The European Commission and the European Office for Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) have allocated 3 million euros to support and reinforce systems of information essential for the coordination of humanitarian aid within the UN Office for the coordination of humanitarian aid (OCHA). The funding is aimed at the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) run by OCHA, in particular the humanitarian information centres in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Pakistan, the new so-called system of “financial traceability” which permits the flow and expenditure of humanitarian aid to be monitored, and the system of world alert for disasters that provides for a mechanism of rapid alert, a damage assessment procedure and a method for planning particularly complex interventions. The decision of the EU Humanitarian Office forms part of the measures adopted as part of EU strategy on principles and good practices in humanitarian aid, approved by the main world donors at Stockholm in 2003.
