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Inter-Cluster Workshop Background

The earth has been experiencing increased climate-related disasters than ever in the last two decades due to climate change. Thus, creating a more complex risk landscape and challenging the humanitarian system to do more at a greater cost than ever before. An estimated 206.4 million people need humanitarian assistance today, and the number of globally displaced has reached over 65 million, almost double that of 20 years ago. Despite remarkable development initiatives and disaster preparedness interventions, Bangladesh has also faced an economic loss of 4,120 million USD with 42 million affected populations from 2014 to 2020 due to the natural disaster, which also hampered the development of the nation.

The 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted in 2015, set out a new ambition: to not just meet needs but to reduce risk, vulnerability, and overall levels of need, providing a reference frame for both humanitarian and development actors to contribute to the shared vision of a future in which no one is left behind. The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) 2016 in which they agreed to implement a "New Way of Working (NWOW")" that meets people's immediate humanitarian needs while at the same time reducing risk and vulnerability by working towards collective outcomes across silos, over multiple years, based on the comparative advantage of a diverse range of actors, including those outside the UN system. A collective outcome is a concrete and measurable result that humanitarian, development and other relevant actors want to achieve jointly, usually over 35 years, in a country to reduce ' 'people's needs, risks and vulnerabilities and increase their resilience to climate-related disasters.

The United Nations Bangladesh, 2022-2026 Cooperation Framework for development signed with the Government of Bangladesh (GoB), is structured around five Strategic Priorities identified from the analysis of the overarching Theory of Change as pillars where five strategic priority has been set where Strategic Priority 2 to namely 'improve the access and utilisation of social protection 'services'; and Strategic Priority 3 'to improve the resilience to climate change, shocks and disasters of the most vulnerable and marginalised 'groups', has been identified as precedence issues for Humanitarian Coordination Tasks Team (HCTT) intended to reach out to development, DRR, and other relevant partners to engage in discussions on mutually reinforcing and strategic partnerships.

Recent progress and changes in action modalities for humanitarian actors create a momentum to offer new ways of working for complex scenarios where humanitarian and development are prioritised parallelly. The inter-cluster workshop was two days residential, focusing on reviewing and analysing existing capacities and preparedness on thematic aspects. The basic concepts of the workshop mainly revolving the ideas of HCTT nexus strategies and strategic priority jointly. The foremost, literature and in-practice review with the lens of capacity and effective tools discussed and analysed through participatory approaches for each strategic priority. Secondly, based on the thematic presentations, existing practices were reviewed thoroughly to develop a collaborative plan of action to ensure effective and efficient implementation of the HCTT-Nexus Strategy in Bangladesh. Thirdly the aspects were also elaborated on the action points and agendas of UNDRR at the countrylevel in aligning with the strategic priority 01 of the HCTT-nexus strategy.