About us
About NAHAB
NAHAB is an alliance of voluntary, non-government, non-profitable, and non-political organizations that will advocate and facilitate a balanced, faster and needful humanitarian actions in Bangladesh.
The increasing frequency and multidimensionality of emergencies putting more and more people in adverse situation and current humanitarian system is being strained to its limit. Study reveals that collaboration with local and national organisations will be the future key to enhance the effective, proper, accountable and balanced humanitarian system globally (Missed Opportunities: 2013)1. A disaster champion country like Bangladesh, even though the individuals, Local and National Non-Government Organisations (L/NNGOs) has improved and innovative knowledge, skills, systems and processes, their voices are hardly being heard often limit the appropriateness, connectedness and timely humanitarian support. Hence, there is a greater need of a National Platform of local and National organisation in humanitarian sector for better coordination and localisation in terms of resource mobilisation and capacity building of L/NNGOs.
In this regard, Shifting the Power a START Network project with Department of Disaster Management, Government of Bangladesh facilitates the launching of “National Alliance of Humanitarian Actors, Bangladesh (NAHAB)” that has been held on 26 January, 2017 at Dhaka. Around 45 L/NNGOs were present and provided their consent to join this platform. This platform will facilitate local and nationals not only to have a stronger voice and representation in humanitarian platforms, networks and national disaster management structure but also create access to financial and non-financial resources. Moreover, it will help the L/NNGOs to create a platform for identity to be recognised by international humanitarian actors. Immediately after the launching, an ad-hoc committee has been formed with 11 L/NNGOs on even geographical distribution across Bangladesh.
These organizations are Association of Voluntary Actions for Society, AVAS (Barishal Division); Young Power in Social Action, YPSA (Chittagong Division); Dhaka Ahsania Mission (Dhaka Division); Caritas (Dhaka Division); Shushilan (Khulna Division); Unnayan Sangha (Mymensing Division); Gana Unnayan Kendra, GUK (Rangpur Division); Uttara Development Program Society, UDPS (Rajshahi Division); People’s Oriented Program Implementation, POPI (Sylhet Division); The National Forum of Organization Working with the Disabled, NFOWD, Network for Information, Response And Preparedness Activities on Disaster, NIRAPAD (Knowledge Platform). The ad-hoc committee will work for upcoming 6 months to explore the governance mechanism of the platform, organize convention for selecting the full committee on democratic process, membership process and resources mobilization to meet up its own operation cost. This platform will act as a centre of excellence to create a culture of cross learning through identifying best innovative knowledge and skills of disaster management across Bangladesh, as well as leveraging opportunities for effective and timely humanitarian response and preparedness.
Objectives of NAHAB
Create a common space for Humanitarian actors to share information, experiences, and research findings.
Provide an outlet for humanitarian actors to get easy access to information and knowledge products on humanitarian aspect.
Advocate for collaboration among the humanitarian actors (GO, NGO, Private sector) at the management and implementation level on humanitarian interventions.
Undertake advocacy for having appropriate policies and revision of policies for reflecting emerging issues and context.