Resources

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.

On 23-25 October 2019, the Grand Bargain (GB) localization workstream organized a “global meeting” in Brussels.

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.

On 5 December 2019 the Executive Heads of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) met in Geneva, Swtizerland to address key issues on system-wide importance for humanitarian action. The Committee discussed a number of critical humanitarian crises and the required support to meet urgent humanitarian needs, including in Syria, the Sahel Region, Afghanistan, and Sudan.

Reducing the incidences, severity and impacts of crises demands a concerted, multi-faceted approach.

Click here to read the fourth 2019 edition of the IASC Newsletter, where we take a look at: