ACF International and the Transformative Agenda

The Transformative Agenda (TA) is an on-going process launched by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) in December 2011 in order to improve the timeliness and effectiveness of international collective humanitarian response. In this way the IASC intended to fix the remaining challenges of the 2005 Humanitarian Reform (HR) which became apparent after some of the failures of collective response to the 2010 Pakistani floods and the Haiti earthquake.

 

The TA covers issues which fall under three pillars: coordination, leadership and accountability. Those issues are addressed through a number of guidance documents (the “TA Protocols”) and a set of actions aimed at improving collective humanitarian response, yet the TA’s content and scope have not been defined with precision. This lack of clear definition, and seeming non-transparency around the whole TA process, has resulted in inconsistent

engagement of the NGO community.

 

In 2014, the TA is expected to enter a phase of massive roll-out at field level. It is, therefore, urgent for NGOs to understand the role they have to play in the TA it if they want to influence this new stage of the humanitarian response coordination transformation.

 

As an active participant of international humanitarian coordination, ACF has engaged with the HR and is currently assessing opportunities and added value of engaging with the TA. This report is part of this effort. It serves both as a tool which helps to understand the TA contents, structure and state of roll-out and as critical analysis of the TA from an NGO’s standpoint.

 

The report is based on information obtained from documents released by the IASC, UN agencies and NGO consortia, and on interviews conducted in October-December 2013 with representatives of UN agencies, donors, and the international NGO community and with ACF headquarters and field-based staff. Where possible, ACF shares its own experience with the TA at global and country level. 

 

The first part of the report provides an overview of the TA process since its inception, from development of the TA protocols to the on-going roll-out in the field. It explains what bodies and mechanisms deal with the TA and how NGOs have been engaged with it.

 

The following chapters look closely at each of the three TA pillars – coordination, leadership and accountability. Key TA elements are identified, followed by an analysis of the state of their roll-out and of their relevance for addressing major challenges of humanitarian coordination. Each time, ACF tries to see in which ways it has been contributing to objectives set under the TA. 

 

ACF comes to the conclusion that while setting the right direction, the TA has not addressed some major structural problems of humanitarian coordination and has left untouched two pillars of the HR, namely the Humanitarian Financing and the Principles of Partnership. The TA roll-out in the field has been taken up slowly and has influenced unevenly across different geographic areas.

 

It is, therefore too early to talk about a real transformation of the international humanitarian coordination system. Further action needs to be taken to achieve the TA objectives and to eliminate the remaining weaknesses of the HR which have not been addressed by the TA. To support further improvement of the coordination system, this report identifies major shortcomings of the TA and offers recommendations to the IASC, UN agencies, NGOs and

donors with a view to ensuring effective collective humanitarian action.