The GHD initiative provides a forum for donors to discuss good practice in Humanitarian Financing and other shared concerns. By defining principles and standards it provides both a framework to guide official humanitarian aid and a mechanism for encouraging greater donor accountability.

In the development field, donors have worked together since the 1960s to define good practice and promote aid coordination. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) has provided one of the main forums for this work. Humanitarian aid, however, did not form part of these debates.

In the mid-1990s, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the Red Cross and United Nations (UN) agencies involved in humanitarian assistance decided to create their own specific guidelines. They undertook the important work of defining their responsibilities under international law, and setting standards against which they could be accountable. The outcomes of this work included the Code of Conduct for Disaster Relief and the Sphere Project (2000). The pivotal role of donors in providing effective and accountable humanitarian assistance remained outside the scope of this work.

A meeting held in Stockholm in 2003 brought together donor countries, United Nations (UN) agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. It agreed on a set of 23 principles and good practice of humanitarian donorship.

(Background text from www.goodhumanitariandonorship.org)

Sida has together with Overseas Development Institute (ODI) put together a training on Good Decision-Making for GHD members, with the aim of increasing competence in GHD Agencies for decision-making when allocating resources according to humanitarian needs. Read more about the training under Trainings and Seminars.