arising out of disaster and conflict.”

Moving on…

The Sphere Project Board unanimously elected Unni Krishnan as Vice Chair as of 1 January 2012. Krishnan is Plan International’s Disaster Response Policy Coordinator. He joined the Sphere Board as Plan’s representative in June 2011 and had already been a Board member in 2009-2010.

Krishnan succeeds Manuela Rossbach, of Aktion Deutschland Hilft (ADH), who is stepping down as Vice Chair after her term. While electing Krishnan, the Board also acknowledged and appreciated the qualities that Manuela brought to the position. Rossbach was the first to hold the position.

On a strategic level, the Sphere Board agreed to strengthen and increase its outreach to humanitarian agencies from Islamic countries. Islamic humanitarian coordination bodies will be approached in this regard. The move will be part of a broader outreach strategy in order to further diversify the Sphere Board membership.

It was also agreed that the current agreement by which the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) hosts the Sphere Project office will end in December 2012 at the latest. A new host organization needs to be identified. The IFRC has hosted the Sphere office since the beginning of the Project.

On 16 November members of the Sphere Project Board met with representatives of the US government (Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration). They also had a working lunch with members of the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) Steering Group and participated at a roundtable discussion on increasing collaboration between humanitarian quality and accountability initiatives hosted by InterAction.

The next meetings of the Sphere Board will take place in Geneva in March (extraordinary meeting) and May 2012, and in New Delhi in November 2012.