Strengthening of the Coordination of Emergency Humanitarian Assistance of the United Nations

A/RES/69/135View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 69a Strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations, published in 2015.

What other versions does this mandate have?

30 versions · 1996–2024

This is an older version — the most recent is A/RES/79/140

Year	Symbol	Title	Word length	Text similarity
2024	A/RES/79/140	Strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations	10,870	92%Compare
2023	A/RES/78/119	Strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations	10,024	91%Compare
2022	A/RES/77/28	Strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations	9,324	94%Compare
2021	A/RES/76/124	Strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations	8,836	87%Compare
2020	A/RES/75/127	Strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations	7,788	100%Compare

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

41 reports · 2005–2025

Year	Symbol	Title	Mandate resolution
2025	A/80/384	Central Emergency Response Fund report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/79/140
2025	A/80/75	Strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/79/140
2024	A/79/327	Central Emergency Response Fund report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/78/119
2024	A/79/78	Strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/78/119
2023	A/78/365	Central Emergency Response Fund report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/77/28

What subjects does this mandate have?

5 subjects

Aid Coordination Disaster Preparedness Disaster Prevention Emergency Relief Humanitarian Assistance

What’s in this document?

55 operative paragraphs

Welcomes the outcome of the seventeenth humanitarian affairs segment of the Economic and Social Council at its substantive session of 2014;⁶

⁶See A/69/3, chap. VII. For the final text, see Official Records of the General Assembly, Sixty-ninth Session, Supplement No. 3.

Requests the Emergency Relief Coordinator to continue her efforts to strengthen the coordination and accountability of humanitarian assistance and leadership within the United Nations humanitarian response system, including through the transformative agenda of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, and calls upon relevant United Nations organizations and other relevant intergovernmental organizations, as well as other humanitarian and development actors, to continue to work with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the Secretariat to enhance the coordination, effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian assistance;

Also requests the Emergency Relief Coordinator to continue to improve dialogue with all Member States on the relevant processes, activities and deliberations of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee;

Encourages Member States and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to continue to improve dialogue and collaboration on humanitarian issues, including on policy, in order to foster a more consultative and inclusive approach to humanitarian assistance;

Welcomes the continued efforts by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to build partnerships with regional organizations and non-traditional donors and the private sector, and encourages Member States and the United Nations system to continue to strengthen partnerships at the global, regional, national and local levels in support of national efforts in order to effectively cooperate to provide humanitarian assistance to those in need and ensure that their collaborative efforts adhere to the principles of neutrality, humanity, impartiality and independence;

Encourages Member States, the United Nations system and humanitarian and development organizations to continue to assess and improve, together with other relevant stakeholders, including the private sector, how innovation can be more systematically identified and integrated into humanitarian action in a sustainable manner and to promote the sharing of best practices and lessons learned on innovative tools, processes and approaches, including those from large-scale natural disasters, that could improve the effectiveness and quality of humanitarian response, and in this regard encourages all relevant stakeholders to continue to support the efforts of Member States, in particular developing countries, to strengthen their capacities, including through facilitating access to information and communication technologies;

Welcomes innovative practices that draw on the knowledge of people affected by humanitarian emergencies to develop locally sustainable solutions and to produce life-saving items locally, with minimal logistical and infrastructure implications;

Calls upon the relevant organizations of the United Nations system and, as appropriate, other relevant humanitarian actors to continue efforts to improve the humanitarian response to natural and man-made disasters and complex emergencies by further strengthening humanitarian response capacities at all levels, by continuing to strengthen the provision and coordination of humanitarian assistance at the global and field levels, including through existing cluster coordination mechanisms and in support of national authorities of the affected State, as appropriate, and by further enhancing efficiency, transparency, performance and accountability;

Recognizes the benefits of engagement and coordination with relevant humanitarian actors to the effectiveness of humanitarian response, and encourages the United Nations to continue to pursue efforts to strengthen partnerships at the global level with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, relevant humanitarian non-governmental organizations and other participants in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee;

Requests the Secretary-General to continue strengthening the support provided to United Nations resident/humanitarian coordinators and to United Nations country teams, including by providing necessary training, identifying resources and improving the identification of and the selection process for United Nations resident/humanitarian coordinators, and enhancing their performance accountability;

Calls upon the Chair of the United Nations Development Group and the Emergency Relief Coordinator to continue enhancing their consultations before presenting final recommendations on the selection process for resident coordinators in countries likely to require significant humanitarian response operations;

Requests the United Nations to continue to strengthen its ability to recruit and deploy appropriately senior, skilled and experienced humanitarian staff quickly and flexibly, giving paramount consideration to the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity, while paying due regard to gender equality and to recruiting on as wide a geographical basis as possible, and in this regard encourages the United Nations Development Group to strengthen the resident coordinator system, on which the humanitarian coordinator system is based, in order to ensure the full implementation of the management and accountability system of the Group and the resident coordinator system;

Recognizes that diversity of humanitarian staff brings value to humanitarian work and understanding of developing countries’ contexts, and requests the Secretary-General to address further the insufficient diversity in geographical representation and gender balance in the composition of the humanitarian staff of the Secretariat and other United Nations humanitarian agencies, in particular regarding professional and high-level staff, and to report on measures taken in this regard in his annual report;

Also recognizes that accountability is an integral part of effective humanitarian assistance, and emphasizes the need for enhancing the accountability of humanitarian actors at all stages of humanitarian assistance;

Reaffirms the importance of implementing the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005–2015: Building the Resilience of Nations and Communities to Disasters,Error: Reference source not found reiterates the importance of strengthening the effectiveness of national and local preparedness in line with priority five of the Framework, notes the fourth session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction, held in Geneva from 19 to 23 May 2013, and encourages States, the United Nations system and all stakeholders to continue to engage in the consultations on the successor to the Framework, culminating at the Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, to be held in Sendai, Japan, from 14 to 18 March 2015;

Calls upon Member States, the United Nations and humanitarian and development organizations to continue to build the capacity at all levels of government and within local organizations and communities to better prepare for hazards and respond to and recover from disasters;

Calls upon Member States and the international community to increase and commit adequate, timely, flexible and predictable resources for disaster risk reduction in order to build resilience, including through complementary humanitarian and development programming and by further strengthening national and local capacities to prevent, prepare for and respond to humanitarian emergencies, and furthermore encourages closer cooperation between national stakeholders and humanitarian and development actors in this regard;

Encourages the United Nations system, humanitarian organizations and development organizations to continue their efforts to mainstream preparedness, early action and early recovery into their programming, acknowledges that preparedness, early action and early recovery should receive further funding, and in this regard encourages the provision of timely, flexible, predictable and adequate resources, including from both humanitarian and development budgets, as appropriate;

Urges Member States, the United Nations and other relevant organizations to take further steps to provide a coordinated emergency response to the food and nutrition needs of affected populations, while aiming to ensure that such steps are supportive of national strategies and programmes aimed at improving food security;

Expresses concern about the challenges related to, inter alia, safe access to and use of fuel, firewood, alternative energy, water and sanitation, shelter and food and health-care services in humanitarian emergencies, and noting with appreciation initiatives at the national and international levels that promote effective cooperation in this regard;

Encourages the international community, including relevant United Nations organizations and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, to support efforts of Member States aimed at strengthening their capacity to prepare for and respond to disasters and to support efforts, as appropriate, to strengthen systems, especially early warning systems, for identifying and monitoring disaster risk, including vulnerability and natural hazards;

Welcomes the growing number of initiatives undertaken at the regional and national levels to promote the implementation of the Guidelines for the Domestic Facilitation and Regulation of International Disaster Relief and Initial Recovery Assistance, encourages Member States and, where applicable, regional organizations to take further steps to review and strengthen operational and legal frameworks for international disaster relief, taking into account the Guidelines, as appropriate, and welcomes the valuable support that national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies are providing to their Governments in this area, in collaboration with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and other partners;

Encourages States to create an enabling environment for the capacity-building of local authorities and of national and local non-governmental and community-based organizations in order to ensure better preparedness in providing timely, effective and predictable humanitarian assistance, and encourages the United Nations and humanitarian organizations to provide support to such efforts, including, as appropriate, under the Common Framework for Preparedness of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, the United Nations Development Group and the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, through the transfer of technology and expertise to developing countries and through support to programmes aimed at enhancing the coordination capacities of affected States;

Calls upon Member States, the United Nations and humanitarian organizations to provide emergency assistance in ways that are supportive of recovery and long-term development, where appropriate, including through prioritizing humanitarian tools that strengthen resilience, such as, but not limited to, cash transfers, local procurement of food and services and social safety nets;

Encourages Member States and relevant United Nations organizations to examine their own financing mechanisms in order to improve, where possible, fast and flexible financing for preparedness, response and the transition from relief to recovery;

Takes note of the efforts of Member States, the United Nations system and the international community to strengthen preparedness and local, national and regional humanitarian response capacity, and calls upon the United Nations and relevant partners to continue support in this regard;

Encourages efforts to provide safe and enabling learning environments and quality education for all, especially for girls and boys, in humanitarian emergencies, including in order to contribute to a smooth transition from relief to development;

Encourages the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to continue to work with Member States and relevant United Nations entities to facilitate the exchange of updated, accurate and reliable information, including through mutually comprehensible harmonized data, in order to ensure better assessment of needs in order to improve preparedness and humanitarian response;

Calls upon relevant United Nations organizations to support the improvement of the humanitarian programme cycle, in particular the development of strategic response plans and humanitarian needs overviews, including consolidated appeals processes, in consultation with the affected States in order to strengthen the coordination of humanitarian action, to meet the needs of people affected by humanitarian emergencies;

Encourages Member States to provide humanitarian funding based on, and in accordance with, the humanitarian appeals brought forward by the United Nations;

Encourages Member States and relevant United Nations organizations to explore innovative risk-sharing mechanisms and to base risk management funding on objective data;

Requests Member States, relevant humanitarian organizations of the United Nations system and other relevant humanitarian actors to ensure that all aspects of humanitarian response, including disaster preparedness and needs assessments, take into account the specific humanitarian needs and vulnerabilities of all components of the affected population, in particular girls, boys, women, older persons and persons with disabilities, including in the design and implementation of disaster risk reduction, humanitarian and recovery programming and post-humanitarian emergency reconstruction, and in this regard encourages efforts to ensure gender mainstreaming, including in the analysis of allocations and programme implementation, and through greater use of the gender marker, and emphasizes the importance of full participation of, in particular, women and persons with disabilities in decision-making processes related to humanitarian response;

Calls upon United Nations humanitarian organizations, in consultation with Member States, as appropriate, to strengthen the evidence base for humanitarian assistance by further developing common mechanisms to improve the quality, transparency and reliability of, and make further progress towards, common humanitarian needs assessments, including through improved collection, analysis and reporting of sex-, age- and disability-disaggregated data and taking into account environmental impact, to assess their performance in assistance and to ensure the most effective use of humanitarian resources by those organizations;

Calls upon the United Nations and its humanitarian partners to enhance accountability to Member States, including affected States, and all other stakeholders and to further strengthen humanitarian response efforts, including by monitoring and evaluating the provision of their humanitarian assistance, incorporating lessons learned into programming and consulting with the affected populations so that their needs are appropriately assessed and effectively addressed;

Calls upon donors to provide adequate, timely, predictable and flexible resources based on and in proportion to assessed needs, including for underfunded and forgotten emergencies, to consider providing early and multi-year commitments to pooled humanitarian funds and to continue to support diverse humanitarian funding channels, encourages efforts to adhere to the Principles and Good Practice of Humanitarian Donorship⁷ and to improve burden-sharing among donors, and in this respect encourages the private sector, civil society and other relevant entities to make relevant contributions, complementary to those of other sources;

⁷A/58/99-E/2003/94, annex II.

Calls upon Member States, the United Nations and humanitarian organizations to identify better ways of working to address the increasing capacity and resource gap, in order to effectively meet the needs of affected populations;

Calls upon Member States that are in a position to do so and development and humanitarian partners, in their efforts to provide flexible resources, to consider ways of better mainstreaming the need for preparedness and building resilience in the provision of humanitarian and development assistance, including reconstruction and rehabilitation, inter alia, with a view to ensuring smooth transition from relief to development;

Encourages humanitarian and development actors to pursue, where appropriate, common risk-management and resilience objectives, achievable through joint analysis, planning, programming and funding;

Calls upon all Member States that are in a position to do so to increase their voluntary contributions to humanitarian emergencies, and in this context reiterates that the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs should benefit from adequate and more predictable funding;

Welcomes the important achievements of the Central Emergency Response Fund in ensuring a more timely and predictable response to humanitarian emergencies, stresses the importance of continuing to improve the functioning of the Fund, and in this regard encourages the United Nations funds and programmes and the specialized agencies to review and evaluate, where necessary, their partnership policies and practices in order to ensure the timely disbursement of funds from the Fund to implementing partners in order to ensure that resources are used in the most efficient, effective, accountable and transparent manner possible;

Calls upon all Member States, and invites the private sector and all concerned individuals and institutions, to consider increasing their voluntary contributions to the Central Emergency Response Fund, and emphasizes that contributions should be additional to current commitments to humanitarian programming and should not be to the detriment of resources made available for international cooperation for development;

Encourages Member States, in cooperation with relevant United Nations humanitarian organizations, to ensure that the basic humanitarian needs of affected populations, including clean water, food, shelter, health, including sexual and reproductive health, education and protection, are addressed as components of humanitarian response, including through providing timely and adequate resources, while ensuring that their collaborative efforts fully adhere to humanitarian principles;

Encourages Member States, the United Nations and humanitarian organizations to continue to work together to understand and address the different protection needs of affected populations, particularly the most vulnerable, in humanitarian crises and ensure that these needs are adequately integrated into preparedness, response and recovery efforts;

Reaffirms the obligation of all States and parties to an armed conflict to protect civilians in armed conflicts in accordance with international humanitarian law, and invites States to promote a culture of protection, taking into account the particular needs of women, children, older persons and persons with disabilities;

Also reaffirms the obligations of all States and parties to an armed conflict, in accordance with international humanitarian law, to respect and protect humanitarian personnel, including medical personnel, facilities, transports and activities, which must not be attacked, and to ensure that the wounded and sick receive, to the fullest extent practicable and with the least possible delay, the medical care and attention required;

Calls upon States to adopt preventive measures and effective responses to acts of violence committed against civilian populations in armed conflicts and to ensure that those responsible are promptly brought to justice, in accordance with national law and their obligations under international law;

Urges all Member States to address gender-based violence in humanitarian emergencies in a strengthened manner and to ensure that their laws and institutions are adequate to prevent, promptly investigate and prosecute gender-based violence, and calls upon States, the United Nations and all relevant humanitarian organizations to improve coordination, harmonize response and strengthen capacity, with a view to preventing and reducing such violence and ensuring that humanitarian relief is provided in a way that mitigates the risk of gender-based violence, and to ensure that support services to victims and survivors of such violence are given due priority, beginning in the earliest stages of emergency response;

Recognizes the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement⁸ as an important international framework for the protection of internally displaced persons, encourages Member States and humanitarian agencies to continue to work together, in collaboration with host communities, in endeavours to provide a more predictable response to the needs of internally displaced persons, and in this regard calls for continued and enhanced international support, upon request, for the capacity-building efforts of States and encourages humanitarian organizations to improve coordination, including with development organizations, to better address the needs of internally displaced persons in support of Member States to promote durable solutions;

⁸E/CN.4/1998/53/Add.2, annex.

Calls upon all States and parties in complex humanitarian emergencies, in particular in armed conflict and in post-conflict situations, in countries in which humanitarian personnel are operating, in conformity with the relevant provisions of international law and national laws, to cooperate fully with the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies and organizations and to ensure the safe and unhindered access of humanitarian personnel, as well as the delivery of supplies and equipment, in order to allow such personnel to efficiently perform their task of assisting affected civilian populations, including refugees and internally displaced persons;

Welcomes the progress made towards further enhancing the security management system of the United Nations, and supports the approach taken by the Secretary-General to focus the efforts of the security management system on enabling the United Nations system to “stay and deliver” its most critical programmes even in high-risk environments by effectively managing the risks to which personnel are exposed, including in the provision of humanitarian assistance, and to adapt quickly to changes in local security conditions;

Encourages the United Nations and other relevant humanitarian actors to include, as part of their risk management strategy, the building of good relations and trust with national and local governments and to promote acceptance by local communities and all relevant actors in order to enable humanitarian assistance to be provided in accordance with humanitarian principles;

Requests the Secretary-General to report on actions taken to enable the United Nations to continue to strengthen its ability to recruit and deploy staff quickly, effectively and flexibly, to procure emergency relief materials and services rapidly, cost-effectively and locally, where applicable, and to quickly disburse funds in order to support Governments and United Nations country teams in the coordination of international humanitarian assistance;

Welcomes the initiative of the Secretary-General to hold the first World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2016, aimed at sharing knowledge and best practices in the humanitarian field to improve the coordination, capacity and effectiveness of humanitarian response, requests the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to ensure an inclusive, consultative, transparent preparatory process, encourages Member States and stakeholders to participate in and contribute to the process and outcome of the Summit, and encourages the Secretary-General to further engage Member States regarding the process and outcome of the Summit;

Encourages Member States to give appropriate consideration in the discussion on the post-2015 development agenda to disaster risk reduction, including building resilience and national and local preparedness and response capacity;

Requests the Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly at its seventieth session, through the Economic and Social Council at its substantive session of 2015, on progress made in strengthening the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations, including on the process and update on the World Humanitarian Summit, and to submit a report to the Assembly on the detailed use of the Central Emergency Response Fund.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What other versions does this mandate have?

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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