Technical Annex – Palestine – Financial, Administrative and Operational Information – European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Dept.

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TECHNICAL ANNEX

PALESTINE

FINANCIAL, ADMINISTRATIVE AND OPERATIONAL INFORMATION

The provisions of the financing decision ECHO/WWD/BUD/2016/01000 and the General Conditions of the Agreement with the European Commission shall take precedence over the provisions in this document.

The activities proposed hereafter are subject to any terms and conditions which may be included in the related Humanitarian Implementation Plan (HIP).

1. CONTACTS

2. FINANCIAL INFO

Indicative Allocation: EUR 25 000 000

3. PROPOSAL ASSESSMENT 3.1. Administrative info Assessment round 1

a) Indicative amount: up to EUR 25 000 000 (subject to the availability of payment appropriations, the amount awarded may be lower than the overall indicative amount or be spread over time. More information will be available upon adoption of the general budget of the European Union for the year 2016).

b) Description of the humanitarian aid interventions relating to this assessment round: all interventions as described in section 3.4 of the HIP.

c) Costs will be eligible from 01/01/2016.¹ Actions will start from 01/01/2016.

d) The expected initial duration for the Action is up to 12 months.

e) Potential partners: All ECHO Partners.

f) Information to be provided: Single Form².

g) Indicative date for receipt of the above requested information: 07/12/2015³.

3.2. Operational requirements:

3.2.1. Assessment criteria:

The assessment of proposals will look at:

• The compliance with the proposed strategy (HIP) and the operational requirements described in this section;

• Commonly used principles such as: quality of the needs assessment and of the logical framework, relevance of the intervention and coverage, feasibility, applicant's implementation capacity and knowledge of the country/region.

• In case of actions already being implemented on the ground, where ECHO is requested to fund a continuation, a visit of the ongoing action may be conducted to determine the feasibility and quality of the Action proposed

3.2.2. Operational guidelines:

This section will provide, as appropriate, specific context requirements and intervention guidelines to partners. It will, in any case, provide with the list of relevant ECHO policy guidelines or guidance notes that the partner should be familiar with.

3.2.2.1. General Guidelines

In the design of your operation, ECHO policies and guidelines need to be taken into account:

The EU resilience communication and Action Plan

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/en/what/humanitarian-aid/resilience  

Food Assistance

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/en/what/humanitarian-aid/food-assistance 

Nutrition

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/media/publications/tpd04 nutrition addressing_undernutrit ion_in_emergencies_en.pdf

Cash and vouchers

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/en/what/humanitarian-aid/cash-and-vouchers 

Protection

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/en/what/humanitarian-aid/protection

Children in Conflict

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/policies/sectoral/children_2008_Emergency_Crisis_Situati ons en.pdf

Health

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/en/what/humanitarian-aid/health 

Civil—military coordination

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/en/what/humanitarian-aid/civil-military-relations 

Water sanitation and hygiene

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/policies/sectoral/WASH_policy doc en.pdf

Gender

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/what/humanitarian-aid/gender-sensitive-aid en 

Disaster Risk Reduction

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/policies/prevention_preparedness/DRR thematic_policy d  oc.pdf

ECHO Visibility

http ://www. echo -visibility. eu/ 

Remote Management

http://dgecho-partners-helpdesk.eu/actions_implementation/remote_management/start  

Education in Emergencies

ECHO will support education activities that enable children's access to quality education⁴ in ongoing conflicts, complex emergencies and early recovery phases. Furthermore, it may support longer-term educational activities in protracted crises and in refugee/IDP camps Innovative solutions will particularly be supported. Actions targeting transition to formal education systems in preparation for a development intervention may also be supported.

It is essential that education activities are carried out in close connection with protection programs. It is vital to ensure that children can access education where they feel safe and protected. Therefore, education in emergencies activities under this HIP could also include psychosocial support; mine risk education and provision of life-skills, such as vital health, nutrition and hygiene information, HIV prevention, sexual- and reproductive health information and DRR training and awareness.

Education activities could entail enabling access to education for children currently out of school, but also strengthening the quality aspects of education in emergencies, including the recruitment and capacity building of teachers. To reduce the vulnerability of children affected by conflict, actions in the field of education in emergencies and especially conflict situations, should reflect protection, relevant legal frameworks (International Humanitarian Law, International Human Rights Law and Refugee Law), education in mediation and conflict resolution, child protection (with special attention to vulnerable groups such as unaccompanied minors and former child soldiers), community-based educational activities and the promotion of peaceful reconciliation. Hence, education projects funded under this HIP could include components of child protection and peace education (i.e. mediation, conflict resolution, etc.).

In order to ensure holistic response, linking education to other life-saving humanitarian sectors, such as WASH and health could also be considered.

Activities shall be tailored to take into account the different needs of children based on their age, gender and other specific circumstances.

Coordination is essential and all education in emergencies projects need to coordinate and support the priorities set by relevant humanitarian and if appropriate development governance mechanisms (e.g. Global Education Cluster, Refugee Working Groups, communities of practices, Local Education Groups), as well as national structures (e.g. Ministry of Education).

All actions funded on education in emergencies should in their design adhere to the INEE Minimum Standards for Education: Preparedness, Response, Recovery, as well as the IASC Minimum Standards for Child Protection.

A set of overall principles needs to guide every operation supported by ECHO.

The humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence, in line with the European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid, and strict adherence to a "do no harm" approach remain paramount.

The safe and secure provision of aid: the ability to safely deliver assistance to all areas must be preserved. ECHO requests its partners to include in the project proposal details on how safety and security of staff (including the staff of implementing partners) and assets is being considered as well as an analysis of threats and plans to mitigate and limit exposure to risks. ECHO or its partners can request the suspension of ongoing actions as a result of serious threats to the safety of staff.

Accountability: partners remain accountable for their operations, in particular:

• The identification of the beneficiaries and of their needs using, for example, baseline surveys, KAP-surveys, Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) or beneficiary profiling;

• Management and monitoring of operations, and having adequate systems in place to facilitate this;

• Reporting on activities and outcomes, and the associated capacities to collect and analyse information;

• Identification and analysis of logistic and access constraints and risks, and the steps taken to address them.

Gender-Age Mainstreaming: Ensuring gender-age mainstreaming is of paramount importance to ECHO, since it is an issue of quality programming. Gender and age matter in humanitarian aid because women, girls, boys, men and elderly women and men are affected by crises in different ways. Thus, the assistance needs to be adapted to their specific needs – otherwise it risks being off-target, failing its objectives or even doing harm to beneficiaries. It is also a matter of compliance with the EU humanitarian mandate and the humanitarian principles, in line with international conventions and commitments. All project proposals/reports must demonstrate integration of gender and age in a coherent manner throughout the Single Form, including in the needs assessment and risk analysis, the logical framework, description of activities and the gender-age marker section. The Gender-Age Marker is a tool that uses four criteria to assess how strongly ECHO funded humanitarian actions integrates gender and age consideration. For more information about the marker and how it is applied please consult the Gender-Age Marker Toolkit

http://ec.europa.eu/echo/files/policies/sectoral/gender age marker toolkit.pdf

Protection: Mainstreaming of basic protection principles in traditional assistance programmes is of paramount importance to ECHO. This approach is closely linked to the principle of 'do no harm', and also extends the commitment of safe and equal access to assistance as well as the need for special measures to ensure access for particularly vulnerable groups. All proposals MUST demonstrate integration of these principles, but also in its substantive sections, i.e. the logical framework, result and activity descriptions, etc.

Integration of protection concerns should, in particular, be reflected in any actions implemented in a displacement- hosting context (be it refugees or IDPs), in situations of conflict or in contexts where social exclusion is a known factor, where considerations on inter-communal relationships are of utmost importance for the protection of the affected population. In such contexts, proposals must present a clear analysis of how threats against as well as vulnerabilities and capacities of the affected population impact their protection, and how this is incorporated in the response.

While humanitarian assistance often focuses on community-level interventions, it is important to remember that, in order to fully address many protection issues, it is also necessary to consider the relevance and feasibility of advocacy (structural level) interventions aimed at (a) stopping the violations by perpetrators and/or (b) convincing the duty-bearers to fulfil their responsibilities.

Do no harm: Partners should ensure that the context analysis takes into account threats in addition to vulnerabilities and capacities of affected populations. The analysis should bring out both external threats to the target population as well as the coping strategies adopted to counteract the vulnerabilities. The risk equation model provides a useful tool to conduct this analysis. The model stipulates that Risks equals Threats multiplied by Vulnerabilities divided by Capacities, and the way to reduce risks is by reducing the threats and vulnerabilities and increasing the capacities. Depending on the type of threat faced by the population in question, reducing it can be anything from possible/straightforward to impossible/dangerous. In the latter case, one will resort to focusing on vulnerabilities and capacities, but the fact that the analysis has acknowledged the threat will contribute to ensuring that the response subsequently selected does not exacerbate the population's exposure to the risk.

Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR): As part of the commitment of ECHO to mainstream disaster risk reduction in its humanitarian operations, the needs assessment presented in the Single Form should reflect, whenever relevant, the exposure to natural hazards and the related vulnerability of the targeted population and their livelihoods and assets. This analysis should also assess the likely impact of the humanitarian intervention on both immediate and future risks as well as the partner's institutional commitment to and operational capability in managing risk (technical competence in the relevant sectors of intervention. The DRR approach and related measures are relevant in all humanitarian sectors (WASH, nutrition, food assistance and livelihoods, health, protection, etc.), and should be systematically considered in hazard-prone contexts. Risk-informed programming across sectors should protect operations and beneficiaries from hazard occurrence, and include contingency arrangements for additional or expanded activities that might be required. Information from early warning systems should be incorporated into programme decision making and design, even where the humanitarian operation is not the result of a specific hazard.

All ECHO beneficiaries and activities should be appropriately protected from hazards and shocks — according to their likelihood of occurrence, intensity and possible impact. ECHO uses two complementary methods for DRR: 1) Integrated DRR is where ECHO humanitarian interventions are risk informed 2) Targeted DRR refers to specific DRR risk reduction actions — that cannot be "integrated" into ECHO response projects (see above) but that will strengthen a system to avoid future humanitarian needs by reducing risk to vulnerable populations.

For targeted DRR interventions, the information in the Single Form should clearly show that:

• all risks have been clearly identified, including their possible interactions;

• the intervention strengthens and promotes the role of the state and non-state actors in disaster reduction and climate change adaptation from national to local levels:

• the measures planned are effective in strengthening the capacity of communities and local authorities to plan and implement local level disaster risk reduction activities in a sustainable way, and have the potential to be replicated in other similar contexts;

• the intervention contributes to improving the mechanisms to coordinate disaster risk reduction programmes and stakeholders at national to local levels.

• demonstrate that the action is designed including the existing good practice in this field;

• the partner has an appropriate monitoring, evaluation and learning mechanism to ensure evidence of the impact of the action and good practice are gathered, and effectively disseminated.

Strengthening coordination: Partners should provide specific information on their active engagement in cluster/sector and inter-cluster/sector coordination: participation in coordination mechanisms at different levels, not only in terms of meetings but also in terms of joint field assessments and engagement in technical groups and joint planning activities. The partners should actively engage with the relevant local authorities and, when feasible and appropriate, stipulate co-ordination in Memoranda of Understanding. When appropriate, partners should endeavour to exchange views on issues of common interest with actors present in the field (e.g. EU, UN, AU missions, etc.). In certain circumstances, coordination and deconfliction with military actors might be necessary. This should be done in a way that does not endanger humanitarian actors or the humanitarian space, and without prejudice to the mandate and responsibilities of the actor concerned.

Integrated approaches: Whenever possible, integrated approaches with multi- or cross-sectoral programming of responses in specific geographical areas are encouraged to maximize impact, synergies and cost-effectiveness. Partners are requested to provide information on how their actions are integrated with other actors present in the same area.

Resilience⁵: ECHO's objective is to respond to the acute humanitarian needs of the most vulnerable and exposed people while taking opportunities to increase their resilience — to reduce on-going and future humanitarian needs and to assist a durable recovery. Where feasible, cost effective, and without compromising humanitarian principles, ECHO support will contribute to longer term strategies to build the capacities of the most vulnerable and address underlying reasons for their vulnerability — to all shocks and stresses.

All ECHO partners are expected to identify opportunities to reduce future risks to vulnerable people and to strengthen livelihoods and capacities. ECHO encourages its partners to develop their contextual risk and vulnerability analysis and to adapt their approach to the type of needs and opportunities identified (see template). This requires partners to strengthen their engagement with government services, development actors and with different sectors. In that regard, ECHO partners should indicate how they will increase ownership and capacity of local actors whenever possible: community mobilisation, CSOs, technical dialogue, coordination and gradual transfer of responsibilities to countries' administration or relevant line ministries.

Good coordination and strategic complementarity between humanitarian and development activities (LRRD approach) are essential to the resilience approach, particularly in relation to i) increasing interest of development partners and governments on nutrition issues; ii) seeking for more sustainable solutions for refugees (access to education, innovative approach toward strengthening self-resilience, etc.); iii) integrating disaster risk reduction into humanitarian interventions.

Community-based approach: In all sectors, interventions should adopt, wherever possible, a community-based approach in terms of defining viable options to effectively help increasing resilience and meeting basic needs among the most vulnerable. Community inclusion should be considered at all stages — design and implementation. Community ownership of the process is more effective and is encouraged. This includes the identification of critical needs as prioritised by the communities, and the transfer of appropriate knowledge and resources.

Response Analysis to Support Modality Selection for all Resource Transfers is mandatory. ECHO will support the most effective and efficient modality of providing assistance, whether it be cash, vouchers or in-kind assistance. DG ECHO does not advocate for the preferential use of either cash, voucher-based or in-kind humanitarian assistance. Partners should provide sufficient information on the reasons about why a transfer modality is proposed and another one is excluded. The choice of the transfer modality must demonstrate that the response analysis took into account the market situation in the affected area. Multiple contextual factors must be taken into account, including technical feasibility criteria, security of beneficiaries, agency staff and communities, beneficiary preference, needs and risks of specific vulnerable groups (such as Pregnant and Lactating Women, elderly, child headed households etc.), mainstreaming of protection (safety and equality in access), gender (different needs and vulnerabilities of women, men, boys and girls) concerns and cost-effectiveness. Therefore for any type of transfer modality proposed, the partner should provide the minimum information as recommended in the 'Thematic Policy Document n° 3 – Cash and Vouchers: Increasing efficiency and effectiveness across all sectors' and demonstrate that the modality proposed will be the most efficient and effective to reach the objective of the action proposed.

For in-kind transfer local purchase are encouraged when possible.

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1 The eligibility date of the Action is not linked to the date of receipt of the Single Form. It is either the eligibility date set in the Single form or the eligibility date of the HIP, whatever occurs latest.

2 Single Forms will be submitted to ECHO using APPEL

3 The Commission reserves the right to consider Single Forms transmitted after this date, especially in case certain needs/ priorities are not covered by the received Single Forms.

4 The Commission adhere to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that defines a 'child' as a person below the age of 18.

5 Resilience opportunities differ according to context. However, these opportunities should be considered in all locations. HIPs, designed after consultation with partners, should explain broad resilience parameters and expectations of partners. ECHO partners are required to fill in the "Resilience Marker" in the e-Single Form. Four guiding questions are presented. For each of these questions, for example "does the proposal include an adequate analysis of shocks, stresses, and vulnerabilities," the technical annex should indicate expectations (i.e. what may be considered as adequate according to the situation).