3. Improving Quality and Impact

Vision

Having played a historical role in establishing them, the SCHR supports widely accepted quality standards, primarily the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS) and Sphere. We support both certification against, and promotion of, standards as a preferred approach to systematically improving the quality and impact of humanitarian response. We actively engage with three key organisations that coordinate and gather evidence for the delivery to standards: Sphere, the CHS Alliance and the Humanitarian Quality Assurance Initiative (HQAI).

We work to find solutions to the practical challenges SCHR members and others are facing in implementing verification, particularly across confederations, and the challenges SCHR members and others are facing in sustainably funding membership and verification, and certification in particular

We ensure that both verified CHS delivery and alternative approaches to program quality support localisation and participation and are aligned with Grand Bargain ambitions. We work to ensure transparency about quality, without punishing those who are making the effort to raise their game. We recognise the legitimacy of other approaches to improving program quality.

We believe certification can be used to align donor’s due diligence requirements with humanitarian-driven efforts to improve our systems and evidence, to ensure that humanitarian implementers remain independent of donor power and can focus on accountability to affected people rather than to donors

Work within and between members

  • Gathering and sharing evidence of the impact of standards in improving humanitarian outcomes

  • Monitoring of implementation of standards

  • Developing propositions to mitigate the associated financial and other costs of implementing high quality programs and verifying that standards are being met

  • Peer support and sharing of the operational realities and costs of verifying quality response, including sharing experience and ideas on how to manage verification in practice, including through different approaches (self-assessment, peer review, independent verification and certification) of humanitarian actors to both general and specific compliance requirements.

Work at the SCHR Secretariat

  • Work with HQAI, CHS and key donors to identify potential overlaps between standards and donor requirements to reduce duplication and costs, ensuring that donors (including INGOs and UN agencies) can accept CHS certification as evidence that due diligence/compliance requirements are being met.

  • Champion the standards at the IASC and Grand Bargain to broaden acceptance and adoption.

  • Work with other networks including Network for Aid Response (NEAR), the Alliance for Empowering Partnership (A4EP) and the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA) to support access to standards for local NGOs, recognizing the role of SCHR members in supporting this.

  • Actively engaging with the governance and leadership of Sphere, CHS Alliance and HQAI.

Key Forums and External Stakeholders

  • CHS Alliance, Sphere, HQAI

  • Network for Empowered Aid Response (NEAR), the Alliance for empowering Partnership (A4EP), International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA),

  • Good Humanitarian Donorship Alliance