Update 2017 (Annex on Humanitarian Sectors and Activities)
This note arises from the work of the Good Humanitarian Donorship Implementation Sub-Group on Definition of Humanitarian Aid to develop a common definition for statistical purposes. OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service seeks inter alia to improve realtime resource allocation decisions and promote equitable funding among crises by posting detailed information on humanitarian aid flows. To do so, it must distinguish humanitarian aid from broader international aid. Since different donors and implementing agencies have different definitions of humanitarian action and assistance, the question arises as to which definition FTS should apply. A parallel issue is that donors and appealing agencies should have guidelines for deciding what funding they must report to FTS (i.e. which of their funding is humanitarian).
These draft criteria comprise context, activities or sub-sectors, textual definitions, and standards and objectives, as well as procedures (plus responsibility) for applying the criteria. In other words they outline “who decides” and “how to decide.” Both the IASC CAP Guidelines and the 2003 Good Humanitarian Donorship document contain textual definitions of humanitarian aid (reproduced below). This document aims to operationalise these definitions for the particular purpose of the FTS, i.e. with reference to the scope and type of projects whose funding has been shown on FTS.