Dear Global Nutrition Cluster partners,

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1 GNC BULLETIN Inside this issue: From GNC Coordinator UPCOMING EVENTS: December 2014: Juba, South Sudan South Sudan Nutrition Cluster Partners Training will be organised jointly by the UNICEF South Sudan Country Office and the GNC Coordination Team February 2015: Nairobi, Kenya Nutrition Cluster Coordinators Training will be organised jointly by the UNICEF Regional Office for East and South Africa (ESA) and the GNC Coordination Team March 2015: Geneva, Switzerland The GNC Annual Working (Face-to-Face) Meeting of Core Partners 19 March 2015: Geneva, Switzerland The GNC SAG (Face-to-Face) Meeting. 1 GNC Updates 1 GNC Annual Meeting 2-3 New ECHO funding 4 Lessons Learned from the Country Clusters GNC Plans for 2015 RRT highlights 5 6 Dear Global Nutrition Cluster partners, December 2014 FROM THE GLOBAL NUTRITION CLUSTER COORDINATOR I am pleased to share with you the sixth issue of the GNC News Bulletin, which provides key updates on the work of the GNC. This issue features updates from the recent 8th Annual Meeting of the Global Nutrition Cluster that was held in Rome, Italy at the FAO Headquarters and many more. We encourage all the GNC partners to support the implementation of the strategy and we also welcome comments on the newly launched GNC website from the GNC partners at both global level and as well as country cluster coordination teams. Wishing you all a very happy holiday season, Merry Christmas and all the best in 2015! THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE GLOBAL NU- TRITION CLUSTER SEPTEMBER 2014 This year, the 8th Annual Meeting of the Global Nutrition Cluster was hosted by the GNC partner, FAO in its Headquarters in Rome, Italy from 16 to 18 September The meeting brought together 64 participants representing cluster partners, donors, and country level Nutrition Cluster Coordinators (NCCs) and Information Management Officers (IMOs) and provided an opportunity to discuss achievements, priorities, country level challenging in relations to scaling up cluster response and mechanisms for collaboratively moving country cluster priorities that needs support from the GNC and global level activities. The meeting resulted in the development of the next steps for the implementation of the GNC Strategic Plan and a two-year costed workplan. A set of recommendations for the global partners as well as for the cluster coordinators and IMOs was developed. For details of the plenary and working group discussions, please see page 2 and visit the GNC website: for the full report of the meeting. GNC UPDATES Josephine Ippe Global Nutrition Cluster Coordinator' THE ANNUAL MEETING OF NUTRITION CLUS- TER COORDINATORS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT OFFICERS, 15 SEPTEMBER 2014 On 15th September, a day prior to the GNC Annual Meeting, the GNC-CT held a meeting with the Nutrition Cluster Coordinators and Information Management Officers. The GNC-CT provided an update of the new developments in within the IASC and country participants shared challenges at country level and discussed the next steps to improve cluster performance. These include: NCC key challenges: Inadequate timing for the development of HNO and SRP does not allow for a comprehensive consultations with all partners and the Government; identification and determination of the humanitarian caseload by OCHA; lack of standardised country tools for capacity mapping; insufficient guidance to country offices on cluster structures; Influencing HC/ HCT and government in more sector-focused situations; capacity limitation for nutrition assessments; challenges with activity-based costing tools and guidance; unclear definition of field monitoring for cluster coordination, etc. IMO key challenges: lack of IM capacity, undefined role of IM within CLA, transition arrangements on how to hand over IM to government, information management vs. knowledge management and who does the latter and how, lack of guidance on how to improve timeliness and quality of reporting, capacity of partners to do their own nutrition analysis, and government ownership of data, etc. Areas for support to country cluster were also identified and presented at the GNC Annual Meeting on 16 September For details of the presentations and working group discussions, please visit the GNC website: nutritioncluster.net/annual-nutrition-cluster-coordinators -information-managers-meeting/

2 Page 2 GNC ANNUAL MEETING, SEPTEMBER 2014 The GNC annual meeting provides an opportunity for cluster partners, donors, and country level Nutrition Cluster Coordinators (NCCs) and Information Management Officers (IMOs) to discuss achievements, priorities and mechanisms for moving forward collaboratively. This meeting marks the 8 th year that the GNC has held an annual meeting. The objectives of the meeting were: To review the progress of the GNC Work Plan (WP) and identify challenges and bottleneck. To provide a structured platform for discussions, sharing information and lessons learned from Level 3 emergencies with an aim to improve coordinated response, information flow and learning. To provide a forum for presenting technical updates relevant to improving effective emergency nutrition response. To provide an opportunity for lead agencies of the Strategic Pillars and contributing agencies to meet and further specific WP tasks. During the Day 1 of the meeting, the partners were updated on the key achievements compared to planned activities and these presentations were made by the GNC-CT and the SAG. Major GNC achievements: There have been significant achievements over the past year. The summary of those is presented here. The Strategic Plan was finalized and a 2-year WP was developed, costed and launched to the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) and donors in Geneva. Significant funding has been secured for many activities while partners have collectively developed concept notes that have been circulated to donors for underfunded activities. A number of country level and regional level trainings have been conducted and training packages have been updated. The Rapid Response Team (RRT) and the GNC- Coordination Team (GNC-CT) also have provided substantial support to the three Level 3 emergencies (Philippines, S. Sudan and Central African Republic), while support was also provided to non L3 countries such as Chad, Somalia, Afghanistan and Pakistan in response planning, emergency preparedness plan and support to Cluster Coordination Performance Monitoring (CCPM). An Information Management (IM) Taskforce has been established and the new, independent GNC website has been launched. Some of the constraints faced in implementing activities in the past year include lack of funding for key activities and the heavy demands on the GNC-CT and RRT to support to core functions of national clusters and the scale up of the response in Philippines, S. Sudan and Central African Republic. Strategic Advisory Group (SAG): Over the past year, the SAG has provided significant support, including planning and facilitating the working session in February 2014, input into the launch of the Strategic Plan, developing the MoU between the GNC and ACF Canada on SMART, providing input into the fundraising strategy and planning and facilitating this meeting. It is recognized that the SAG s input has centred on management and process issues; it has not been working at a purely strategic level. The SAG aims to review priority areas moving forward, identifying those of a more strategic level, and will likely revise the SAG TOR. This was followed by a presentation on the needs and priorities by the NCC/IMO consolidated from a NCC/IMO meeting that took place a day before the main GNC meeting. The NCC/IMO presented their collective challenges and needs at the country level. The summary of needs per each of the core cluster functions is presented below: Support to service delivery: need a tool for capacity mapping and bottleneck analysis Informing strategic decision-making: guidance on global agreements with partners who can support on assessments, global commitments from partners on how they can help Strategy development: GNC to update on global UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) costing tool, update the existing GNC Consolidated Appeals Process (CAP)/ Strategic Response Planning (SRP) tips, develop template Online Project System (OPS) sheet, GNC to advocate for OPS-less SRPs Monitoring and reporting: provide adequate translation of CCPM documents into different languages, GNC to discuss with OCHA about CCPM flexibility Capacity development and preparedness: develop guidance on capacity development for the response, develop guidance on how to do capacity mapping, develop guidance on nutrition contingency planning Advocacy: disseminate advocacy package and develop countrylevel guidance on advocacy, develop GNC advocacy strategy and clarify how it engages with other advocacy initiatives (e.g. post 2015, SUN etc.), support comprehensive nutrition responses at global level (particularly IYCF-E), develop guidance on channels used for advocacy, develop guidance on accountability to affected populations (AAP) for nutrition and provide knowledge management/dissemination on the issue. The finding of Cluster Coordination Performance Monitoring (CCPM) exercise conducted in five cluster countries were presented and discussed. The CCPM exercise reviewed the performance of country cluster around the six-core cluster functions. This was followed by group work and discussions during which participants further discussed additional issues and challenges around the core cluster functions presented below: Supporting service delivery challenges: information flow between MoH and Nutrition Cluster is difficult, link between national and sub-national level is weak, cluster core functions not well understood by partners, poor attendance by field and government staff. Informing strategic decision making challenges: prioritization of activities not grounded in strong analysis, gap analysis and prioritization with partners and other clusters weak, analysis of crosscutting issues is weak. Planning and strategy development challenges: need to clarify funding requirements and deactivation strategy, limited strategic planning at sub-national level, limited sub-national consultation on response plan.

3 Page 3 GNC ANNUAL MEETING, SEPTEMBER 2014 Advocacy challenges: advocacy concerns not comprehensively discussed or pro-actively taken forward when identified, unsure advocacy issues are raised in Humanitarian Country Team. Monitoring and reporting: insufficient reporting back to partners, field monitoring is infrequent, unclear mechanisms for sharing reports with WFP, UNICEF, quality of partner reports, timeliness of reporting, limited consideration of reports in bulletins, lessons learnt not documented or used for programming. Contingency planning: limited partner engagement. AAP: cluster role on this is unclear, no review done, most partners have organizational mechanisms in place but not shared/ harmonized CCPM Process: better uptake if cluster is engaged in process, strong understanding of process required by all partners, number of respondents per organization (guidance says one but might be better to have more), language very UN focused and better in English than French, a need for a more flexible questionnaire, engagement from donors, OCHA and cluster required (from all not just one), need to make separate donor section for questionnaire, sub-national questionnaire requires review. Following the review of challenges, the groups recommended actions to be taken at both global and country levels to improve cluster coordination around the six core functions. For details, please see the full report of the 8th GNC Annual Meeting. Day 2 focused on the experience, issues and challenges to scaling up nutrition response in emergencies. Three countries with recent level 3 emergencies made presentations: S Sudan, Philippines, and Central African Republic. Issues and challenges around needs assessment, response planning, resource mobilization and implementation were identified. Some of the key challenges reflected in the country presentation are: In the Philippines: Needs Assessment issues/challenges: government led needs analysis had limited nutrition information, government disaster assessment team had limited capacity to adapt existing methods to respond to such a large emergency, MIRA had limited focus on nutrition and was not linked to planning (timing/methodology), limited capacity to do nutrition assessments, high number of meetings to clear protocols led to significant bottlenecks, while tight deadlines affected remote support (HQ), disconnect between national and sub-national discussions, and limited use of response monitoring data to complement needs assessment. In South Sudan: Implementation and Monitoring issues/challenges: Logistics, supplies, funding, availability of staff, availability/capacity of partners to scale up, need to strengthen IYCF programming, limited inter-sectoral programming, reporting and monitoring of some components of the nutrition response were lacking (micronutrients and IYCF), monitoring of achievements has had limited impact on decision-making, limited information from site level available early in response. In the Central African Republic: Strategic Planning issues/challenges: heavy strategic planning process in context of rapidly changing situation meant that what was included in SRP was not necessarily appropriate by the time it was finalized, focus on Bangui at beginning, lack of inter-sectoral engagement and strategy outside of Bangui initially, limited number of cluster partners for nutrition, limited capacity in CMAM and limited interest in taking on MAM programming. Participants reflected on these presentations and discussed and identified what is being/could be done at both global and country level to address these and improve a coordinated response. Some of the key issues identified and discussed include: Based on these discussions, global partners updated the GNC WP to reflect additional partner commitment to activities and more details around the process of taking forward some of the activities. At the same time, NCC and IMO discussed what they could do at country level to address the above in their contexts. Next steps The SAG will review WP and discussions at this meeting to identify strategic priorities to engage in moving forward. This will be reported back to the collective. The WP will be consolidated based on feedback and discussions during this meeting and will be shared with partners. Funding gaps will be followed up by the GNC and there will be a telecom with global partners in October for the GNC-CT to share an update and discuss any re-prioritization of funds. Additionally in this call, partners will update on their commitments to activities in the WP and related next steps. A traffic light system will be developed to monitor the activities in the WP and will be posted on line. NCC/IMO will prepare an action plan to address some of the issues raised in the meeting and will feed back to the GNC-CT. They will also identify a mechanism to provide feedback to the GNC-CT on IASC guidance so that the GNC-CT can advocate for issues at the global level. Technical updates on the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC), Rapid SMART, International Conference on Nutrition 2 (ICN2) and Ebola were presented. For details, please visit the GNC website. Day 3 aimed to consolidate the key issues from discussions in day 1 and 2 and identify ways forward both at the global and country level. Firstly, an overview of the GNC funding situation was presented around the strategic pillars. Unfunded activities were highlighted and fundraising strategies were shared. Group work was conducted with global actors to update the Work Plan (WP) in terms of identifying additional partners for activities and discuss potential funding strategies for unfunded activities. Meanwhile country level actors (NCC and IMO) prioritized key issues and needs at the country level and identified what they can move forward directly, what they need support on and what they request the GNC take forward at the global level. The next GNC working session will be in February and the next Annual Meeting will be in September 2015.

4 Page 4 UNICEF-EU partnership helps to sustain coordination capacity in support of life-saving nutrition interventions in large-scale emergencies around the world. UNICEF received 2 million from ECHO to support the Global Nutrition Cluster to support operational and surge capacity BRUSSELS/GENEVA, 30 October 2014 The Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC) received a 2 million from the European Commission to ensure surge support to effectively coordinate nutrition interventions in large-scale emergencies and chronic crises. The GNC is an international body led by UNICEF designed to support better coordinated responses to nutritional crises across the world. It is made up of a coalition of the main charitable organisations and the United Nations agencies involved in the sector with critical financial support from the European Commission and other donors. Coordination of the partners working better together in nutrition in humanitarian situations under the lead of UNICEF is vital for ensuring timely and effective delivery of emergency nutrition interventions to the population in need, said Henrike Trautmann, Head of Specific Thematic Policies Unit in the European Commission's Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response. The GNC maintains its surge capacity to support large-scale emergencies through the Rapid Response Team (RRT) - a partnership between five members of the GNC, managing the surge capacity: Action Against Hunger International, International Medical Corps, Save the Children United Kingdom, UNICEF and World Vision International. The purpose of the team have in place standby support who are readily deployable to countries to facilitate effective coordination of live saving nutrition activities during emergencies. The RRTs are deployed to cluster countries mainly during L3 emergencies as well as other cluster countries to provide required support to countries cluster coordination platforms. This support of the cluster to help prevent duplication of activities, by supporting response planning, prioritization of areas that need nutritional interventions by cluster partner which in turn maximize the uses of the ever limited resources available in these emergencies and coordinated response to the affected population The team consists of six experienced nutrition professionals who are deployable to countries in crisis on very short notice, and are also provide support to other national clusters In large scale emergencies and chronic crises, nutrition interventions are life-saving, said Sikander Khan, UNICEF Deputy Director of the Office of Emergency Programmes in Geneva. The nutrition cluster plays a key role in the field to ensure a well prioritized and coordinated nutrition response so that the most vulnerable, including children, are reached as quickly as possible. This funding will help the GNC to kick-start the cluster arrangements and effectively respond in emergency situations, with the support from UNICEF as cluster-led and all the GNC members. Currently, 12 emergency nutrition coordination mechanisms are active around the world to coordinate emergency nutrition responses, such as in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic and South Sudan. The GNC RRT partnership was founded in 2012 and is supported by ECHO, UK s DfID and the Swiss Government.

5 Page 5 LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE NUTRITION CLUSTER COUNTRIES The GNC and a number of National Nutrition Clusters have recently undertook a lessons learned exercise, during which clusters prepared their reports on lessons learned on each of the core cluster functions, the accountability to affected population and the cluster management arrangements. The reports have been prepared by the National Nutrition Cluster coordination teams with support from the GNC-CT and in consultations with partners. They include the desk reviews of cluster documents and the outcomes of consultations with partners. This exercise was undertaken in Ethiopia, Philippines, Somalia and Yemen and the reports from Yemen and Somalia are published below. We will publish reports from Ethiopia and Philippines in the next edition of the Bulletin. Reports from Afghanistan, Nepal, South Sudan and Sudan are being prepared and will also be published. YEMEN NUTRITION CLUSTER The nutrition cluster coordinates a network of 35 active partners of which just 25 % are National NGOs. The Nutrition cluster is currently well established at national level, with four stand alone sub-national cluster groups in the Northern, Central, Western and Southern parts of the country. The following are the key lessons learnt identified under each core function of the national cluster and documented in an exercise conducted by the Global Nutrition Cluster and Yemen Nutrition Cluster in September Taking part in sectorial coronations such as the SUN movement country steering committee gives an opportunity to cluster to ensure that lifesaving interventions often regarded by some decision makers as not so much contributing to prevention of chronic malnutrition be included in a SUN country Action/investment plan Examining how NGOs are supporting nutrition service delivery in MOH facilities is an important exercise for ensuring smooth handover of services once emergency is gone and this also avoids compromising the commitment and the role of MOH staff in running nutrition service by themselves with minimal support NGO support. CLA in-house consultation among clusters lead by UNICEF and CLA Head or Agency emergency focal person on common challenges and obstacles faced can be used as means of conveying issues to HCT for prompt decision. Adoption of HPC process gives an opportunity for phase by phase consultation on humanitarian needs and response at lower administrative levels. Hence enhancing engagement with local authorities, line ministries at lower administrative level. Quarterly Snapshot of Emergency Nutrition Response produced by cluster to periodically monitor response against SRP targets as well as funding status was found a useful comprehensive and informative IM product that need to be replicated. There is a tendency amongst cluster partners to confine nutrition response activities to just CMAM and give little attention to preventive interventions such as IYCF promotion and Micronutrient supplementation activities The Nutrition cluster in Yemen on several occasions made its utmost effort to influence partners to incorporate preventive interventions alongside CMAM services. SOMALIA NUTRITION CLUSTER The nutrition cluster has been operational in Somalia since 2006 and coordinates a network of over 100 active partners. Somalia nutrition cluster is guided by the Strategic Advisory Group (SAG) which provides overall strategic direction, vision and guidance. In addition, various Technical Working Groups (TWGs) have been established e.g. IMAM, IYCF, Capacity Development, Assessment and IM. The national coordination meetings are regularly held in Mogadishu supported by 14 monthly sub-national cluster meetings at regional level. Due to security restrictions, senior level international staff are unable to participate in the Mogadishu meetings. This limits strategic engagement of all stakeholders in the coordination effort and slows the decision making process. However, to sustain such deliberations at Nairobi level, where majority of the stakeholders are located, the coordination team convenes either SAG, TWGs or region specific meetings on a regular basis in which critical issues are discussed and key decisions are made. These are then ratified during the Mogadishu meetings. Nutrition service delivery in Somalia is guided by the Nutrition Strategy and the Basic Nutrition Services Package (BNSP) which is centred on a holistic life cycle approach (combining treatment and promotion), including management of acute malnutrition. These strategic documents have been endorsed by all nutrition cluster partners. The nutrition cluster uses the SRP in project development process to ensure alignment of partner projects and service delivery strategies with the cluster s strategic response plan and priorities and avoiding any duplications. The nutrition cluster in Somalia uses the Inter Cluster Working Group (ICWG) platform to ensure that strategic priorities, concerns, recommendation for the nutrition cluster are adequately voiced for the attention of the humanitarian country team (HCT). In addition, the nutrition cluster has in place a systematic and data driven process for seasonal nutrition situational analysis and response planning during and in-between the Deyr and Gu seasons. Development of the cluster strategic plans are influenced by situational analysis generated through the bi annual Gu and Deyr food security and nutrition assessments. These assessments are used to generate, adjust and make projections of caseload targets for the nutrition cluster. Monitoring and evaluation remains challenging in Somalia due to access constraints. Whenever possible, field missions are organized, to meet with partners and monitor implementation and in inaccessible areas the cluster partners rely on third party monitoring mechanisms. Monitoring tools and systems have been put in place in each zone to identify gaps in partner performance and reporting, as well as identify opportunities for improving capacity building and programme quality. The nutrition cluster together with the WASH cluster has developed a joint emergency preparedness and response/contingency plan which is expected to sustain the capacity of Government and other humanitarian actors to prepare and respond in an effective and timely manner when emergencies occur. In coordination with the Inter Cluster Working Group (ICWG), the nutrition cluster regularly conducts joint contingency planning exercises with some of the key clusters e.g. food security in response to early warning information and alerts on the food security and nutrition outlook. The joint contingency plans have been a useful tool for advocacy to the HCT. Additionally, the cluster uses findings from FSNAU Post Deyr and Post Gu seasonal assessments to contribute to the HC/HCT messaging and action on nutrition needs in the country. The nutrition cluster publishes a quarterly bulletin and widely disseminates cluster information through the humanitarian.hr website and twitter handle, have been critical media for advocacy and dissemination of information.

6 Page 6 The GNC continues to implement its two-year costed workplan. Below are the major highlights of activities planned for ACF-UK TO DEVELOP GNC ADVOCACY STRATEGY AND THE IN TOOLKIT/TRAINING PACKAGE In October 2014, the ACF-UK entered into a partnership agreement with the UNICEF/GNC-CT through a Project Cooperation Agreement (PCA). The project will contribute to achieving the Global Nutrition Cluster s Strategic Plan Pillar 1, Objective 3 and Strategic Pillar 4 Objective 1 which involves the identification and drafting a global advocacy strategy that also addresses the advocacy priorities at global nutrition and country levels. Through this financial support, toolkits to support advocacy capacity and cluster s partner s engagement on advocacy activities at the country level will also be developed to support evidence-based advocacy efforts for coordinated action, partnerships and accountability for cluster results. The other core part of this funding will be utilized in the development of Information management tool kit HIGHLIGHTS OF 2015 GNC ACTIVITIES RRT HIGHLIGHTS and a training package for IMOs The project is expected to be completed in March ENN TO WORK WITH COUNTRY NUTRITION CLUSTER ON KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (KM) INITIATIVES The UNICEF/GNC-CT and ENN will work together through a PCA on the development of a more systematic approach to KM to complement other IM/KM activities being implemented by the GNC Coordination Team and other cluster partners. The key deliverable within the current agreement would include: Scoping exercise to identify existing KM activities and key areas of experience and learning amongst country cluster coordinators and other actors at country level Active support to NCCs/IMOs to capture and document their experiences and learning. The project is expected to be completed in December The GNC s RRT is a partnership between the GNC-CT and four GNC partners: ACF-International, IMC, SC-UK and WVI with funding from ECHO and DFID. Major highlights include: Paul Wasike (NCC RRT, SC-UK) was deployed to Somalia cluster until 7 November 2014; Anna Ziolkovska (IMO RRT, ACF) was on a three-week deployment to South Sudan until 17 October Angeline Grant (NCC RRT, ACF) has completed her term as the GNC RRT on 26 September 2014; Samra Hanif (IMO RRT, WVI) has completed her term as the GNC RRT; on 1 September 2014; The GNC welcomes Simon Karanja, newly recruited Information Management Officer (WVI) to the Rapid Response Team. Simon holds an MSc in Human Nutrition and has more than 10 years of experience in international relief and development organizations. Primarily working in the area of nutrition in emergencies with UN agencies and international NGOs in East Africa and South-East Asia. The GNC welcomes Grace Omondi, newly recruited Nutrition Cluster Coordinator (IMC) to the Rapid Response Team. Grace holds a BSc in Family and Consumer Sciences majoring in Nutrition. She worked as the nutritionist, nutrition programme manager and emergency nutrition coordinator for a range of international agencies, including major NGOs and the UN in a number of countries, including Nigeria, South Sudan, Uganda and more recently in Turkey (for Syria response). Grace is based in Nairobi, Kenya. The GNC-CT launched the Evaluation of the support provided by the Global Nutrition Cluster to National Coordination Platforms with focus on the GNC RRT mechanism. A team of two consultants are working with the RRT members and agencies, the GN-CT, the national nutrition clusters and donors to generate credible evidence of the results achieved and the constraints experienced by the GNC in providing support to national Coordination Platforms, and the role played by the RRT in these aspects. The evaluation is expected to be completed by mid- January 2015 and presented at the GNC Annual Working Meeting in New deployments: Paul Wasike (NCC RRT, SC-UK) will be deployed to Sudan Nutrition Cluster from 24 November 2014 to 23 January 2015 Simon Karanja (IMO RRT, WVI) will be deployed to- South Sudan Nutrition Cluster from 01 December to 20 December c/o Office of Emergency Programmes (EMOPS) United Nations Children s Fund (UNICEF) 5-7, Avenue de la Paix 1202 Geneva, Switzerland Ms. Josephine IPPE GNC Coordinator jippe@unicef.org Skype: gnc.geneva Dr. Ayadil SAPARBEKOV GNC Deputy Coordinator asaparbekov@unicef.org General enquiries gnc@unicef.org