Minimum technical standards in humanitarian aid
- Page updated on18 de April de 2025
After the hard lessons learned in the 1990s in contexts such as Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, Somalia and, above all, Rwanda, many humanitarian actors saw the need to improve the quality of humanitarian responses, not only in terms of participation, responsibility and accountability, but also in the technical standards of operations.
This is how in 1997 the Project Sphere, a movement self-regulated by the humanitarian organizations committed to this change, came into being.
Table of contents:
Sphere: a consensus for quality improvement
Among the objectives of the Sphere movement was the improvement of the quality of humanitarian response in disasters and emergencies, which in addition to including aspects linked to the humanitarian imperative, principles, code of ethics, and commitments for transparency and accountability, also included minimum norms and standards on key technical issues.
These minimum standards and norms, included in the second part of the Sphere Handbook, cover the sectors of water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), food security, nutrition, shelter and settlement, and health. For each of these sectors and their specific technical areas (e.g., mental health care or water quality), the document indicates a series of recommended key actions, key indicators with pre-established minimum thresholds, and additional technical guidance.
The Sphere Handbook is not the only document of the Humanitarian Standards Partnership, the alliance that today continues to advocate for these improvements. There are also additional documents on standards for the care of children and adolescents, the inclusion of the elderly and people with disabilities, and the management of camps for displaced persons, among others.
Beyond Sphere
In addition to the Humanitarian Standards Partnership and the Sphere project, numerous other UN agencies, academic institutions, donors and non-governmental organizations have developed technical guides and sectoral manuals, which are increasingly evidence-based.
Although it is impossible to list all the sources of technical guidance for the different sectors, it is worth highlighting the work of UN agencies such as WHO, UNFPA and UNICEF and organizations focused on research, innovation and learning such as ALNAP and ELRHA, the work that numerous NGOs implementing humanitarian action such as Médecins Sans Frontières carry out in research, learning and evidence generation, or the commitment of academic sector initiatives such as the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, the Geneva Centre of Humanitarian Studies, the Health in Humanitarian Crises Centre of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, or the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health, among many others.
Health in humanitarian crises provides technical guidance on many of these issues related to public health and health care.
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