Sphere India - Unified Response Strategy (URS)

Experiences of previous emergencies has provided a lot of lessons to the humanitarian sector. The most important learning observed in these crisis situations was that each of the agencies go independently and respond to the situations according to their mandate, resources and expertise. In most of the cases, it was seen that there are huge clusters of agencies and resources in some areas and there are minimum or none in the other. There are huge gaps in responses - geographical as well as sectoral. Besides, duplication of efforts were also a key observation.

Thus evolved Unified Response Strategy (URS) as an Inter Agency initiative aiming to avoid gaps and duplicacy of responses with understanding the strengths and limitations of each other in situations of humanitarian crisis.

URS emphasizes over the best use of the most critical time in humanitarian emergencies to save maximum number of lives and provide a prompt and effective response. It emphasizes over the important theme of Sphere process: Process of Collaboration.

Unified Response Strategy comprises of different phases that form a complete cycle of humanitarian response starting from Common Assessment and ending with Common Monitoring and Evaluation. The various phases of URS include:
        (1)    Strengthening and Promoting Inter Agency Groups at state levels
        (2)    Mapping of information of Who is doing What & Where
        (3)    Common Assessment
        (4)    Common Response Planning
        (5)    Common Monitoring & Evaluation