Estonian participation in international humanitarian policy

Estonia is a member of UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) from 2009 -2011. Additionally as vice president in 2009, Estonia was responsible for the humanitarian aid session during ECOSOC’s annual meeting. This year’s ECOSOC humanitarian week took place in Geneva on 19 - 21 July, and among the topics of discussion was the strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance of the United Nations and strengthening resilience, preparedness and capacities of humanitarian response.

On 3 June 2009, the Estonian Foreign Ministry along with the Finnish Foreign Ministry and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) organised a regional seminar to support OCHA’s Donor Support Group entitled “Humanitarian Partnership Forum for Emerging European Donors”. The OCHA Donor Support Group is the world’s most active humanitarian aid donor network, which helps to manage OCHA’s annual humanitarian aid budget of over 2 billion USD.

Chairmanship of the Good Humanitarian Donorship group

From 2009 to 2010, Estonia was the co-chairman along with Ireland of the largest group unifying humanitarian aid donors—Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD). GHD is an informal forum that brings together 36 countries that give humanitarian aid (donors), all of whom have approved standards for good practice in providing humanitarian aid—the principles of good humanitarian donorship.

The goal of the GHD group is to spread the principles of good humanitarian donorship. For this they meet about 4 times a year in Geneva, where they share practical experiences and discuss current issues in humanitarian policy. There is also dialogue with other humanitarian partners. The broader goal of the group is to improve the behaviour of donors, which would make helping those in need much more effective. All of the EU member states have joined the good humanitarian donorship principles through the “European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid” (Council declaration), which among other things bases its own goals on the GHD principles.

Read more about the GHD principles here: http://www.goodhumanitariandonorship.org/.

One of the priorities of the Estonian chairmanship was to help spread the GHD principles among other emerging and potential donors. In addition, we hope to set an example that inspires new EU member states to increase their activeness in humanitarian aid policy.

The Irish/Estonian chairmanship ended in July 2010 during the annual high-level GHD meeting in New York. The leadership of the group was handed off to Switzerland.

After the chairmanship Estonia has continued its active participation in GHD meetings and continues to organize GHD-SHARE meetings. GHD-SHARE is one GHD initiative aimed towards strengthening partnership.