Flagship Initiative

People sit in chairs facing each other, some people can also been standing behind them.
Masna settlement in Wau province, South Sudan. In 2023, the Flagship Initiative engaged communities to understand their priorities. As a result, in January 2024, a voluntary return process was initiated to assist displaced people to return to their places of origin. OCHA/Alioune Ndiaye.

Redesigning humanitarian action

The Flagship Initiative was launched in 2023 to redesign humanitarian action from the ground up. One year into its implementation, in the four pilot countries of Colombia, Niger, the Philippines, and South Sudan, the initiative is shifting the drivers of humanitarian action, organizing assistance around the priorities of crisis-affected communities rather than the priorities of aid providers.

Based on the Flagship Initiative’s first global learning report published by the Institute for Development Studies in March 2024, there are clear areas of convergence emerging from the four pilot countries. Collectively, the four pilot countries are on the cusp of a new approach to humanitarian action, one which:

  1. Systematically engages with communities to understand their priorities, risks, capacities, and aspirations.
  2. Coordinates planning and programming around these priorities at a decentralized, subnational level.
  3. Finances a coalition of partners and packages of humanitarian assistance that contribute to delivering community priorities – both in terms of emergency response and strengthening resilience.

“We want to move towards a community-centered, nationally-led humanitarian system that builds on existing capacities and reduces over time the need for humanitarian support and funding” – Mireia Villar Forner, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Colombia

People sit in chairs.
A OCHA South Sudan team listens to a community in Rodriak, South Sudan. OCHA consulted with communities approximately every two weeks since the pilot began as part of a model that supports ongoing dialogue to identify community priorities. OCHA/Alioune Ndiaye.

The evolving approach

Despite the vastly different operational contexts and unique challenges faced in each country, the Flagship Initiative has identified five common evolving elements that are transforming the way humanitarian responses are programmed and delivered. These elements, emerging over the past 18 months, are reshaping the humanitarian landscape, moving away from standardized, top-down approaches towards more community-centered, locally-driven solutions. 

The Flagship Initiative approach is revolutionizing humanitarian action through five key elements:

  1. Systematic and Participatory Community Engagement 
    This new approach prioritizes participatory engagement based on active listening and iterative dialogue. It aims to truly understand and prioritize community needs, moving beyond traditional needs assessments. Find out more about how community engagement is evolving in the Philippines.
  2. Decentralized Area-Based Coordination 
    The initiative implements area-based coordination, emphasizing greater local involvement and decentralized decision-making. This approach focuses on empowering local actors who are best positioned to respond effectively.
  3. Funding Local Communities' Priorities and Capacities 
    The Flagship approach utilizes country-based pooled funds to directly support local initiatives and capacities. It introduces micro-grants and develops coherent country-level finance strategies that align with community priorities and focus on building resilience.
  4. Programming and Humanitarian Planning Based on Community Priorities 
    Community priorities become the central focus for all actors involved in humanitarian response. The humanitarian response plan is evolving to present area-based strategies organized around these community-identified priorities.
  5. Empowering Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators to Drive an Integrated Response that Addresses Community Priorities 
    The initiative empowers Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators to transform the humanitarian business model. They can now develop innovative approaches that directly respond to community priorities and promote integrated programming across humanitarian and development sectors.

Find out more about the Flagship Initiative’s evolving approach.

Learning, adaptation and replication

The Flagship Initiative is an exploratory process: some approaches will work, others will not. The aim is to understand why and, where desirable, how approaches can be replicated and brought to scale. To do so, an external rigorous learning and evaluation function has been engaged to support pilot countries to learn from setbacks, identify promising new approaches, and develop them for replication in other contexts. Following the publication of the Flagship Initiative’s First-Year Learning Report, the first Global Learning Forum was held in Luxembourg in March 2024. You can find a summary of the discussions in our Global Learning Forum Report.

Key documents

All Flagship Initiative documents

Colombia + 3 more

Evaluation and Lessons Learned

Flagship Initiative First Year Learning Report (March 2024)

Lewis Sida, Philip Proudfoot, Mariah Cannon, Mónica Almanza, Manual De Vera, Nyachangkuoth Rambang Tai In 2023, the Flagship Initiative was launched as a radical shift in humanitarian coordination...

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