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Welcome to the new edition of our Newsletter!The highlight of this edition is of course the coverage of the Grand Bargain Annual Meeting 2024 and its outcome. The meeting took place on 16-17 October in Geneva and brought together the Grand Bargain Signatories and special guests.
We invite you to take a few minutes to dive into this newsletter to read the key updates from the Grand Bargain. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the Signatories for their participation, energy and engagement in making this Annual Meeting a success!
Warm Regards,
Grand Bargain Secretariat.
Samar, Björn, Melissa and Gauri |
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Stay updated: We are improving how we keep you informed
To streamline communication, the Grand Bargain newsletter will now be published monthly instead of bi-monthly. The bi-weekly updates will be discontinued, and latest updates, news and other content will instead be shared weekly on LinkedIn.
Follow us on LinkedIn to stay informed! |
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The Grand Bargain Annual Meeting 2024 wraps up with concrete actions towards 2026 |
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| The GB Annual meeting took place on 16-17 October 2024, hosted by ICRC in Geneva. With the Principals Segment on Day 1 and the Sherpas Segment on Day 2, the two-day event brought together 57 Signatories. Special guests were the representatives from Qatar Charity and representatives of Grand Bargain National Reference Groups (NRG) from Türkiye, Indonesia, Kenya, Myanmar, and Yemen. |
| Participants engaged in inspiring and collaborative discussions focused on advancing the Grand Bargain 3.0 Framework through concrete steps, discussing progress, sharing good practices, and aligning on an Implementation Agenda through 2026. |
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Ready, Set, Implement!Signatories at the Annual Meeting agreed a GB 3.0 Implementation Agenda 2026 guiding Signatories until 2026. The Implementation Agenda was developed based on insights from the self-report results, |
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| discussions with Signatories in 2024, the Ambassadors' engagements with Principals, and previous GB Annual Independent Reports. This agenda is designed around 10 “levers of transformation” to drive transformative impact in Focus Area 1— localisation, quality funding, and AAP/Participation — by enabling Signatories to rally behind existing initiatives to reach transformative impact by 2026. The Implementation Agenda also includes actions on Focus Area 2 as well as an outcome of the discussion of the Principals. |
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Good practices to power up the agendaAt the Annual Meeting, it was inspiring to hear about the many good practices the Signatories have adopted or planned to implement. The Grand Bargain Secretariat has compiled these insights – from the meeting itself and contributions from Signatories afterwards – into a new Good Practices section on the GB website. |
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 | A stronger voice of national actors at the table!
Next to the two GB Signatory networks of local and national actors, NEAR and A4EP, representatives of national and local actors and of National Reference Groups (NRGs) participated in the discussions of the Sherpa Segment on equal footing with all other Signatories, providing an important reality-check on how the GB is impacting humanitarian responses in different contexts. Prior to the Annual Meeting, representatives of NRGs came together for a peer-learning workshop in Geneva, hosted by NEAR and Oxfam, discussing experiences, challenges and opportunities of setting-up NRGs.
Please see here for the statement of NRGs, a key outcome of the workshop. |
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Highlights from Grand Bargain Ambassadors last monthGrand Bargain Ambassador Michael Koehler engaged in several events. On 10 October, he attended the Ambrela Development Forum in Bratislava, where he highlighted the importance of operationalising the humanitarian-development nexus in response to the polycrisis in East Africa. At AidEx 2025 held at Palexpo Geneva on 23-24 October, Ambassador Koehler shared a message in a panel on leadership and localisation, discussing ways to strengthen local capacities. He also joined the Anticipation Hub Global Dialogue Platform online, where he presented together with Germany and WFP the work of the Caucus on Anticipatory Action, exploring how its outcomes could improve anticipatory measures and address humanitarian challenges. |
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The Grand Bargain Facilitation Group 2024-2025 - A focus on implementation
The members of the GB Facilitation Group for the next period are confirmed: the Sherpas from A4EP/Ahmed Al-Zubaidi, InterAction/Christine Knudsen, IFRC/Nena Stoiljkovic, OCHA/Ramesh Rajasingham, UNICEF/Hazel de Wet, DG ECHO/Hanna Jahns and Germany/Ina Heusgen together with the GB Ambassadors and the Secretariat will work with Signatories in the next 12 months on the implementation of the GB Annual Meeting outcome. Updates about the FG's activities in the next months will be shared via Email and the Newsletter. |
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The CoPs on Risk Sharing and on Gender are live!
Building on the work of the Risk Sharing Platform launched in 2021, the Risk Sharing Community of Practice (RSCP) held its inaugural meeting on Thursday, 24 October, hosted by co-chairs InterAction and the ICRC. Over 50 participants joined the call, indicating a high level of interest in risk sharing and eagerness to move this body of work forward together. During the meeting, the group endorsed the RSCP structure, governance, and TORs. The agreed purpose of the RSCP is to provide and share technical inputs on the issue of risk sharing, to inform a shared understanding among signatories and other stakeholders of risk sharing challenges and advocate for the uptake of promising approaches. In order to achieve this objective, the 2025 workplan will be endorsed during the next RSCP meeting in December, at which members will also vote on co-chairs for the coming year.
If interested in joining the community of practice, please register here to be added to the lister.
The Friends of Gender Group, is relaunched as the Grand Bargain Community of Practice on Gender. The group, which includes members of all constituencies, donors, UN agencies, representatives of INGOs and national and local CSOs, especially women-led organisations, will continue to work together to ensure that the Grand Bargain contributes to achieving gender equality and the empowerment and protection of women, girls and gender-diverse people experiencing humanitarian crisis, through systematically inclusive humanitarian action. They will explore how to best link the work of the CoP with the agreed Implementation Agenda 2026.
Additional CoPs will be established in the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned! |
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| Updates from Signatories and Partners |
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Development Initiatives – Falling short? Humanitarian funding and reform
The report sheds light on the latest data on humanitarian assistance, which is falling behind, along with progress on the Grand Bargain targets on localisation, cash and voucher assistance, and anticipatory action. You can read more here. |
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Norwegian Refugee Council – Catalogue of quality funding practices to the humanitarian response
First published in July 2020, and revised in July 2024, the updated version maintains its focus on humanitarian funding mechanisms, though individual examples support a broader crisis response across the humanitarian and development nexus.
Looking ahead, the catalogue will be presented in early 2025 during a dedicated session, preparing the ground for a more in-depth discussions at the Sherpa-level on quality funding in Q1 2025. More details will be shared at a later stage.
Click here to read the catalogue |
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Join the Donor Cash Forum!
During the Annual Meeting, the Signatories agreed on an Implementation Agenda that includes levers of transformation to drive transformative impact in Focus Area 1, such as prioritising and scaling up cash assistance as a system-wide and institutional solution to empower affected populations to make decisions with dignity and choice. |
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The Global Donor Cash Forum (gDCF) is an informal body where donors discuss and develop shared positions to advance and improve cash programming. The gDCF is currently shaping its vision and ways of working for the next five years, while exploring service offerings to meet the needs of a wider range of donor teams, both globally and at the response level.
If you're a donor team that could benefit from additional capacity to strengthen cash programming, we encourage you to express your interest with the gDCF. |
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