On the 4th of November NCCI organized a general coordination meeting at its office in Erbil. General coordination meetings are organized monthly in both NCCI’s Erbil and Baghdad office and are designed as a meeting space for NGOs to coordinate their operations and share relevant information.

The meeting started with an introduction on the IDP call center, which is organized by UNOPS and serves as a communication channel between IDPs, UN agencies and NGOs. IDPs can call the center with questions about humanitarian aid distribution. The center keeps track of these questions and possible complaints and relays them to the relevant UN agencies or NGOs, increasing the accountability of humanitarian actors towards their beneficiaries.

Next a brief update on NCCI’s recent activities was presented. This update included NCCI’s efforts to ease the visa and registration procedures for NGOs in Baghdad, the recent outreach to NGOs in Dohuk and Sulaymaniyah and the advocacy panel discussion held in Geneva on 26 October. Following these NCCI updates the attendants discussed the HRP process and the Department of Foreign Relations’ meeting with international NGOs held on 2 November. Finally the participants raised a number of issues related to humanitarian operations in Kirkuk and the emigration of local staff members.

As always NCCI’s members can access the minutes of this meeting and other meetings in the members’ area of NCCI’s website. For your information a poster about the IDP call center in English, Arabic and Kurdish can be found below.