Executive Summary
This annual report for the CHF fiscal year of 2008 covers the programmatic fund management under OCHA's responsibility. The financial management information is provided by the UNDP Fund Management Unit in a separate report. The report provides an overview of how CHF funds were allocated and how it performed against the main objectives of the Fund. Further, it summarizes some of the key achievements and presents some challenges to implementation. Additional information about the implementation of UN agency programmes can be found in annual reports of UN agencies, in accordance with their respective standard reporting requirements.
The Common Humanitarian Fund (CHF) is an in-country pooled funding mechanism for humanitarian activities in Sudan which was established in 2005. Under the CHF, donors pool their funds; and, the Humanitarian Coordinator (HC) manages the funds with support from OCHA and UNDP. The donors to the CHF in 2008 included Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom
In 2008 the CHF allocated US$154 million through 549 allocations to priority, time-critical humanitarian projects in Sudan. All UN agency and NGO projects listed in the UN & Partners Work Plan for Sudan were eligible to be considered for funding. The CHF was the third largest source of funding to humanitarian activities in Sudan surpassed only by the United States and the European Commission.
The funding provided by the CHF had several important strategic applications for humanitarian financing in Sudan. In order to ensure a needs driven project selection process, the Humanitarian Coordinator promoted a decentralized allocation decision-making model. Further, the CHF helped advance humanitarian reform through provision of timely and flexible humanitarian funding to priority humanitarian requirements. The fund supported the leadership of the HC while strengthening Sudan's coordination structures.
A programmatic reporting framework was developed and implemented allowing for the collection of achievements reports from recipients of CHF allocations. Reports were collected on two occasions during the year, one interim period covering 1 January to 31 September, and one annual report covering the full year. These reports were consolidated and provided valuable information on the performance of projects funded by the CHF.
The introduction of programmatic reporting enabled the CHF Technical Unit to track key achievements of CHF-funded activities. The key achievements presented in this report are derived from reporting from northern Sudan. The highlights of CHF outputs reported in 2008 include:
- 1,245,250 beneficiaries provided with either new or rehabilitated Water and Sanitation facilities
- 426,434 beneficiaries provided with either new or rehabilitated sanitation facilities
- Average of 2,700 patients per month received medical treatment in IDP camps,
- 681,100 people received emergency food aid
- 209,900 households received seeds and tools for agricultural production
- Essential non-food item and emergency shelter served to 338,859 households in all of Sudan.
- 134,880 children benefited from school feeding/food for education programmes.
- 2.6 million square meters of high impact minefields cleared,
- 105,632 people in vulnerable situations reached with legal counseling, and
- Returns and repatriation operations organized support for 28,645 IDPs and 62,410 refugees to return in safety and dignity.
Additional information on key outputs per sector is included in the chapter 4 of this report. The detailed achievement reports on CHF 2008 allocations are presented in Annex 1. The introduction of the programmatic reporting in 2008 provided valuable lessons learned which will stimulate further development of the monitoring framework of the CHF.
