Commission staff working paper

Sectoral policies

In line with the Consensus Action Plan, a number of sectoral policy initiatives were either in progress or completed in 2009.

1. Health

The Commission prepared a Position Paper on User Fees for Primary Health Services. This was presented to the Council Working Group. There is international consensus that user fees discriminate against the poor and most vulnerable, as only those who can pay get access to primary health care. The Commission's position is that partners running the emergency health care programmes that EU funds should not ask users to pay fees. However, development partners could consider levying fees during the rehabilitation process in exceptional situations, as a means of working towards financial sustainability.

Regarding the Novel Flu caused by Influenza A (H1N1), the Commission set up a task force to monitor the risk and to adjust the EU-funded humanitarian response as necessary.

The Commission is taking part in a Communication on “The EU role in global health” to be published in April 2010. The EU continued to fund WHO from budget earmarked for capacity building, to enable it to continue its leadership role for the Global Health Cluster and to support country health clusters so that these function efficiently. By the end of 2009, there were 36 partners in the cluster, 51 new Health Cluster Coordinators were trained, and new tools such as a Health Cluster Guide and an assessment tool were finalised.

2. Protection

After a thorough stakeholder consultation process, funding guidelines on protection in humanitarian assistance were finalised in 2009. The document was very well received, even if some organisations would have preferred a broader definition of protection.

The guidelines aim to define the framework in which the Commission should fund protection activities, as well as specifying the type of partners and activities eligible. The guidelines also provide recommendations as to how to programme and monitor protection activities.

Protection is approached in many different ways from the fundamental delivery of humanitarian assistance to institution-building and deployment of peacekeeping troops. The Commission opted for an operational approach in its guidelines. Protection is defined as support to "non-structural activities aiming at reducing the risk and the impact of human-generated violence, coercion, deprivation and abuse of vulnerable individuals or groups in the context of humanitarian crises". The humanitarian aid budget will therefore not fund activities such as long-term institution-building processes, which are a structural process that challenges society as a whole by aiming to change policy, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour.

The guidelines recognise that protection is as important in natural disasters as it is in conflict situations. They identify three levels of protection interventions:

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  "Pure" protection activities;
  
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  Interventions whose main objective is protection, but achieved through assistance;
  
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  Other humanitarian interventions, in which protection should be mainstreamed in order to, at the very least, "do no harm“.
  

On the more operational side, the guidelines insist on the need to recognise programmes, whose main objective is protection, as such, even when the objective is achieved through material assistance. This is important to ensure coherence between needs assessments, objectives, results, activities and indicators.

Monitoring protection programmes is challenging. Quantifying a protection problem can be very difficult. For example, it is hard to measure a reduction in abuse. Moreover, the impact of protection activities is often linked to factors beyond the control of programme operators. The timeframe is also an obstacle to measuring impact. However, where it is impossible to define realistic impact indicators, the level of activity can at least be measured.

3. The use of cash and vouchers in humanitarian crises

In 2009, the Commission finalised work launched two years earlier on the use of cash and vouchers in humanitarian crises, with the adoption of funding guidelines in mid-2009, following extensive consultation with the main actors active in this field¹².

It defines the standards to be followed during the full cycle of projects using cash and vouchers as a means of delivering humanitarian aid. Alternative ways of delivering humanitarian assistance should be systematically analysed and compared in project proposals.

The Commission believes that both cash-based and in-kind humanitarian assistance can be appropriate, and the choice depends on the context. It aims to provide funding to meet needs in the most appropriate, cost-effective and safe way in each case. Nevertheless, the guidelines aim to facilitate wider use of cash and vouchers to reduce costs and improve delivery of humanitarian aid, and to empower beneficiaries by offering them more choice, thus helping to foster self-esteem.

The Commission does not expect rapid, profound changes in the way humanitarian is delivered, though it sees potential for a gradual increase in cash-based systems.

The implementation of these guidelines will be monitored closely and an evaluation of their implementation will be carried out within two years with a view to amending them if need be.

9. Outlook 2010

Overall trends and individual crisis situations show the current main challenges facing humanitarian aid:

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  decreasing humanitarian space: a growing number of countries where access to beneficiaries has become more difficult or impossible;
  
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  worsening security situation for beneficiaries and aid workers alike;
  
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  steep increase in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters;
  
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  difficulties of linking short-term humanitarian aid to longer-term development co-operation activities.
  

The Commission-implemented EU-funded humanitarian aid operations will address these issues. It is clear the answer lies not only in the quantity, but also in the quality of aid. In addition, there will have to be pressure through advocacy at the highest levels to counter some of the most serious impediments to carrying out humanitarian aid operations. This applies particularly to access to beneficiaries, and growing disregard for international humanitarian law.

The context is bleak and the prospect of maintaining humanitarian budgets at current levels in 2010 and beyond is unlikely, given that donor countries have to manage problematic budget deficits. The Commission will respond in two main ways:

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  by addressing the main challenges horizontally, through policies to make aid more effective, and by bringing problems to the attention of decision-makers and the general public;
  
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  through systematic, equitable and consistent programming to allocate what funding is available.
  

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