Baseline Technical Needs Assessment Report 2019

A number of needs assessments activities were undertaken in 2018/19 to identify the type of technical advice requests that commonly arise from country level and to identify any gaps in technical knowledge or guidance for the GTAM to potentially address within its initial work plan. ENN, together with the GTAM Core Team, have documented the processes and findings of these assessments as summarised in this report.

In recent years, it has become clear that leadership and coordination among global partners providing technical support to countries on nutrition in emergencies (NiE) is inadequate. Two recent studies^{1, 2}, confirmed this, highlighting a profusion of different models for linking country, regional and global level technical expertise resulting in duplication of efforts, limited technical coherence, and delayed and inadequate response to country level nutrition technical needs. To date, the humanitarian nutrition sector has not had a global modality for providing systematic nutrition technical support to countries in emergencies in a timely, coherent, collaborative and equitable manner.

In 2016, the Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC) constituted a Technical Task Force to propose a mechanism for addressing technical gaps in humanitarian contexts. Following an analysis of various approaches and experiences from other clusters, the concept of the Global Technical Assistance Mechanisms for Nutrition (GTAM) was developed, endorsed during the 2017 GNC Annual Meeting and is due to go live this year. The three main functions of the GTAM are to:

1. Provide technical advice: Provide timely signposting and advice based on existing guidance.

2. Facilitate consensus driven guidance: Identify urgent needs for operational guidance and facilitate the process of developing such guidance, based on consensus among experts, for priority questions where existing guidance is not sufficient or doesn’t exist.

3. Provide specialised technical expertise: Facilitate provision of specific technical expertise (deployment, remote technical support or capacity building) required by a country to deliver results for nutrition.

In order to do this effectively, it was necessary to first take stock of the type of technical requests for support that commonly arise and to identify any gaps in technical knowledge or guidance for the GTAM to potentially address within its initial work plan. This was achieved through a number of different initiatives, the processes and findings of which this report aims to summarise.  

¹ Richardson, L. and Ververs, M. (2015) Evaluation of the support provided by the GNC to National Coordination Platforms. Global Nutrition Cluster and UNICEF.

² Le Cuziat, G. and Frize, J. (2015) Position of the GNC on Providing Technical Support to Country Clusters. Save the Children USA, GNC and UNICEF.