UNOCHA

Vision partners with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) to help ensure humanitarian action is coordinated, principled, accountable, and focused on the needs of children and communities affected by conflict, disasters, displacement, and other crises.

Through this partnership, World Vision contributes frontline operational experience, technical expertise, and evidence from crisis-affected communities to inform humanitarian policy, coordination, advocacy, and funding processes.

Together, World Vision and OCHA are working to build a more effective, inclusive, and responsive humanitarian system that delivers life-saving assistance and protection where it is needed most.

Better Together

As the UN agency responsible for coordinating global humanitarian response, OCHA brings together governments, UN agencies, NGOs, local organisations, and humanitarian partners to improve emergency preparedness, response, and recovery. Working through key humanitarian coordination mechanisms, including the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), Humanitarian Country Teams, and cluster systems, World Vision helps strengthen humanitarian access, civilian protection, accountability to affected populations, and adherence to international humanitarian law.

By elevating the voices and experiences of crisis-affected children, families, and communities, World Vision ensures that humanitarian decision-making, coordination efforts, and funding priorities are grounded in the realities of those most impacted by emergencies.

By connecting field realities with global policy and coordination discussions, World Vision helps strengthen the link between local experiences and international action. Together with OCHA and humanitarian partners, we work to foster a humanitarian system that is collaborative, accountable, and capable of responding effectively to the evolving needs of people affected by conflict, disaster, and displacement.

Priority Areas of Engagement

Humanitarian Response and Coordination

World Vision contributes to OCHA-led coordination processes by sharing operational evidence, participating in planning discussions, and supporting collective efforts to improve humanitarian response in priority crises.

Humanitarian Access

World Vision advocates for safe, timely, and principled humanitarian access so that affected populations can receive the assistance and protection they need. This includes engagement on the operational and policy barriers that restrict humanitarian action.

Protection of Civilians and International Humanitarian Law

We support collective advocacy to protect civilians, including children affected by conflict, and to strengthen respect for international humanitarian law in crisis settings.

Accountability to Affected People

World Vision promotes humanitarian action that listens to, responds to, and is accountable to affected populations. Through OCHA-related platforms, we advocate for community perspectives to inform humanitarian priorities, response design, and decision-making.

Humanitarian Financing

World Vision engages in discussions on humanitarian financing to help ensure that resources are prioritised according to need, support principled humanitarian action, and strengthen the reach and quality of response for vulnerable communities.

Humanitarian System Reform

We contribute to discussions on improving the humanitarian system, including efforts to strengthen coordination, simplify processes, advance localisation, improve accountability, and make humanitarian action more effective and sustainable.

Overview of Key Engagement

World Vision’s engagement with OCHA spans global, regional, and country-level platforms that shape humanitarian coordination, policy, advocacy, and financing. Through these spaces, we work to ensure that the priorities of children and vulnerable communities are reflected in humanitarian decision-making and that field evidence informs collective action

Partnership in Action

ECOSOC HAS 2026

At ECOSOC HAS 2026, World Vision helped shape global conversations on hunger, localisation and humanitarian reform. As humanitarian needs rise and...

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It Takes a Coalition to Combat Conflict & Hunger

World Vision is working with humanitarian partners through the Coalition Against Conflict and Hunger, highlighting how local evidence, community...

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Humanitarian Aid for Families Affected by New Floods in La Mojana

World Vision and OCHA provided immediate humanitarian assistance to affected families in Majagual and Guaranda (Sucre), with the delivery of 258...

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Where Humanitarian Policy Meets Frontline Reality

Throughout the humanitarian year, World Vision’s engagement with OCHA is amplified during key advocacy, policy, and coordination moments. These include the United Nations General Assembly, the ECOSOC Humanitarian Affairs Segment, Protection of Civilians Week, Global Humanitarian Policy Forum, Global Humanitarian Overview discussions, humanitarian financing dialogues, and other high-level consultations linked to humanitarian access, accountability, anticipatory action, and system reform.

In these spaces, World Vision works alongside OCHA, Member States, UN agencies, NGOs, and partners to advocate for principled, people-centred humanitarian action and to ensure that the needs and rights of affected children and communities remain central to humanitarian decision-making.

Joyce Msuya (Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator at OCHA) and Mark Smith (World Vision’s senior director for humanitarian emergencies) sharing remarks at the side event "Underfunding and the Cost of Inaction: How to Address One of the Main Challenges to Humanitarian Response," co-organized by OCHA and World Vision, during ECOSOC HAS 2024, and which focused on the significant challenges of underfunding in coordinated humanitarian action and its severe impact on vulnerable populations.