A Step forward: The Establishment of a Humanitarian Response Center

The impact of humanitarian crisis around the world is increasingly severe and humanitarian action is a collective responsibility at an international level, involving many different stakeholders, including NGOs. With the aim of strengthening the role of Slovenia and its NGOs in international humanitarian community, SLOGA, the Platform of NGOs for development cooperation and humanitarian aid, with the cooperation of Foundation TOGETHER, will establish a Humanitarian Response Center (HRC) of NGOs. The establishment of the HRC is one of the activities of the DG ECHO financed project “Strengthening the Capacities of the NGOs in ECHO underrepresented countries”, in which Foundation TOGETHER is the applicant organisation of the project, SLOGA and the People in Peril Association are implementing partners.

On 7th September 2010 SLOGA organized a HRC introductory meeting of humanitarian NGOs, representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Administration for civil protection and disaster relief. During the meeting NGOs activities, available resources and their expectations about HRC were presented. The NGOs agreed that HRC will primarily operate on the following areas: it will serve as a cooperating and coordinating point of NGOs, facilitate rapid reactions to humanitarian crisis, build capacities, ensure the linkage between NGOs and public authorities (ministries, civil protection and other relevant stakeholders), facilitate exchange of experience and transfer of good practice, work with other organizations and agencies on EU level, search partners in the field and raise awareness. For this purpose a web page of HRC is established (available on http://www.humanitarni-center.si/), that will provide information on activities of the center, trainings, humanitarian crisis around the world and other relevant information.

During the meeting all organizations expressed their interest to become members of the HRC and the representatives of the ministry and administration expressed their support and willingness for further cooperation.

For any further information please contact: Janja Mikulan, janja.mikulan@sloga-platform.org

Information provided by Janja Mikulan, SLOGA