Islamic Relief Humanitarian support 2022-2025

In 2022, Sida and Islamic Relief Sweden entered into a multi-year agreement for the period 2022-2025 to enable support for Islamic Relief's humanitarian activities. The intervention consists of two different types of support. One part relates to support for annual projects in specific countries with ongoing humanitarian crises. A second part concerns funds that can be allocated in the event of sudden crises (Rapid Response Mechanism, RRM). The proposed support for Islamic Relief is based on the fact that Islamic Relief is judged to have a good ability to respond to humanitarian crises, through its forty different country operations and 2000 employees globally. Sida has financed Islamic Relief for several years and based on the organization's ability to deliver results in hard-to-reach areas, Sida has assessed Islamic Relief to be a appropriate implementing partners for humanitarian aid operations. Islamic Relief's goals are in line with the strategy for Sweden's Humanitarian Aid through Sida 2021-2025 and through their activities they strengthen the capacity of the humanitarian system and efficiency. The contribution is relevant to all objectives of the strategy, but with emphasis on the strategic objective of humanitarian aid and protection activities reaching people in hard-to-reach areas. Sida assesses that Islamic Relief is a particularly strong organization when it comes to humanitarian access. Examples of this are their activities in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Pakistan and northwest Syria. Most of Islamic Relief's projects are based on a multi-sector approach. The sectors included in the projects are: nutrition, protection, food security, health, livelihoods, shelter, gender, water, sanitation, and multipurpose cash). A common form of aid that is included in several sectors is cash based assistance, which will be used in crises with functional markets and where it is deemed relevant. The programme takes conflict perspectives into account in design, implementation and evaluation, but conflict management is rarely the main purpose of the activities. The programme also takes gender perspectives into account in the design, implementation and evaluation, but gender is rarely the main purpose of the activities.