Revised Sphere guidelines

The Sphere handbook 2000 edition has been revised over the last year. There have been consultations in many countries in an attempt to capture people's experience and views and build consensus on minimum standards, indicators and guidance notes. The major new additions to the next edition are the new Food Security standards. These will appear in a new chapter entitled Food Security, Nutrition and Food aid, which combines the previous food aid and nutrition chapters with the new food security standards.

This new chapter has been developed by national, regional and international groups of technicians who have carefully reviewed drafts and suggested improvements. The consultations have taken place in Kenya, Ethiopia, India, Afghanistan, Malawi, Liberia, USA, Switzerland and UK and have involved about 250 individuals. In addition there has been a much wider web-based consultation.

The new handbook will be published in October 2003. It is hoped that the new edition will be more useful for field workers, be relevant to a wide variety of contexts for disaster response and ultimately contribute to greater quality and accountability in humanitarian response.

For further information or to offer feedback, contact Anna Taylor (nutrition) email: A.Taylor@scuk.org.uk, Helen Young (food security), email: Helen.young@tufts.edu, or John Solomon (Food aid), email: Jsolomon@care.org