Sphere Handbook 2011 edition soon available in 20 languages

The Sphere Handbook Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response is already available in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesian, Bengali, English, French, German, Hindi, Marathi, Russian, Sinhala, Slovenian, Spanish and Tamil. Other language versions in production are Chinese, Creole, Kyrgyz, Myanmar, Pashtu, Urdu and Vietnamese. Additional language versions, like Portuguese, are expected in the coming months.

“The significant number of Handbook language versions spontaneously produced within just a few months shows the extraordinary vitality of the Sphere community,” said Sphere Project Manager John Damerell.

“The commitment of aid professionals all over the world to increase the quality and accountability of their work is both heartening and challenging – it challenges us to continue disseminating the Sphere Handbook and developing adequate tools for practitioners and trainers alike,” he added.

The Sphere Handbook establishes shared principles and a set of universal minimum standards in core areas of humanitarian response: water and sanitation; food security and nutrition; shelter and non-food items; and health. It offers a common language and provides guidance for effective and accountable humanitarian response and advocacy.

The worldwide launch of the handbook’s English version took place on 14 April. “The Sphere Standards have become the gold standard for humanitarian assistance,” said UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos on that occasion. Other language versions were launched on 23 June and the following weeks.

In the United Arab Emirates, a Handbook launch hosted by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the humanitarian news agency IRIN and the Khalifa University took place in Abu Dhabi on 23 June.

In his keynote speech, the Chief Executive Officer of the Emirati Office for the Coordination of Foreign Aid, Sultan Al-Shamsi, stressed the need to respect humanitarian principles and discussed the importance of humanitarian accountability as highlighted by the Sphere standards.

On 12 July, a “virtual launch” of the Handbook’s Arabic version took place in seven locations linked by videoconference across North Africa and the Middle East. The launch was co-hosted by the Regional Office of the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Department (ECHO), in cooperation with the International Rescue Committee and Save the Children.

“Although a technical tool, the Sphere standards allow us to work in compliance with our fundamental humanitarian principles: humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality,” said ECHO’s Head of Unit Andrea Koulaimah.

Speaking at the Handbook launch in Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua on 7 July, Martín Villarroel García, Save the Children’s Emergency Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean, emphasized the need to understand that “populations affected by a disaster have a right to receive timely and quality aid in an accountable manner”. “The Sphere Handbook contributes to achieve this goal,” he said.

At the Handbook launch in Ottawa, Canada on 29 June, Oxfam’s Mark Fried emphasized the importance of the new chapter on protection principles. “This is a significant addition, as it obliges us humanitarian actors to take care of people’s safety beyond providing them basic aid,” he said.

As an example, Fried cited the case of vulnerability to sexual violence. “In Darfur, where women are routinely raped, they are attacked when they are out collecting firewood outside the camps. To prevent that, we need to provide cooked rations so they don’t have to search for firewood,” he said.

Speaking at the Handbook launch in Kinshasa, D.R. Congo on 23 June, Caritas Executive Secretary Bruno Miteyo called on humanitarian organizations, governmental agencies and the international community to promote the implementation of Sphere’s minimum standards.

In Dakar, Senegal, several humanitarian organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the African Office for Development and Cooperation (OFADEC) co-hosted a Handbook launch on 7 July. On that occasion, OFADEC’s executive director Mamadou Ndiaye made a plea for the widest possible dissemination and implementation of the Sphere Handbook. It constitutes, he said, “the object of a rarely achieved consensus” within the humanitarian sector.

The Sphere Project, a unique voluntary initiative, is a consortium of humanitarian actors including some of the biggest and oldest organizations and agencies in this sector . It aims to improve the quality of humanitarian response to disasters or armed conflicts and the accountability of states and humanitarian agencies to their constituents, donors and affected populations.