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Humanitarian Access Working Group Toolkit
2: Establishing
This section highlights best practice in establishing a Humanitarian Access Working Group (HAWG) and outlines its relationship with other parts of the humanitarian coordination system.
Purpose
An HAWG should serve as an operational and technical advisory body for the entire humanitarian response. Any issues related to access concerning the wider humanitarian community should be directed towards it.
An HAWG can be involved in a broad range of issues and activities, from supporting the development of an HCT access strategy to drafting common positions on operational dilemmas and supporting senior officials' engagement with external interlocutors.
If access issues are discussed at a Humanitarian Country Team (HCT), Inter-Cluster Coordination Group (ICCG) or other coordination forum without the HAWG’s involvement, then there is potentially a gap in communication.
Start-up
HAWGs are established in a variety of settings, but they are most commonly associated with situations of armed conflict, both international and non-international.
They might also be warranted in situations where violence is taking place, but which have not yet been classified as an armed conflict, such as in Haiti where criminal gangs are prevalent.
High levels of existing or potential access constraints and operational dilemmas should be common features of any situation where an HAWG is set up.
OCHA and its non-governmental organisation (NGO) partners play a key role in assessing whether an HAWG is required. Its establishment will depend on the HCT’s requirements and OCHA’s capacity as a convening body for humanitarian partners and its information management capacity to support HAWG activities.
Many HAWGs are co-chaired by OCHA and either an NGO such as NRC, or an NGO forum. All co-chairs will have responsibilities both towards their own organisation and the HAWG. Co-chairs should be mindful of how their own organisation’s priorities might come into conflict with those of the HAWG as a collective, and transparent about any conflicts of interest.
Terms of reference (ToR)
There can be a tendency to jump straight into developing strategies and plans when an HWAG is established, and to allow the structures that underpin it to develop ad-hoc. This is understandable in an emergency situation, but poorly defined structures can be difficult to change later and can eventually impede an HWAG’s effectiveness.
It is important to establish sound structures from the outset, regardless of the situation. If an HAWG already exists, these structures should be evaluated as soon as possible.
A clear and concise ToR (access sample ToR here) is one of the first documents an HAWG should aim to produce or update. It should include the following:
- The HAWG’s overall objective: This is often generic text about improving humanitarian access.
- Roles and responsibilities: The topics, issues, and activities the HAWG will focus on.
- Membership and chairing: The co-chairs and their functions, how members will be selected and revised, and what is expected of members in terms of time and effort dedicated to the HAWG.
- Meetings and agendas: How often the HAWG will aim to meet, how the agenda will be decided and when minutes will be shared. Attendance rules could also be included, allowing the possibility of changing membership if organisations do attend regularly.
- Reporting lines: Who the HAWG will report to, ideally the HCT. If possible, a commitment should be included that the HAWG leadership will sit on the HCT.
- Revision: When the HAWG’s ToR will be updated during the course of a year, providing an opportunity to adjust its structure if it is not fit for purpose.
- Norms and ways of working: An HAWG’s strength depends on its members’ ability to collaborate and share information in productive and safe ways. Firm norms and expectations for participation enable more productive collaboration.
Best ToR practices
A ToR might be drafted at the same time as the group membership structure is being decided, so involve prospective members in the process. The ToR, or any document for that matter, should not solely be produced by the co-chairs.
Ensure the HCT has ownership of, and engagement in the HAWG’s work by having it endorse the ToR. HCT endorsement is particularly important if the HAWG envisions presenting regularly to the HCT.
An endorsed ToR helps to establish accountability for the commitments it contains. Many HAWGs have excellent ToRs, but they regularly are not fully realised. An endorsed ToR can be a useful tool to remind HAWG members or the HCT of the commitments they have made.
Many HAWG ToRs do not specify how the co-chairs will split their responsibilities. This has its pros and cons. On the one hand it provides flexibility to divide tasks as they arise, but on the other it can lead to frustration in situations where there is a poor working relationship between the co-chairs or their superiors. At a minimum, the co-chairs and their superiors should discuss the division of responsibilities as soon as possible so clear expectations are established early on.
In case of major disagreements, recourse to the Global Access Working Group could be taken as a last resort.
Reporting lines
An HAWG should ideally have an active reporting line to the HCT. This increases it chances of influencing important strategies, engagements, policies and decisions related to humanitarian access and principled action. As the Humanitarian Coordinator (HC) will often lead on the most important high-level negotiations, a connection to the HCT and by extension the HC is important to ensure technical advice and support for these negotiations.
HAWGs may also have reporting lines to ICCGs. This can be a productive relationship in supporting ongoing and future operations, but it does distance the HAWG from more senior decision makers within the humanitarian response.
Regardless of which forum an HAWG reports to, its co-chairs should present regularly to the HCT, ICCG and key clusters to help realise its ToR.
If an HAWG’s leadership is not present in these coordination forums, access priorities should be systematically raised with more senior officials, such as the head or deputy head of OCHA or the director of the international NGO forum, to ensure they are presented and discussed in the most important coordination forums.
This kind of separation, however, is likely to increase the chances of the HAWG operating in a bubble and its members becoming frustrated. A middle course might be for its co-chairs’ superiors to represent the HAWG’s work on the HCT or ICCG, but this is not ideal because neither will be as well versed in its day-to-day work.
Structure
HAWGs need to be mindful of how many members they admit. Those with large numbers risk becoming solely information-sharing platforms that struggle to generate meaningful and effective discussions about strategy and policy.
Different HAWG structures can help to mitigate this, and there are four that tend to be used. These are described below, with the first and fourth being the most common. The size of the potential membership pool may be a deciding factor in choosing which structure to adopt.
Single-structure HAWG: This is the most straightforward in terms of organisation. It consists of one group, but membership can range from 10 to 50+ individuals. The bigger the group, the less effective it is likely to be. If it grows beyond 15 to 20 members, one of the structures below should be considered.
Core HAWG + briefing group: This involves a core working group of fewer than 20 members that are committed to dedicating more time to the group’s work. The core group is supplemented by a larger briefing group that is mainly used for information sharing. The briefing group is provided with opportunities to feed into HAWG products, but it is less involved in the week-to-week work. There is less need to be stringent in terms of the profile of briefing group members.
Core HAWG + various briefing groups: Similar to the above but with various briefing groups to cater for different working languages. One briefing group might typically by held in English, French or Spanish and another in a further language to embrace as many organisations as possible. As the number of briefing groups grows, however, so too does the effort required to organise meetings.
Core HAWG + sub-national HAWGs: This option may be preferable if certain geographical areas require specific attention that a national working group is not capable of addressing. In this scenario, the national HAWG co-chairs should have a technical line to each of their sub-national counterparts.
A requirement to have one or more briefing groups could be a welcome challenge, because it points to broad interest in the HAWG and its work, but coordinating a large number of organisations fairly but effectively is more complicated. OCHA’s staffing capacity is likely to be important in such situations.
Membership
Whether a co-chair is tasked with setting up an HAWG or slotting into an existing forum, deciding on or revising its membership structure is an important step.
Structures that are not transparent, consensus driven and strategic can undermine an HAWG’s legitimacy and relevance within the humanitarian community. Ad-hoc, top-down processes can lead to perceptions of there being an elite “in-group” and another that is “out of favour”.
- Some guiding principles to select member organisations include:
- Membership should represent a mix of organisations – UN agencies, national and international NGOs and coordination bodies such as ICCGs and NGO forums – that cover specific expertise in areas such protection, logistics and civil-military coordination.
- Membership should reflect operational presence in as many as possible if not all geographic areas so that isolated access constraints do not go unreported.
- Members’ work should reflect a range of programmatic interventions. Some sectors may experience access challenges that others do not.
- Membership should include organisations that intervene directly rather than through partners. These organisations are more likely to be able to speak with authority about the access environment.
- Some UN agencies are less frequently included in HAWGs, but are worth considering:
- The UN Department for Safety and Security (UNDSS), particularly in higher risk locations given its significant influence over UN agencies’ movements
- UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), in situations where deconfliction mechanisms are in place
- The UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS), in situations where contamination with explosive remnants of war, unexploded ordnance or improvised explosive devices is significant.
- An HAWG’s membership should also reflect the main stakeholders of influence, such as large UN agencies or international NGOs which are part of the HCT and are willing to raise priority issues. These organisations will ultimately decide whether the HAWG’s work is endorsed.
- Different HAWGs select different membership profiles in different situations. Some will only have technical access specialists as members, which facilitates more granular discussions. Others will include more influential operational members, which helps to raise the profile of the group but may detract from the technical nature of the discussions. In situations with significant access constraints, having members with advocacy or policy backgrounds profiles can be helpful.
- Regardless of the seniority of positions, it is good to include members that are directly involved in, or support engagement with external stakeholders and which have programmatic responsibilities.
- In situations with high levels of insecurity, access and security can become synonymous and lead to an HAWG having many security experts as members. This has its advantages, but it can mean that non-security access barriers or dilemmas are not given enough attention.
- An HAWG’s leadership should ensure that a number of national and/or local NGOs are represented in the group for a number of significant reasons:
- They are likely collectively to be the largest implementers in a response.
- They are likely to face access challenges that UN agencies or international NGOs do not.
- They may be able to access communities and areas that international agencies are unable to.
- Their decision-making processes and ability to resolve access challenges and dilemmas might differ from those of UN agencies or international NGOs.
- Including a UN agency or international NGO that works through national and/or local partners should not be a substitute for including national and/or local NGOs themselves.
- HAWGs regularly struggle to meaningfully include national and/or local NGOs in their core membership. This is not necessarily because of a lack of effort, but because a different type of effort is required. It should not be assumed that national and/or local NGOs will have the same interests as a large international organisation in being a member, and co-chairs need to reflect on whether they understand and are responding to their motivations of to take part.
- If securing participation continues to be a challenge, they should also strive to make greater bilateral efforts with national and/or local NGOs to seek their input and feedback on the HAWG’s work. They might also seek advice from an NGO forum or international stakeholders that work primarily through partners.
Whether or not to include donors as part of an HAWG’s core membership is often a difficult decision to make. They are often not included, particularly in situations of armed conflict in which a donor’s government may be a party.
Aside from the potential politicisation of the HAWG, members may be less likely to talk about their access impediments and operational compromises in front of their donors. This is likely to be particularly true for organisations that rely on a small number of donors.
NRC’s position is that HAWGs should be platforms for operational and coordination humanitarian partners only.
A decision not to include donors should not, however, be equated with a decision not to keep them informed and support their advocacy efforts. Donors often have influence over HCT members and senior humanitarian officials and can be important allies for an HAWG.
Donors that are not included in an HAWG’s membership should be kept informed, possibly through a monthly briefing that would ideally be delivered by both co-chairs.
Some organisations, such as Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross, do not traditionally participate in UN-led coordination structures. They may, however, participate as observers.
Regardless of their membership status, both organisations are important to consult. They often have access to areas and vulnerable groups that others do not have. They are also considered more independent in terms of their funding structures and so can provide a perspective on the access environment that is less influenced by the UN system and large western donors.
Meetings
Like any meeting, running an HAWG meeting is straightforward in many respects but it can be challenging to generate an active discussion among members.
Repeated meetings with one-way communication can lead to frustration among the leadership and members alike. There are several reasons this can happen:
- Members are not comfortable discussing what they perceive to be sensitive topics.
- Agendas are set solely by the HAWG’s leadership.
- Members’ profiles are not conducive to good discussions. They might be removed from day-to-day operations and might not be well versed in the minutiae of the access environment.
There is no formula to overcome these challenges, but the following could help:
- Stress and demonstrate that the HAWG is a confidential space to discuss issues. Ask members to agree on ground rules on confidentiality that might include a commitment not to forward HAWG emails or messages to organisations outside the membership, and agreement that members who violate the rules will be removed. If HAWG members trust each other and communicate openly it will support stronger collective responses.
- Have members contribute to setting the agenda and lead on points they put forward in the meetings. Make it clear as well that over time all members will be expected to lead on some agenda points.
Call on members for their opinions during meetings if people are not forthcoming. Particularly in online meetings it is easier for people to shy away from contributing, but being part of an HAWG should come with an expectation that members participate actively in all aspects of its work. - While not always possible, try to set an agenda at least a few days in advance to give members time to gather necessary information from their partners or colleagues.
The HAWG leadership should ensure that minutes and action points are disseminated as soon as possible after a meeting, taking care to ensure members’ anonymity is maintained. It might also be agreed during a meeting to omit any highly sensitive discussion points from the minutes. A lighter version of the minutes could be shared with the ICCG, the Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator (DHC) and platforms such as Civil-Military Coordination (CMCoord) cells to keep them informed.
Even in extremely sensitive situations, action points from the meeting should at least be circulated to ensure accountability to the action owners and follow-up in subsequent meetings.
Signing off
A consensus-driven approach is usually the default way for an HAWG to sign-off on a joint position or document, but this method is not without its drawbacks given that it can lead to the lowest common denominator being agreed. Nor is there often much appetite to adopt any type of voting method. Despite the drawbacks, there are ways of ensuring that true reflections of HAWG positions are sent to the HCT or ICCG.
- Disagreements over a position should be addressed in a one-to-one setting to better understand that organisation’s position and alternatives acceptable to them.
- Red-lines or vetoes from specific organisations should be explained and justified.
- If an HAWG position risks being forced through, concerned organisations should seek the advice of their country director or head of mission on how to address the issue. Members should not let the co-chairs force through work that they disagree with.
- Major disagreements that cannot be overcome should be documented and included in a presentation to decision-making bodies.
