Projects

Short Description:

Overall goal

The project aims to contribute to strengthened capacities in national and regional institutions to respond effectively to humanitarian crises in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) region. In a wider context, the project contributes to achieving peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16) as well as to making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (SDG 11).

Expected results

The expected first outcome of the project is that 60 participants out of 75 graduates of the Humanitarian Assistance in West Africa (HAWA) Core Courses (CC) from the ECOWAS Region apply their knowledge in humanitarian assistance – including specific women-focused concepts – in their own regional and national contexts by 2021.

Closely linked to the first is the second outcome, in which 24 of 46 participants (30 in phase III) of the HAWA Training of Trainers (ToT) mostly from the ECOWAS region, increased and shared their skills by 2021 through the development, implementation and evaluation of training courses for staff of their national institutions, on specific aspects of humanitarian assistance and under the mentorship provided by the project.

Target group / Beneficiaries

The direct beneficiaries are (a) 75 participants of the HAWA CC (45 civil, 15 police and 15 military professionals, at least 40% of them women and out of the 45 civil participants at least 27 from civil society). The HAWA CC targets a mixed group of mid-level civil, police and military professionals directly or indirectly engaged in humanitarian assistance and/or disaster relief operations in the ECOWAS region, either at the local, national or regional level. (b) 30 HAWA ToT participants, from the Austrian focus countries in particular, who work on humanitarian assistance in the ECOWAS region. (c) 80 participants in the training courses during the mentoring module, which are conducted by 24 of the 46 ToT participants themselves. This group will benefit from enhanced training on humanitarian assistance and will be mentored in sharing their knowledge and skills in their national institutions.

At the institutional level, KAIPTC and at least 20 West African agencies that plan and deliver humanitarian assistance or provide capacity development in the field are indirect beneficiaries.

The project will, through its graduates, indirectly reach a total of 150,000 recipients of humanitarian assistance. After the end of the project, the trainees are expected to continue reaching about 150,000 recipients of humanitarian assistance annually through their work.

Activities

Two sets of activities will be undertaken to achieve the project results:

(1) The HAWA CC, designed in the previous project phases, will be offered three times. In addition to various aspects of humanitarian assistance planning and delivery, the focus will be placed on civil-military interagency coordination and cooperation and on promoting mutual trust and understanding. Gender aspects and gender mainstreaming (e.g. guided by UN resolution 1325) will be further strengthened.

(2) Two HAWA ToT courses will take place. Each will have 15 participants, who had already taken part in a HAWA CC (either in the current or previous phase). The HAWA ToT will be arranged in two modules building upon each other. The first module will deliver the basic training skills and will take place at the KAIPTC training centre. The second module will add a mentorship component to the course. In this (mentoring) module, 24 of the 46 participants (30 in phase III) will be supported in designing, implementing and evaluating a training on an aspect of humanitarian assistance in their own institution.

Context

West Africa has seen a lot of conflict and large movements of Internally Displaced People (IDPs) and refugees that have weakened host countries already handicapped by low levels of development. The region is suffering from the effects of food insecurity, natural disasters, climate change, conflict, the global economic crisis and socio-political instability. More than 50% of West Africa’s population of 140 million live in extreme poverty and are thus particularly vulnerable to these effects.

Humanitarian assistance provides for immediate relief and is the basis for recovery and the subsequent development, peace and security. This is recognized by regional strategic frameworks such as the ECOWAS Conflict Prevention Framework (2008), which mentions humanitarian assistance as a major strategy for conflict prevention in West Africa.

Effective humanitarian assistance is ideally the result of coordinated efforts of multiple actors with specially trained personnel. This project is therefore embedded in, and informed by, the Austrian "3C Approach" that aims at the development of coherent, coordinated and complementary engagement of Austria’s governmental and non-governmental actors in international crisis situations. The project builds on the pilot project (2690-00/2013), finalized in January 2016, and project phase II (2690-00/2016), which ended in December 2018.