The NGO Coordination Committee for Iraq (NCCI) organizes monthly meetings in order to coordinate and share information on issues pertaining to NGOs in the current emergency. The last meeting took place on Thursday October 30th in the NCCI office in Erbil and was attended by 24 national and international NGOs. These NGOs discussed issues related to enhancing cooperation between different humanitarian actors in Iraq in the fields of security, advocacy and administration. In this framework the International NGO Safety Organization (INSO) provided the attendees with a brief on the scope of their operations in Iraq and their available services for NGOs. Following on this presentation, NGOs sought for ways to overcome common administrative issues, such as visa restrictions, which will…

To address NGOs’ coordination needs in relation to administrative and HR concerns, NCCI is soon to coordinate the first of a series of meetings to bring HR representatives together in order to discuss common problems and concerns. Such meetings are of particular interest to the various new NGOs that are setting up operations in Iraq at the moment. Alongside the regular monthly coordination meeting, NCCI is to convene its second national NGO general coordination meeting in Erbil to further coordinate and share information on issues pertaining to national NGOs in the current emergency. Within the framework of improving coordination, the NGO Coordination Committee for Iraq (NCCI) also attended a meeting alongside John Ging, Director of the Operational Division at OCHA,…

On Thursday 16th October, NCCI organized a coordination meeting which was held at IRC’s Baghdad office and was attended by representatives from the IRC, Mercy Corps, Islamic Relief and PU-AMI. The agenda of the meeting was to discuss coordination needs in Baghdad, including ongoing access and security issues in light of the current emergency situation, along with information sharing mechanisms such as 3W and NGO mappings, referral systems and other important areas. NCCI hosts a wide variety of assets and capacities to enable efficient information sharing and NGO coordination, and recently produced an emergency report regarding the humanitarian situation in Heet (Anbar), which continues to be of concern to the collective NGO community inside Iraq. Participants in this meeting discussed…

Within the NGO Coordination Committee for Iraq’s mandate for coordination, the enabling of a free flow of information is vitally important. It is particularly relevant in light of the current humanitarian situation in Iraq, which is changing rapidly. Therefore NCCI has been releasing weekly field situation reports, which contain detailed updates on the changing security and political environment and on the humanitarian needs on the ground in the different Iraqi governorates. Following the renewed heavy fighting between Iraqi Security Forces and Islamic State (IS) members in Heet and Ramadi, the focus of the conflict shifted once again to the Anbar governorate, which has seen continuous fighting since December 2013. After IS took control of Heet, hundreds of families have reportedly…

In the current emergency scenario, the NGO Coordination Committee for Iraq (NCCI) continuously seeks ways to enhance its mandate to ‘act as an independent, neutral and impartial forum for coordination and information exchange among the NGO community to enhance the effectiveness of humanitarian action in Iraq’. In this framework, NCCI organizes monthly NGO meetings in order to discuss any concerns that its members might have and to enhance cooperation among NGOs in Iraq. The last meeting took place on Tuesday September 23rd in the NCCI office in Erbil and was attended by 16 national and international NGOs. These NGOs firstly discussed the start of a joint project by SNAP and NCCI on tracking funding flows per sector and geographic area…

Recent reports indicate that following the outbreak of violence in the Anbar governorate at the end of 2013 and the spread of violence to other parts of Iraq during this year, almost 1.8 million people have been internally displaced across Iraq. Given the increased likelihood that the Islamic State (IS) will continue to target the Iraqi population in its attempt to establish an Islamic State, the number of IDPs might increase even more in the future. In response to this protracted crisis, the NGO Coordination Committee for Iraq (NCCI) is increasing its information sharing activities. The enabling of a free flow of information is important within NCCI's mandate for coordination and is particularly important with regards to the current humanitarian…