By: Tsion Hagos, Senior Liaison Officer, RWI Addis Ababa
In March 2025, RWI officially joined the Humanitarian Coordination Forum (HCF), an umbrella entity for various UN agencies and INGOs in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to play their humanitarian role in a coordinated manner. HCF was established in October 2023, comprising agencies with a liaison function with the African Union Commission (AUC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The HCF is mainly steered by UNOCHA’s AU Liaison Office and consists of 19 UN agencies and 13 INGO members with over 100 active participants, including some that are based outside of Addis. Members of the forum discharge their independent roles and mandates as individual organisations. Under HCF, they plan and act collectively with a united voice in synergy, coordination and with capacity to support the AUC in discharging its efforts in early warning, preparedness, and response to humanitarian situations in Africa. As a priority area, the HCF strives to strengthen crisis prevention in the continent, and it also engages in key focus areas including humanitarian diplomacy, humanitarian action, access and coordination.
In terms of its coordination method, the forum meets on a monthly basis to discuss humanitarian developments in the continent and to reflect on the status of interventions by relevant international, regional and local humanitarian actors. The involvement and active participation of the Department of Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development (HHS) of the AUC in the HCF’s monthly coordination meetings and its other activities creates an ideal space for stakeholders in the civil society space to effectively influence and contribute to AU’s policy action on humanitarian and IHL issues.
For RWI, joining the HCF offers a strategic advantage for expanding our IHL work in Africa. Being part of the forum enables us to be closer to key and evolving information on AU’s efforts towards ensuring compliance with IHL. In the short time since its establishment, the forum’s engagement on conflict situations in the continent such as Sudan and DRC has demonstrated some level of effectiveness in terms of jointly sending key messages and data to inform decision-making by the relevant AU policy organs. Aside from serving as a platform for exchange of information and for synergising action, the forum is also a great place for mapping bilateral partnerships with other members that share similar mandates with RWI.