The Grand Bargain calls for aid organisations and donors to increase multi-year humanitarian planning and funding. However, the extent to which progress is being made remains unclear. Existing data sources – including the Grand Bargain self-reporting process, the Financial Tracking Service (FTS) of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and independent research – do not currently provide a clear picture of the quantity of multi-year funding passing through the humanitarian system.
On 14 January 2020, the Accelerating Localisation through Partnerships programme (led by Christian Aid) and the Humanitarian Policy Group of ODI hosted a closed-door roundtable under Chatham House Rule to discuss the challenges for large INGOs without a traditional partnership approach to move towards partnerships in humanitarian contexts. This discussion took place within the framework of on-going efforts by the humanitarian system to support more local and locally-led humanitarian action.
The Global Education Cluster (GEC) held a workshop on localisation in Geneva, Switzerland, 17 – 21 February, 2020, with participation from the new members of its Strategic Advisory Group (SAG). The new members of SAG represent local and national NGOs (L/NNGO) from 7 countries with an existing education cluster.
Please see the summary report of the workshop below.
At the Grand Bargain Annual Meeting 2019 in June in Geneva, the Signatories put forward 63 collective and individual action points to advance the Grand Bargain progress.
On 13 December 2019, UN Women and the Grand Bargain Friends of Gender Group (FoGG) organized a global consultation in Geneva to enable dialogue among the Grand Bargain (GB) Facilitation Group, Workstream co-conveners, signatories, and representatives of local women-led and women’s rights organizati
This is a 1-pager highlighting some of the successes and next steps for workstream 9 (Harmonize and simplify reporting requirements). For further information, don't hesitate to contact the Secretariat.
You are kindly invited to the event "The 8+3 template: An update on the Grand Bargain initiative to simplify and harmonize reporting" at the Humanitarian Partnerships and Networking Week.
Please see the full invitation below.
One of “the reduce management costs” workstream commitments of the Grand Bargain is to decrease the costs of delivering assistance with the use of technology and innovation (commitment 4.1). Reducing management costs will increase the portion of funding used for the direct benefit of affected people. There are various ways to do so, including with mobile technology for needs assessments/post distribution monitoring; digital platforms/mobile devices for financial transactions; communication with affected population via call centers/SMS; sustainable energy and biometrics.
Building on the extensive work of ActionAid and others, this research evidences, and advocates for, an approach to localisation which prioritises the leadership of local women and women-led organisations who have been overlooked, undervalued and under resourced in humanitarian response to date.
The Charter for Change held its annual meeting in Copenhagen on 10-11 December 2019 that gathered 31 local/national NGOs from crisis-affected contexts and 25 international NGOs. The meeting produced a communiqué calling on the Grand Bargain Facilitation Group to put localisation as one of the key themes on the agenda for the GB annual meeting in June 2020. The Charter for Change sets out in the communiqué key ideas for moving the GB localisation agenda forward, including:
● A focus on localisation and participation at the 2020 Grand Bargain annual meeting
These are a few examples of implementation of the Grand Bargain commitments by the Signatories at country level in 2018. The examples have been extracted from the Grand Bargain Annual Independent Report 2019 and are not exhaustive. They have been reported by the Signatories as their contributions to the Grand Bargain efforts.
Please find below a workplan from August 2019 to June 2021 for workstream 6 (Participation revolution: include people receiving aid in making the decisions which affect their lives).
On behalf of the Gender and Cash sub-working group of Cash Workstream of the Grand Bargain, we are pleased to kick of 2020 with a series of webinars on cash and voucher assistance and gender-based-violence. The webinars will focus on the most recent experiences in practice, research and application of guidance on CVA and GBV. We have a great line up of webinars from UNFPA, CARE and the Women’s Refugee Commission will be the first.
The webinars will be held on Thursdays at 8:00 EST/ 14:00 CET/ 15:00 EAT starting from the 16th January 2020 for at least five weeks.
As committed at the Grand Bargain Annual Meeting on 27 June 2019, WFP is pleased to share their management insights on quality funding. While their reflections and benchmarks are agency specific, they indicate a pathway that other agencies could consider recognising that the current impasse between donor and agency Grand Bargain Signatories needs a more nuanced understanding of the realities, barriers and opportunities to improve the funding of the humanitarian system.
The study, conceived as a multi-stakeholder contribution to the Grand Bargain workstream 7&8 (Increase collaborative humanitarian multi-year planning and funding and reduce the earmarking of donor contribution), provides significant evidence to support the claim that NGOs can do more with predictable and flexible funding and identifies a number of straight-forward recommendations for NGOs, UN agencies and donor partners to implement.
UNHCR hosted and organized the webinar ‘What is the UN Business Innovations Group (BIG) in the Grand Bargain to reduce management cost?’ on November 26th, 2019.
Please see the recording here, and the summary note and the presentation below.
UN Women and the Grand Bargain Friends of Gender Group are pleased to invite you to a global consultation on ‘Promoting a gender transformative humanitarian action agenda through the Grand Bargain commitments’.
The one-day workshop will take place in Geneva, Switzerland on 13th of December, 2019. Please find below the concept note for the event. Further logistical details and background reading will be provided over the coming two weeks.
