The humanitarian system and quality standards

1The actors

• Affected States: primarily responsible for assisting their population.
• Communities and local organisations: the first to respond; “localisation” aims to give them a greater role and more funding.
• The United Nations: OCHA (coordination), UNHCR (refugees), UNICEF (children), WFP (food, logistics), WHO (health), FAO, IOM, UNFPA, UNDP…
• The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement: the ICRC, the International Federation and National Societies.
• International and national NGOs, donors (States, the European Union, foundations) and the private sector.

2Coordination and the programme cycle

In a country in crisis, the Humanitarian Coordinator leads the Humanitarian Country Team (UN agencies, NGOs, the Red Cross as an observer). OCHA supports coordination.

Since the 2005 reform, the cluster approach has organised the response by sector: health, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene, shelter, protection, food security, education, logistics, emergency telecommunications, camp coordination and early recovery. Each cluster has a lead agency.

The humanitarian programme cycle: needs assessment (Humanitarian Needs Overview), planning (Humanitarian Response Plan), resource mobilisation, implementation and monitoring, review.

3Funding

• Bilateral funding from donors to organisations.
• CERF: the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, for sudden-onset emergencies and underfunded crises (disbursed to UN agencies and IOM).
• Country-based pooled funds (CBPF) managed by OCHA, open to national and international NGOs.
• Funding flows are tracked on OCHA's Financial Tracking Service (FTS).

4The standards: Sphere and the CHS

The Sphere Handbook brings together the Humanitarian Charter, the Protection Principles, the Core Humanitarian Standard and minimum standards in four sectors: water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion; food security and nutrition; shelter and settlement; health. A frequently cited example: a minimum of 15 litres of water per person per day for drinking, cooking and hygiene.

The Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) sets out nine commitments on quality and accountability to affected people: a response that is appropriate, timely, strengthens local capacities, is based on communication and participation, has a complaints mechanism, is coordinated, learns, relies on competent and well-managed staff, and uses resources responsibly.

The standards are benchmarks, not mechanical quotas: they are adapted to the context while keeping their objective.

5The humanitarian programme cycle step by step: timeline, products and roles

The humanitarian programme cycle (HPC) is often presented as an abstract circle. In practice, it is a tight schedule of products, meetings and deadlines to which an NGO project manager or coordinator must align so that their needs are visible and their projects fundable.

In a sudden-onset emergency: the first 30 days

The IASC System-Wide Scale-Up (2018 protocols, which replaced the former "Level 3 emergency") is activated by the Emergency Relief Coordinator for an initial period of up to six months, which may be extended once by three months. It triggers the accelerated deployment of staff, the streamlining of agencies' internal procedures and stronger coordination.

In a protracted crisis: the annual cycle

1. May to August: assessment planning, multi-sector surveys (often MSNA-type), cluster data collection.
2. August to October: joint intersectoral analysis using the JIAF (Joint Intersectoral Analysis Framework). Severity is classified on a scale from 1 (minimal) to 5 (catastrophic) by geographical area and population group. People in need (PiN) generally correspond to people in severity 3 or above. Drafting of the Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO).
3. October to December: each cluster sets its objectives, its targets (people targeted, always less than or equal to the PiN) and its costing method (project-based or unit-based activity costing). Partners submit their projects or activities for the Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP), endorsed by the Humanitarian Country Team and launched in the Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) in December.
4. Throughout the year: monthly monitoring through the 4W and cluster dashboards, periodic monitoring reports, funding recorded on FTS, mid-year review if the context changes.

An NGO that does not fill in its cluster's 4W is invisible: its achievements are not counted, its areas appear as gaps and its proposals to pooled funds score lower, because review committees check participation in coordination.

The functions of a cluster and how its performance is measured

The IASC Reference Module for Cluster Coordination at Country Level sets out six core functions, plus accountability to affected populations: support service delivery (avoid duplication), inform strategic decision-making (needs and gap analysis), plan and develop strategy (sectoral plans, standards, funding requirements), advocate, monitor and report, and contingency planning and capacity building. The cluster lead agency is the provider of last resort: it commits, subject to access, security and funding, to filling critical gaps. Each cluster's performance is assessed every year by its members through the CCPM (Cluster Coordination Performance Monitoring) exercise; an active member should respond to it with well-argued input.

6Funding a response: mechanisms, rules and donor requirements

Knowing the acronyms is not enough. A professional must know which mechanism is accessible to their organisation, how quickly, with what compliance requirements and what consequences for its freedom of action.

The Grand Bargain commitments

Signed in 2016 at the World Humanitarian Summit, the Grand Bargain set, among other things, the target of channelling at least 25% of humanitarian funding as directly as possible to local and national actors, increasing multi-year and flexible funding, harmonising and simplifying reporting (the "8+3" reporting template), scaling up cash transfers and strengthening the participation of affected people. Progress is real but uneven: in practice, the share of direct funding to local actors remains far below the target. Country-based pooled funds are today one of the main channels of direct funding for national NGOs.

What a donor examines in a proposal

• Relevance: alignment with the HRP and the donor's strategy, a quantified needs analysis, cited sources, data disaggregated by sex, age and disability.
• Coordination: participation in clusters, no duplication (reference to the 4W), demonstrated complementarity.
• Technical quality: explicit reference to Sphere standards and cluster standards; modalities (in-kind, cash, mixed) justified by a market and feasibility analysis.
• Accountability: complaints and feedback mechanism, protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, data protection.
• Risk management: risk matrix (security, fiduciary, diversion, operational), mitigation plan, remote management if necessary.
• Cost and efficiency: cost per beneficiary compared with sector benchmarks, ratio of direct support costs to activity costs, justification of staff positions.

Cost per beneficiary only makes sense when compared with a similar project in a similar context. A water project in a hard-to-reach area will legitimately cost two to three times more per person than in a peri-urban area: this must be explained in the proposal, not left to the reader to understand.

7Sphere in practice: reading, applying and adapting the minimum standards

The Sphere Handbook (2018 edition) is organised on four levels for each sector: the standard (a universal qualitative statement), the key actions (what must be done to meet it), the key indicators (how to know whether it is met) and the guidance notes (how to adapt to the context). The most common mistake is to retain only the indicator figures and forget the standard they are meant to measure.

The most widely used benchmarks

How to use these figures correctly

• They are minimums for a life with dignity, not ceilings or automatic project targets. In a long-standing camp, the cluster may set higher standards; in a very acute phase, an intermediate step (for example 7 litres per person per day during the first days, for survival) may be accepted temporarily, provided it is explicitly justified and accompanied by a timeline for catching up.
• The national cluster adapts: national cluster standards and ministry norms often take precedence in proposals and reports. Always check which version applies in the country.
• An average indicator hides disparities: an average of 15 litres per person across a site may conceal households at 6 litres at the end of the network. Measurement must be disaggregated by area and by group (female-headed households, older people, persons with disabilities).
• Do not reduce the standard to quantity: for water, quality (no faecal coliforms at the point of consumption, free residual chlorine of 0.2 to 0.5 milligrams per litre at the point of delivery in contexts at risk of epidemics) and safe access matter as much as volume.

Companion standards

The Humanitarian Standards Partnership brings together, alongside Sphere, complementary standards with the same structure: the Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action (CPMS, Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action), the INEE Minimum Standards for Education, the Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (LEGS), the Minimum Economic Recovery Standards (MERS, SEEP Network), the Minimum Standard for Market Analysis (MISMA, CaLP), and the Humanitarian Inclusion Standards for Older People and People with Disabilities. The IASC Guidelines on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action (2019) complete the set.

In an interview as in a proposal, quoting "15 litres" proves very little. Explaining that you measured actual access through a household survey, disaggregated by area, and adjusted the design for water points more than 500 metres away demonstrates real command of the standard.

8The Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) in practice: commitments, evidence and verification

The revised CHS published in 2024 frames its nine commitments from the perspective of affected people and communities, and specifies for each one the organisational commitments and staff responsibilities. It remains structured around the same themes as the 2014 version, which makes it possible to link it to existing tools.

The four levels of verification

1. Self-assessment using CHS Alliance tools: the organisation scores each indicator itself on the basis of interviews, documents and community consultations.
2. Peer review: a similar organisation examines the evidence.
3. Independent verification by a third-party body.
4. Certification by an accredited body (for example HQAI), with initial, maintenance and recertification audits, and field visits including interviews with affected people.

Protection from sexual exploitation and abuse

The IASC Six Core Principles (2002, revised in 2019) prohibit, among other things, any sexual activity with a child (a person under 18) regardless of the local age of majority, and any exchange of money, employment, goods or assistance for sex, and require staff to report any suspicion through established mechanisms. For the UN system, the Secretary-General's bulletin ST/SGB/2003/13 sets out the same rules. In practice, a donor or verifier will ask for: a policy signed by every employee, a trained focal point, reporting channels known to communities, a confidential, survivor-centred investigation procedure, and participation in the country's PSEA network.

Setting up a complaints and feedback mechanism in six steps

1. Consult communities on the channels they consider safe and accessible (separating women, men, adolescents, persons with disabilities).
2. Combine at least three channels: a toll-free hotline, help desks or suggestion boxes, and direct contact with trained staff.
3. Classify feedback into categories (information, request for assistance, programmatic complaint, sensitive complaint: fraud, abuse, sexual exploitation).
4. Set response times (for example immediate acknowledgement of receipt, a reply within 7 days for a programmatic complaint, referral within 24 hours to the focal point for a sensitive complaint).
5. Protect data: restricted access to the log, anonymisation in reports.
6. Close the loop: inform the community of changes made as a result of feedback, and analyse trends each month in programme meetings.

9Full example: from a Sphere diagnosis to a country-based pooled fund application

Fictional context. The Morenga displacement site, in Haute-Sélia province, hosts 18,000 people (around 3,600 households of five people) who arrived in three waves over the past eight months. The fictional national NGO "Solidarité Sélia", a member of the WASH and Shelter clusters, was rated medium risk following the country-based pooled fund's capacity assessment. A standard allocation has just been launched: an envelope of 6 million dollars, WASH and shelter priorities in severity 4 sites, a ceiling of 500,000 dollars per project, 12 months.

Step 1: a quantified diagnosis against the standards

The team combines data from the site manager, a survey of 380 households (random sample, margin of error of about 5% at a 95% confidence level), an infrastructure inventory and focus group discussions separated by sex and age.

The focus group discussions provide what the figures do not: women avoid the toilets at night because there is no lighting and no lock; older people in sector 6 cannot carry 20 litres over 700 metres; two incidents of harassment near a water point have been reported to the protection cluster.

Step 2: check coordination before writing

The 4W shows that an international NGO has a project for 200 toilets funded by a bilateral donor in sectors 1 to 3. The shortfall to be covered by Solidarité Sélia is therefore 390 toilets, in sectors 4 to 6. The Shelter cluster indicates that a UNHCR partner is covering 600 of the 1,100 households; the proposal targets the remaining 500. These two checks avoid a duplication that the review committee would have spotted.

Step 3: the results framework submitted

Step 4: summary budget and consistency check

Cost per person for the WASH component, which benefits the whole site: about 16 dollars excluding support costs; for the shelter component, 190 dollars per household in kits. The team compares these costs with the cluster's benchmarks and explains the difference for the water component (rocky ground, existing borehole 1.8 kilometres away). As a medium-risk partner, it plans for payment instalments linked to reports, a field monitoring visit by the fund and a project audit, and budgets the time required.

The review committee does not score the quality of the writing but the consistency: every figure in the results framework must derive from the diagnosis, every budget line from an activity, and every activity from a measured gap against a standard or a need expressed by affected people.

10Contextual variations, common mistakes and evaluators' expectations

The system does not work the same way everywhere

Common mistakes

• Using standards as uniform targets without disaggregation or consultation: the site "meets the standards" on average, but women do not use the toilets at night.
• Confusing people in need, people targeted and people reached. The three figures are different, and adding them up across clusters creates double counting; the HRP calculates a separate intersectoral figure.
• Turning up at the cluster only to obtain funding. Cluster coordinators know the regular members; their opinion carries weight in the technical review of allocations.
• Underestimating the cost of compliance: audits, field monitoring, third-party monitoring, insurance and accountability staff must be budgeted.
• Displaying a complaints mechanism that exists only on paper: a box that is never opened, a number that nobody answers. CHS verifiers test the channels and interview communities.
• Forgetting the State: the affected State retains primary responsibility. Ignoring line ministries undermines sustainability and can lead to access restrictions.

What evaluators and auditors look at

Humanitarian evaluations use the OECD-DAC criteria as adapted by ALNAP: relevance and appropriateness, coherence, coverage, connectedness, efficiency, effectiveness, impact. For the topics covered today, they look in particular for evidence that the needs analysis guided the design, that the intervention was coordinated (4W, participation in clusters), that Sphere standards were applied in a contextualised way, and that feedback from affected people changed implementation. Inter-Agency Humanitarian Evaluations (IAHEs), triggered in particular after a system-wide scale-up, examine the collective response rather than a single organisation. Auditors, for their part, check that the quantities reported (for example 390 toilets) match the supporting documents: purchase orders, goods received notes, photos, handover certificates, signed distribution lists.

A report stating "390 toilets built in accordance with Sphere standards" without specifying the number of people per toilet, sex segregation, lighting and user satisfaction proves nothing. An evaluator will ask for the data, and an auditor for the supporting documents.

11Interview questions and key references

Interview questions

1. "Explain the humanitarian programme cycle and where an NGO fits in it."

A good answer describes the stages (needs assessment and analysis, HNO, strategic response planning, HRP, resource mobilisation, implementation and monitoring, operational peer review and evaluation), gives the annual calendar in a protracted crisis and the accelerated timeline in a sudden-onset emergency (flash appeal within a few days), then shows concretely what an NGO does: take part in joint assessments, submit its projects through the cluster, fill in the 4W, report. Mentioning the JIAF and the severity scale is a plus.

2. "What is the difference between CERF and a country-based pooled fund?"

CERF is a global fund that directly finances UN agencies and IOM, through a Rapid Response window and an Underfunded Emergencies window. Country-based pooled funds are managed by OCHA under the authority of the Humanitarian Coordinator, directly fund national and international NGOs, and rely on capacity assessment and risk-based management. A strong candidate mentions their role in localisation.

3. "The site where you work has 9 litres of water per person per day. What do you propose?"

Do not just answer "reach 15 litres". Analyse first: is it a production or a distribution problem? Are there disparities between sectors? What about quality? Queuing times? Then propose short-term measures (water trucking, repairs, loss reduction, storage) and medium-term measures (borehole, extension), coordinate with the WASH cluster, disaggregate monitoring and consult users, especially women and people with reduced mobility.

4. "How do you demonstrate accountability to affected people?"

Cite the CHS, describe a multi-channel complaints mechanism with categories and response times, a separate procedure for sensitive complaints, data protection, monthly analysis and feedback to the community. Give an example of a programme being changed as a result of feedback. Mention the IASC Six Core Principles on protection from sexual exploitation and abuse.

5. "What are the benefits and limitations of the cluster approach?"

Benefits: predictability, clear accountability (lead agency, provider of last resort), common standards, gap analysis. Commonly cited limitations: burdensome meetings, low participation of local actors, a sectoral approach that compartmentalises intersectoral needs, coordination that sometimes runs parallel to that of the State. A good answer proposes remedies: co-chairing with national NGOs, intersectoral working groups, translation and meetings in the local language.

Key references

• Sphere Association, The Sphere Handbook: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response (2018).
• CHS Alliance, Groupe URD and Sphere Association, Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (2024), and CHS Alliance verification tools.
• IASC, Reference Module for Cluster Coordination at Country Level; System-Wide Scale-Up protocols (2018); Six Core Principles relating to sexual exploitation and abuse (revised in 2019); Guidelines on the Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action (2019).
• OCHA, reference documents on the humanitarian programme cycle; Joint Intersectoral Analysis Framework (JIAF); Global Guidelines for Country-Based Pooled Funds; CERF guidelines.
• UNHCR, Refugee Coordination Model; Joint UNHCR-OCHA Note on Mixed Situations.
• DG ECHO, Humanitarian Implementation Plans, Single Form and guidance on Key Outcome Indicators; Humanitarian Partnership Certificate.
• Grand Bargain (2016) and annual independent reports.
• ALNAP, The State of the Humanitarian System (latest edition) and the guide Evaluation of Humanitarian Action (2016).
• Humanitarian Standards Partnership: CPMS, INEE Minimum Standards, LEGS, MERS, MISMA, Humanitarian Inclusion Standards.