1. Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action
Pleased to present the 3rd version of the Core Commitments for Children, issued in April
background to the CCCs:
As numbers and complexity of humanitarian crises increased during the early 1990s, UNICEF re-examined its response to crises and developed appropriate policies and strategies for a more robust, timely and effective response to the needs of children and women in crises.
Initially developed in 1998 and reviewed in 2004
the current revision brings UNICEF’s priority humanitarian policy up to date with changes in humanitarian contexts, including new evidence and best practices, as well as humanitarian reform, in particular the Cluster Approach.

2. What are the CCCs?
UNICEF’s core humanitarian policy with recognition that strengthening partnership and collaboration is key to success in humanitarian action
Promote predictable, effective and timely collective humanitarian action
A framework based on norms and standards, around which UNICEF seeks to engage with partners
1. The CCCs are UNICEF’s core humanitarian policy. They are fully grounded in the Principles of Partnership, with the recognition that strengthening partnership and collaboration is a key to success in humanitarian action and improved results for children and women.
2. The intent of the updated CCCs remains to promote predictable, effective and timely collective humanitarian action, putting forth clearly the results where UNICEF can best contribute.
3. They are guided by international human rights law, in particular the CRC, and in complex emergencies, IHL. Norms and standards include:
Humanitarian Principles
General Assembly Resolutions, in particular Resolution 26/182 which creates the IASC
Relevant Security Council resolutions, including those pertaining to the protection of children affected by armed conflict;
SPHERE and INEE
This foundation in child rights and global standards means that the CCCs constitute a framework for protecting the rights of children affected by humanitarian crisis (with partners) through reliable preparedness, predictable, effective and timely response and rebuilding better for early recovery.

3. CCCs: Core Commitments for Children
What is new – Humanitarian Action
CCCs: Core Commitments for Children
Humanitarian Action vs. emergency
Broader scope including preparedness and early recovery actions during the response
Three major shifts:
The first change is explicit through the title. Shift from Core Commitments for Children in Emergencies to CCCs in Humanitarian Action, emphasizing reliable preparedness and better early recovery in the response. This is illustrated here and specific actions for preparedness, response and early recovery are articulated under each sector.
[IMPORTANT] Early Recovery (not a phase) is an approach to crisis response that applies development principles of sustainability and local ownership to the delivery of humanitarian assistance as early as possible. Early recovery is an integral part of the cluster system, the current humanitarian architecture borne out of the 2005 Humanitarian Reform Review.
Therefore, a benefit of the CCCs is that:
The CCCs are relevant to both rapid onset and protracted humanitarian situations.
It also means that by definition the CCCs apply to every country programme through the lens of preparedness

4. What is new – Humanitarian Reform
Humanitarian reform has changed the way we work as humanitarian agencies:
Cluster approach
Financing
Humanitarian leadership
Partnerships
The CCCs have been updated, but remain the same in their essence. This updating reflects changes that have occurred in the broader humanitarian context.
UNICEF has made a number of commitments as part of Humanitarian Reform, and the CCCs needed to be adjusted to reflect these in our core humanitarian policy.
Humanitarian reform has changed the way we work as humanitarian agencies, with clear and defined accountabilities assigned, and emphasizing the importance of partnerships. Through and within the clusters, UNICEF -as lead and as partner-is given a real opportunity to achieve the CCCs. The clusters should therefore be viewed as a key tool to implement and achieve the CCCs.

5. What is new – Results orientation
Results-oriented, with clear Strategic Results, Commitments and Benchmarks for each sector
realized through close collaboration among partners, host governments, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), UN agencies and donors.
Clearly linked to partners’ ability to deliver on the ground
Third, the CCCs bring a stronger results focus to UNICEF humanitarian action for children, from a strategic level of engagement with partners through to more specific actions that UNICEF will support directly.
Each sector contains specific:
Strategic Results
Commitments
Benchmarks
In general we cannot forget that:
-UNICEF’s ability to fulfill CCCs is clearly linked to its partners’ ability to deliver on the ground.
-It may be difficult to fulfill CCCs if UNICEF can’t find partners or if partners are already funded. Advocacy will be the main tool in such cases
Example of results based commitment for Child Protection
-former CCCs: “Ensure that family tracing systems are implemented with appropriate care and protection facilities”
-New CCCs: Commitment 2: “Separation of children from families is prevented and addressed and family based care is promoted” – benchmark 2 :“All unaccompanied children are identified and are in family-bases care of an appropriate alternative”.

6. What is UNICEF committing to?
Ensure the situation of children and women is monitored
Respond in defined programme sectors where resources and partners allow
Advocate with governments and partners to ensure that benchmarks are achieved
Ensure minimum preparedness in defined programme sectors and within UNICEF
UNICEF’s commitments are to:
Ensure the situation of children and women is monitored, to ensure that all humanitarian emergencies are detected, including slow onset emergencies.
UNICEF will also respond within defined programme sectors to contribute to the sectoral results and activities, to the extent that availability of funding and presence of partners allow.
UNICEF is also committed to advocating on behalf of children and women with government and other partners humanitarian situations to ensure that the benchmarks are achieved, through UNICEF programmes or other means. This means UNICEF and the CCCs are relevant in contexts where UNICEF and IASC partners have limited programmes.
UNICEF is committed to ensure a minimum emergency preparedness in each of the CCC sectors and clusters, as well as within UNICEF.

7. What is UNICEF’s role?
UNICEF’s role varies depending on context and who has comparative advantage. May include:
promoting CCCs through advocacy,
leadership,
cluster roles (lead and/or member),
Role of UNICEF within humanitarian country teams, etc.
UNICEF’s role in helping to meet the benchmarks will vary depending on the context and comparative advantage.
Depending on the situation, UNICEF’s role may include promoting CCCs through advocacy, leadership, cluster roles, or within humanitarian country teams.
In general we cannot forget that:
-UNICEF’s ability to fulfill CCCs is clearly linked to its partners’ ability to deliver on the ground.
-It may be difficult to fulfill CCCs if UNICEF can’t find partners or if partners are already funded. Advocacy will be the main tool in such cases

8. What are UNICEF’s cluster commitments?
Ensure effective leadership and interagency coordination
Always on preparedness (clarify UNICEF and partners cluster responsibility)
Articulated under 1st commitment for Nutrition, Health, WASH, Child Protection and Education
UNICEF’s role in country often mirrors global role, but varies according to capacity and context
The CCCs reaffirm UNICEF’s cluster commitments. At the country level, UNICEF always has the responsibility on preparedness and to support coordination mechanisms in accordance with Cluster Lead Agency and CCCs obligations.
The CCCs spell out these obligations under the first commitment for Nutrition, Health, WASH, Child Protection, and Education, which commit UNICEF to ensure that sectoral coordination takes place, whether there is a formal cluster approach in place or whether UNICEF is the designated lead at country level. This commitment is always in place.
In most humanitarian situations, UNICEF’s role as global lead will apply in country. In some situations, UNICEF may not be best placed to lead that sector because of country context. But it always commits to ensure this coordination takes place and is supported by UNICEF. These responsibilities should be clarified and strengthened in preparedness, as called for under the Programme actions. Not doing so in preparedness may mean the responsibility will be assigned in the response without a plan in place to deliver. This is also true for cross-cutting areas, e.g. that issues such as HIV are mainstreamed in sector responses.

9. When are the CCCs used? In all countries on:
Preparedness
Situation monitoring of women and children
In both rapid onset, slow onset and protracted humanitarian situations
Since the CCCs include preparedness, the CCCs always apply. Preparedness is always required.
In response, the CCCs apply to both rapid onset and protracted humanitarian situations. The threshold for a situation becoming ‘humanitarian’ will vary from country to country depending on that country’s capacity. It may include smaller-scale emergencies in countries with limited capacities.
The CCCs include a commitment to monitor the situation of women and children to allow COs to determine when the threshold of humanitarian situations is reached. This does not mean that UNICEF must necessarily do the monitoring itself, but support the development of national monitoring and draw from available data. This entails focus on acquisition of the best data available as well as analysis, including the identification of key gaps.
With preparedness and monitoring always in effect, ongoing contextual analysis may trigger assessments, which in turn trigger a CCC structured response. The CCCs commit UNICEF to contextual analysis, and UNICEF COs therefore have an obligation to have a sufficiently good contextual awareness so they know when to trigger a humanitarian assessment.

10. What are the Cross-cutting commitments? (detailed in Chapter 1)
Normative:
Programme Areas:
Humanitarian Principles
HIV and AIDS
Human Rights-Based Approach
Advocacy
Gender Equality
Communication for Development
‘Do No Harm’
Programme Processes:
Coordinated Approach:
Contextual analysis
Integrated programme approach (including DRR)
Monitoring, analysis and assessment
Risk management and assessment
Partnerships
Inter-agency
These interrelated Commitments are based on existing UNICEF policies and normative frameworks and apply to all Programmes and each Sector Response.
The cross-cutting commitments can be roughly categorised under four inter-related areas: Normative Frameworks; Programme Processes; Cross-cutting Programme Areas and Coordinated Approaches.
Examples of how these are applied in the Programme actions:
Disaster risk reduction (DRR):
training of health workers for emergency action;
contingency planning for WASH, including in learning environments;
strengthening nutrition information systems.
Gender equality:
Pre-positioning gender-sensitive sanitation and hygiene supplies
support the resumption of age-, gender- and culturally appropriate structured activities for children and women
HIV and AIDS:
ensure appropriate counselling regarding infant feeding options and follow-up and support for HIV-positive mothers
prevention, protection, inclusion and support regarding HIV and AIDS (in education).
These apply to all programmes and are mainstreamed in each sector response

11. CCCs: Core Commitments for Children
Content: Hierarchy of Results
CCCs: Core Commitments for Children
Strategic Result
Commitments – 1st in each sector refers to coordination or cluster lead (when relevant), aligned to UNICEF’s commitments in humanitarian reform.
Benchmarks – aligned with globally accepted standards including SPHERE and INEE
The CCCs constitute a great tool to structure UNICEF`s engagement in emergencies.
Firstly at the strategic level, the results are premised on corresponding benchmarks derived from global standards in the respective programme areas (stemming from Sphere and INEE).
-Example of alignment to standards for nutrition” the nutritional status of girls, boys and women is protected from the effects of humanitarian crisis”
Secondly, associated to each strategic result are commitments and benchmarks which are formulated as measurable results
Important to note that the first commitment for sectoral/cluster coordination is for ensuring that this coordination takes place, whether there is a cluster approach activated or whether UNICEF is in the lead.

12. CCCs: Core Commitments for Children
Content: Technical Justification and Programme Actions
CCCs: Core Commitments for Children
Technical Justification
Programme Actions:
UNICEF has identified key
preparedness,
response and early recovery actions to contribute to each sectoral commitment.
Thirdly, a technical justification is provided for each sector
Fourthly, for each sector a set of illustrative Programme Actions has been identified, within preparedness, response and early recovery. These are based on evidence available and best practice, recognizing that partners will employ diverse strategies to work towards global benchmarks for children in humanitarian action
-example of a programme action for Health in preparedness phase :”Identify senior technical staff with health policy experience in emergency and early recovery to strengthen surge capacity”
-example of a programme action in response phase for health: ”clinical and psychosocial services for victims of sexual violence and/or child abuse”
-example of a programme action early recovery oriented: ”provide critical inputs towards re-establishment of routine services, e.g., cold chain for resumption of EPI services.”

13. Objective of CCC Performance Monitoring
To support the CO in managing performance in humanitarian action in line with the revised CCCs
In coordination with operational partners
In support of coordination across humanitarian system, especially clusters
Where possible linking to/ building up national monitoring and reporting systems
To reinforce accountability for CCCs at UNICEF CO, RO and HQ levels.
Objective of the CCC PM
To strengthen CO performance management of UNICEF humanitarian action in line with the revised CCCs, contributing to a more predictable, effective and timely humanitarian action of UNICEF, its operational and Cluster partners.
The CCC PM will feed into and support Cluster and Humanitarian Country Team performance management, therefore contributing to more effective humanitarian coordination
Where ever possible it is intended to link to national monitoring and reporting systems including UNICEF supported monitoring activities in the existing Country Programme.
To reinforce accountability in line with the revised CCCs at UNICEF CO-RO-HQ levels
The CCC PM is being developed in line with the ongoing developments to UNICEF wider organizational Performance Management System.
[Note monitoring of preparedness continues to be done via the EWEA]

14. What is the CCC PM system?
The CCC PM system is to be adapted to each country context
The CCC PM system is a logically connected:
results framework aligned to CCC benchmarks
a set of data collection methods and tools
feeding into key planning and management processes
framed in an M&E plan
processed for managers and decision-makers thru ‘dashboards’ pulling in data from different systems (latter not yet developed)
It is understood that the CCC PM must be adapted to country context. There are a number of variables that will define what is required to achieve effective CCC PM as well as what is possible.
CO capacity -- financial and human resources
Capacity of Clusters – what is the status of development of the clusters and to what degree is there a clear strategy, response , common indicators and frequency of reporting; also resources and staffing
OCHA’s capacity – are they fulfilling an Information Management support role for coordination, tracking the 3Ws, coordinating needs assessment exercises and/or follow-up cross-sectoral data collection
National capacity is similarly a factor. CCC PM must not undermine any existing Performance Management or Monitoring efforts of national partners;
There are some common elements that will found in any CO with CCC PM in place:
A results framework aligning planned results in the Appeal to the CCC benchmarks and indicators. This sets out how UNICEF intend to measure performance in a given emergency. The planned results and specific indicators will vary according to the scope of humanitarian action and the context – what is feasible in data collection. However, the common framework of benchmarks and menu of indicators brings this together in a global system
A set of data collection methods and tools feeding into key planning and management processes (i.e. chosen anticipating how and when they will be used) and laid out in an M&E Plan (to ensure adequate resources). In a rapid onset emergency, this may be a stand alone light IMEP. In countries with ongoing humanitarian situations or even regular seasonal emergencies, CCC PM will be built into the annual IMEP.
The system also requires regular PM data feeding back to decision-makers. This will eventually be supported by a data management dashboard that helps pull data from different systems and summarized them for managers.

15. How does UNICEF fund the CCCs in response
Reprogram Regular Resources within the country programme budget, or reprogram Other Resources;
Request internal loan – Emergency Programme Fund
Apply to CERF
Appeals – IND, Flash
CAP (inter-agency) and HAR (UNICEF)