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    4.3.5 Examples of Key Areas for Inter-Sector Coordination: Early Recovery
    • 11 Mar 2024
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    4.3.5 Examples of Key Areas for Inter-Sector Coordination: Early Recovery

    • Updated on 11 Mar 2024
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    Article summary

    Early Recovery is a vital element of an effective humanitarian response and one that cuts across all sectors.  It is both an approach to humanitarian response and also a set of specific programmatic actions to help people to move from dependence on humanitarian relief towards self-reliance: 

    • Approach to Humanitarian Response: As an approach, it focuses on strengthening resilience, re-building or strengthening capacity, and contributing to solving rather than exacerbating long standing problems, which have contributed to a crisis. 
    • Specific Programmatic Actions: Effective integration of early recovery throughout a response requires that, as far as is possible and appropriate in each crisis setting, each cluster design their response with a view to longer term recovery while also addressing immediate, life-saving needs. The aim of such actions should be to generate self-sustaining, nationally owned, resilient processes for post-crisis recovery and to put in place preparedness measures to mitigate the impact of future crises. This could mean maintaining stability as much as possible in the midst of a crisis. For the FSC, this could include supporting market systems, livelihoods, asset creation and returning lost assets rapidly to affected communities, conflict sensitive programming. 

    It also means bringing national and local authorities into the response as early as possible with a focus on local ownership and strengthening capacities (see 3.3.1, 3.6.1, 3.7 and 10.3). This provides the platform for recovery to start quickly after a crisis and for communities to be more resilient to a crisis.  

    Early recovery and resilience-building activities can also serve as a basis for an effective ‘exit strategy’ for humanitarian actors and help facilitate a transition to local authorities and actors (see 3.8). 

    Coordination of Early Recovery Activities – Early Recovery Working Groups

    Since 2017, when the Global Cluster for Early Recovery (see text box) scaled back its presence at country level, the primary platform for early recovery coordination has been the ICCG. A dedicated Early Recovery Working Group may be established for this purpose by the ICCG (or the HCT).  

    The Global Cluster for Early Recovery revisited its activity approach at country level following an evaluation in 2017. From here on, at country level, existing Early Recovery Clusters could continue based on needs (currently active in for example Syria, Nigeria, and Colombia - any existing ERC should not include food and agriculture activities) but no new clusters would be activated. Therefore, in many countries, Early Recovery Working Groups allow for intersectoral coordination and integration of activities.

    HCs (RCs) have the lead responsibility for ensuring early recovery issues are adequately integrated through the Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC) in cooperation with national actors. 

    In turn, each cluster, with the relevant CLAs, should take the lead on integrating early recovery and should design their response in line with early recovery approaches and principles (see below).      

    What is the role of the FSC Coordinator? FSC interventions should, from the outset, integrate early recovery approaches into all the different phases of the food security responses.

    Exactly how, is context specific and depends for example on the type of crisis (if an acute emergency or a protracted emergency, which may require a longer-term vision), the capacity and leadership role played by clusters and governments (the FSC can promote early recovery activities to help facilitate a transition to local authorities where possible), the existing resilience of affected communities, and the pre-crisis engagement of the international community.

    Guiding Principles for Early Recovery: The FSC Coordinator should be aware of the guiding principles for early recovery and adapt these as per the context - see pp. 14-15 in the Guidance note on inter-cluster early recovery (Global Cluster for Early Recovery, 2016).  See also pp. 39 and 42 for examples of FSC work with early recovery, annex 1 for a menu of indicative Early Recovery Approaches and Activities and annex 2 for a checklist of early recovery principles to check if plans have taken an ER approach into consideration. 

    gFSC Guidance: See also the gFSC Early Recovery Interventions and Best Practices, which provides an overview of early recovery activities, which can be integrated into FSC activities within the areas of: 

    1) Livelihoods.
    2) Basic Infrastructure and rehabilitation.
    3) Governance.
    4) Capacity Building (investing in people).  

    These examples can also assist the FSC Coordinator in discussions with FSC partners and if relevant, with the early recovery working group. 

    Examples: For an example of cross sectoral collaboration on early recovery, see the Joint Assessment of Food Security, Livelihoods and Early Recovery (Nepal, 2015). 

    Additional Resource: See the Early Recovery Indicator Registry (Early Recovery Cluster, 2017).

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