OCHA CBPF 2023-2025

Sida has supported the CBPFs since the establishment of the very first fund in Angola, already back in 1999. Since then, Sida has been one of the largest donors to the CBPFs. During 2022, the CBPFs received 1.34 billion USD in financial contributions to respond to humanitarian needs though 20 CBPFs. The CBPFs fund UN, NGOs and the Red Cross/Red Crescent Society. During the years, the CBPFs has increased its funding to local actors. In 2022, 28% of the total amount allocated went to local organisations, which is twice as much as in 2013. CBPFs are locally managed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) under the leadership of the Humanitarian Coordinator and in consultation with the humanitarian community. Advisory Boards oversee the Funds, providing advice on key decisions, and ensuring efficient and effective management. The daily management of the funds is overseen by a Fund Manager, monitoring officers and financial officers. At the global level, the Pooled Fund Working Group brings together key stakeholders (representing donors, NGOs and UN agencies) to provide policy guidance. The main value added of the CBPF will be ensuring an efficient humanitarian response due to the specific strengths the fund entails: 1) Proximity to the response: The CBPFs aims to address humanitarian needs through a structure with high degree of local expertise of both the humanitarian situation and the humanitarian actors on the ground. 2) Humanitarian Coordination: The CBPF has a strategic objective of ensuring the implementation of the Humanitarian Response Plan and its various components/ programmes. The Humanitarian Coordinator can hence direct funding to critical components in the HRP that are underfunded. The Humanitarian Coordinator can also at any time direct humanitarian funding to sudden onset emergencies or quickly deteriorating crises, through the quick funding mechanism called “Emergency Reserve”. The overall coordination is naturally strengthened by the fact that the ultimate authority of the mandate lies with the Humanitarian Coordinator who is the overall coordinator of the UN lead humanitarian response in any given country. 3) Reach the best placed actors, which in many cases are local actors who has the expertise and humanitarian access. The CBPF can support local actors in responding to the humanitarian needs. This has been particularly useful when local actors have shown to have the local expertise needed to adequately formulate smaller local responses and also having humanitarian access to areas not accessible by international actors. During 2019, the CBPF allocated 25% directly to local actors and in some countries up to 50% is allocated directly to local partners. Moreover, the CBPFs aim to ensure that projects consider the specific needs and constraints faced by women, girls, boys and men. The CBPFs do so by promoting sound gender analysis and gender integration in all projects. The Pooled Fund Disability Inclusion Contact Group composed of independent experts advise on how to improve the funds' work with people with disabilities. This is to ensure that disability inclusion is taken into account in all CBPF processes. Some of the funded projects aim to strengthen resilience of affected population, although this is not the main objective of the contribution. OCHA as a central actor in the humanitarian system has a good understanding of the contexts OCHA and the CBPFs work in, including good understanding of the conflict, power dynamics, root causes and drivers of conflict. At CBPF level there is a mandatory part in the project template that implementing partners needs to show an understanding of the context and analyse the humanitarian consequences for the beneficiaries, including do-no-harm, based on multi-sectoral needs assessments.