4.1 The Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS)

The Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS),launched in December 2014, is a set of nine Commitments to communities and people affected by crisis that encapsulate principled, accountable and good quality humanitarian action. While a voluntary code for humanitarian actors at present, the CHS aims to become a means of certification of agencies delivering humanitarian aid. CARE contributed to the development of the CHS and became a founding member of the CHS Alliance in June 2015.

The CHS replaces the 2010 HAP Standards, People in Aid Code of Good Practice and (in 2017) Sphere Project core standards, but sits alongside the Sphere Project Technical Standards and Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief as an inter-agency humanitarian standard.

While the CHS is intended in part to consolidate the very many standards that have been produced to guide global humanitarian programming over recent decades, its raison d’être is to facilitate greater accountability to people affected by crisis because ‘knowing what humanitarian organisations have committed to will enable them to hold those organisations to account’. The CHS, in other words, places people affected by crisis at the centre of humanitarian action and promotes respect for their fundamental human rights.
For more general information about the CHS refer to the CHS Guidance Note and Indicators; FAQs about the CHS and Sphere; and the CHS folder in Minerva, which also includes FAQs about the CHS and CARE