Why: During the 2nd annual conference on Effective Partnership and Information sharing for better humanitarian action held last year in Kuwait, a great number of stakeholders, referred to the importance of collectively working towards the creation of basic profiles of the major Arab humanitarian actors. The existence of these profiles would better facilitate information-sharing, partnership development and capacity-building amongst humanitarian actors in the Arab world as well as globally.

What: To this end, OCHA’s Gulf Office, has taken the initiative to launch in August 2012, a regional and innovative effort in collaboration with its local, regional and international partners, to identify, map and profile the main humanitarian actors in the GCC. A team of senior international experts has been put together with the mission to map the overall humanitarian structure in each of the GCC countries and to thereby create comprehensive country profiles.

Objective: The overall objective is for these profiles to serve both as a reference-point of all that constitutes humanitarian activities in a country, as well as to render themselves a medium to help facilitate collaboration, effective resource mobilization and information-sharing amongst the several different stakeholders.

Format and Content: The country profiles seek to identity not only the main actors involved in humanitarian affairs but also, the institutional/legal framework that governs their operations, the government policies and strategies that might have been put into place in-country, successful existing partnerships that they may carry, annual key figures, focus areas, international projects and activities.

Methodology: In addition to the necessary desk research and presentation of already existing information, this project’s philosophy is to actively and directly engage as many stakeholders as possible in this process and its outcome through in-depth, personal interviews. The idea is for these profiles to be perceived as “living documents” and a work-in-progress that will eventually require the continuous contribution of its makers in their updating, reshaping and evolution.
Where will you find the profiles: Upon completion of this in-depth research, the country profiles will be shared locally with the GCC interlocutors, the humanitarian community and government officials as well as internationally with international NGOs and UN agencies. They will also be made publicly available on this portal with the sole purpose of centralizing and facilitating access to humanitarian information in the Arab region, and to each other.

Where will you find the profiles: Upon completion of this in-depth research, the country profiles will be shared locally with the GCC interlocutors, the humanitarian community and government officials as well as internationally with international NGOs and UN agencies. They will also be made publicly available on this portal with the sole purpose of centralizing and facilitating access to humanitarian information in the Arab region, and to each other.

When: The profiling project is currently ongoing and it consists of three phases. The first phase which is now underway will focus on the mapping of the first four countries, namely Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain (Phase 2) as well as a closer look to regional organizations and financial institutions (Phase 3) is expected to follow. The first and currently running phase is expected to be concluded by November 2012.