About us

Secretariat

The secretariat is the small permanent staff of the forum. It coordinates the research programme, maintains this site, and is the point of contact for member agencies and for the institutions that fund the work.

What the secretariat does

• Runs the research programme. It identifies the subjects that members need answered, commissions or carries out the work, and publishes the result in a form an agency can use.
• Maintains the collection. Every item in the library is held here, kept current, and corrected when a document is superseded.
• Coordinates incident learning. It maintains the shared approach to recording and classifying security incidents so that patterns are visible across agencies.
• Represents members. It works with donors, with the United Nations and with states on questions that no single agency can raise alone, including the duty of care owed to seconded and contracted staff.
• Answers questions. Member agencies ask the secretariat for guidance on specific situations, and it either answers or points to the agency that has already solved the problem.

How it works with members

Membership is open to humanitarian organisations, not to individuals. Each member agency nominates a focal point, and the focal points set the research agenda between them. Work is commissioned only where members have agreed that it is worth doing, which is what keeps the programme tied to decisions agencies are actually facing.

The secretariat does not hold operational responsibility for any agency's staff. It publishes guidance; the decision to deploy, and the risk that follows from it, belongs to the employing organisation.

Working with the secretariat

Member agencies, researchers and funders reach the secretariat through their existing contact there. Enquiries about the research programme should state the decision the work is meant to inform, because that is the first question the programme asks.

Posts and consultancy opportunities are advertised on the vacancies page.