Resources

Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (Gavi), and the member agencies of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), the humanitarian system’s main coordinating body[1], are working together to ensure that the most vulnerable people caught up in humanitarian crises have access to COVID-19 doses. 

This book is developed by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings (IASC MHPSS RG).

Living with the Times: a mental health and psychosocial support toolkit for older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic has been developed by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Reference Group on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings (IASC MHPSS RG).

The IASC duty of care minimum standards guide IASC members and standing invitees (hereinafter ‘the IASC organizations') in the implementation of adequate duty of care provisions in the context of COVID-19 for all of their personnel regardless of nationality and contractual type.

These are intended to supplement a more detailed set of key messages which are being produced by the group and which are intended to cover the humanitarian impacts of climate change, including how these impact different groups in vulnerable situations, and different types of needs and sectors, as well as more detailed recommendations on reducing climate change driven humanitarian needs. These are deliberately intended to be short and to address issues specifically related to COVID-19 and climate change and not the broader spectrum of climate change related humanitarian concerns.

The COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating protection concerns in humanitarian crises and exposing vulnerable populations to new threats. Protection clusters are reporting an increase in cases of violence, including a ‘shadow pandemic’ of Gender Based violence (GBV), forced displacement, a rise in xenophobia and stigmatization, alongside discrimination in access to health, food, water, education and legal services for vulnerable and marginalized groups.

As raised by the Emergency Relief Coordinator at the IASC Principals meeting on 28th April 2020, there is some progress in providing funding to NGOs which are on the front lines of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This document provides an overview of the factors that may put persons with disabilities at heightened risk in the COVID-19 pandemic and response in humanitarian settings; and proposes actions to address these risks. This note draws on the IASC Guidelines on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action, applying these to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on ongoing humanitarian crises have created a need to make funding agreements more flexible so that frontline humanitarian actors receive timely and adequate resources and can pivot as appropriate to COVID-19-related activities.

This checklist is to accompany the full Interim Technical Note on Protection form Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (PSEA) during COVIID-19 Response. The authoring bodies are: CHS Alliance, InterAction, IOM, Oxfam, UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, OCHA, WFP, WHO, and the UN Victims’ Rights Advocate in consultation with other IASC members.