Principles of cooperation

“IHP is a cooperation characterized by a problem solving approach based on common objectives and mutual interest”

The collaborative principles of the partnership are the following:

Effectivness and efficiency: The cooperation is driven by a wish to deliver better and more effective and efficient services to the humanitarian community. The members recognize that to a certain extent they are competitors. Cooperating is seen as a way of limiting and regulating this competition and avoiding duplication of efforts. But the main aim of this cooperation is that IHP operations are made more efficient and cost effective by the sharing of equipment, staffing, funding and logistics capacity but also that the IHP organisations jointly pool their wide range of expertise and experiences.

Synergy: Cooperation enables the partners to provide support, which they are not able to provide individually. Synergy is derived from joint deployments, where for example one member provides staff and another member provides equipment and a third arranges the airlifts.

Dual use: IHP assets serve the dual purpose of being part of the domestic emergency management system and also being a preparedness capacity for the international emergency system. The advantage is a cost effective preparedness that can be deployed to both the domestic and international arena. Nevertheless, cross fertilization and sharing of experiences between the two systems benefits the improvement of the development and maintenance of the preparedness capacity as well as assisting in development of technical standards and initiatives etc.

Autonomy: From the beginning, IHP was as an informal, non-binding cooperation, in recognition of the individual members’ autonomy as well as the limitations of the mandate of the cooperating members. Hence, membership in IHP does not restrict the members from individual response and initiatives.