About the humanitarian partnership process

• Sida received 105 complete expressions of interest in humanitarian partnership.
  • 89 civil society organisations
  • 14 UN organisations
  • 2 within the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
• Of these 105 organisations, 25 were selected to proceed to the second stage of the selection process: an assessment conducted by external consultants.
• 42 applications did not meet the eligibility criteria for humanitarian partnership with Sida.
• The 63 organisations that were assessed to be eligible for partnership were assessed against criteria related to relevance, quality and effectiveness.

The 25 organisations that were assessed to best meet Sida’s criteria based on the information provided in their applications were selected to proceed in the selection process.

The review was conducted by a team of 11 staff members, including policy specialists, humanitarian programme officers, and a controller.

For quality assurance purposes, all applications were reviewed by at least two people, in addition to thematic experts reviewing questions within their respective areas of expertise.

The most common reasons for rejection were either that the organisation, based on their applications, did not meet the eligibility criteria, OR that there were other organisations that were deemed more relevant and suitable for humanitarian partnership with Sida, based on the information provided.

The following 25 organisations have been selected to proceed to the next step of the assessment process:

• Action contre la Faim
• CARE International
• Danish Refugee Council
• Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
• Humanity & Inclusion
• International Committee of the Red Cross
• International Organization for Migration
• International Rescue Committee Sweden
• Islamic Relief Sweden
• Mercy Corps Europe
• Norwegian Refugee Council
• OCHA Country-Based Pooled Funds
• Oxfam GB
• Plan International
• Première Urgence Internationale
• Save the Children Sweden
• Solidarités International
• Swedish Red Cross
• The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
• Trócaire (Caritas consortium)
• UNICEF
• United Nations Population Fund
• World Food Programme
• World Health Organization
• World Vision

• An external assessment was conducted between February and July 2025.
• All short-listed applicants in the second step were informed on the outcome of the external assessment by 15 September 2025.

The external assessment collected, analysed and presented information about the organisations. The purpose is to provide Sida with a solid basis for making the final selection of potential future humanitarian partners. The assessment did not make recommendations with regard to the selection of partners.

Through the call for expression of interest Sida seeks to identify core operational humanitarian partners with the capacity required to work in many crises and rapidly respond to severe humanitarian needs around the world.

However, this is only one type of humanitarian partnerships that Sida envisages to have in its portfolio in the upcoming strategy period. To ensure an effective implementation of the Swedish government’s next humanitarian strategy, Sida may initiate additional calls or processes to select other types of humanitarian partners.

In the new humanitarian strategy, Sida envisages having four humanitarian partnership categories. The current call expression of interest only considers the first category of partnership: central operational partners.

Additionally, Sida will have targeted operational partnerships, enabling partnerships and partnerships for analysis, learning and innovation. These partnership categories are under development, and Sida will launch processes to identify potential partners for each category in due course, to ensure successful implementation of the humanitarian strategy.

The selection has been made based on pre-established criteria, including the following 12 eligibility criteria:

1. Be a non-profit Non-Governmental Organisation; UN Agency; Red Cross and Red Crescent movement entity or a global humanitarian pooled-fund.
2. Have on-going operations delivering humanitarian assistance in a minimum of 15 countries (or demonstrate that the applicant humanitarian organisation has a unique and critical mandate in one or more humanitarian crises).
3. Support democratic values and human rights and not have links to violent ideologies, extremism or Islamism.
4. Be guided by the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence and not pursue any other commercial or military activities or purposes.
5. Fulfil Sida’s requirements on transparency and accountability within aid operations; have sound internal governance, control systems and resources, including to prevent and respond to all forms of fraud, corruption and different forms of abuse.
6. Ensure zero tolerance for sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment.
7. Deliver humanitarian activities that are results-oriented and promotes visibility, transparency and reporting on how donor contributions have been utilised, and that prioritises safety and dignity, do no harm, accountability to and participation of affected persons throughout the programme cycle.
8. Work actively to place protection at the centre of humanitarian action and to contribute to collective protection outcomes to reduce risks of violence, threats and coercion amongst affected people.
9. Demonstrate technical capacity to deliver humanitarian aid that targets people in most acute need.
10. Ensure that gender equality is considered in all humanitarian action.
11. Take into account the impact of humanitarian activities on the environment and climate.
12. Contribute to effective coordination with other humanitarian actors to avoid duplications and gaps, and to enhance the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the response.

The assessment also took into account aspects related to quality and effectiveness of humanitarian operations, and relevance for Sweden’s humanitarian assistance through Sida. This included multiple aspects related to the organisations’ systems, capacity and expertise. For more information, please see the question below about the system used to assess applications.

To ensure a fair and transparent selection process, Sida set up a scoring system based on a traffic light matrix. For each question, Sida used pre-established criteria to grade the answer as green, yellow or red. Each colour was linked to a score.

In the scoring, additional weight was given to questions that Sida considers to be of particular importance for the overall policy direction for Swedish humanitarian assistance as set out in the Swedish government’s reform agenda, and for Sida’s operating model for humanitarian assistance.

This included important questions regarding:

• geographic presence and focus
• ability to rapidly scale up response
• ability to operate in hard-to-reach areas
• systems for results-based management
• mechanisms for prioritising within and between crises
• policies and capacity on centrality of protection, conflict sensitivity, and locally-led humanitarian action
• contribution to coordination of humanitarian response efforts
• ability to operationalise the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, either in its own operations or in partnership with others.

The 25 organisations that scored the highest were selected to proceed to the next stage of the assessment.

Guidance for assessment of expressions of interest in humanitarian partnership

Partner selection processes take time as applications have to be carefully reviewed, including by external consultants, to identify humanitarian organisations with the requisite operational capacity and expertise to implement a forthcoming global humanitarian strategy.

To avoid interruptions in time-critical humanitarian work, Sida aims to stand ready to select partners once the new humanitarian strategy becomes available, and have agreements in place as quickly as possible to start implementing the new strategy.

The criteria and requirements used to select partners have been designed based on the overall direction for Swedish humanitarian assistance as expressed in the Swedish government’s reform agenda.

The reform agenda re-affirms that the overarching objective of Sweden’s humanitarian assistance is to save lives, alleviate suffering and uphold human dignity, based on a global assessment of needs.

Furthermore, the reform agenda prioritizes effectiveness, efficiency and transparency in humanitarian action, focusing on reaching the most vulnerable people.

Current multi-year humanitarian agreements will run throughout 2025, as per the agreement period. New multi-year partnership agreements are expected to come into force in 2026.

For humanitarian partners under the current strategy that do not become partners from 2026, the activity period of the agreements will come to an end by December 2025.

Every organisation that submitted a complete application has received feedback by email on the outcome of their application, including at which step of the review they were not successful. To learn more about the criteria used to assess the applications, please see the assessment guide here.

Assessment guide

 

 

No, it is not possible to appeal Sida’s decision. However, this selection process only concerns one out of several categories of humanitarian partnerships that Sida envisages to have in its portfolio during the next strategy period.

Sida may launch additional calls or processes for other types of partnerships in due course, to ensure successful implementation of the next humanitarian strategy.

To request public documents related to this call for expression of interest, please contact Sida’s archives by email at arkiv@sida.se

All applications received have been carefully reviewed by a team of 11 staff, including programme officers, thematic experts and controllers. Every application has been reviewed by at least two people. Every organisation applied and was reviewed on an equal footing, including current humanitarian partners to Sida.

The information collected will now be validated and complemented by findings of an external assessment conducted by consultants.

Sida has not yet made any decisions regarding which organisations will become central operational partners within the framework of Sida’s humanitarian assistance. This will only happen once the respective assessments have been completed and a decision to enter into an agreement has been made.

Decisions on which organisations will become partners through this call will therefore be made continuously, as assessments and decisions are finalized. No such decision has yet been made, and assessments are ongoing. Sida does not comment on ongoing assessments of individual organisations.

The process of determining which organisations will proceed to the appraisal phase is still ongoing. It is based on an evaluation of the applicant organisations, a portfolio analysis in relation to the new humanitarian strategy, and an assessment of the risk that a partner may engage in or support anti-democratic activities. This process also includes a review of communications from and about the applicants in open sources.

As noted, the process is still underway. Some organisations have already been informed whether they will proceed to the appraisal stage, while others are still awaiting the outcome. Since the process is ongoing, we are unable to provide further comments at this time and will instead publish our decisions on Sida’s website when the process has been completed.

Through this selection process, Sida aims to establish partnerships with a limited number of humanitarian organisations with broad geographical reach, and has therefore set a minimum eligibility criteria of having active operations delivering humanitarian assistance in at least 15 crises.

In exceptional circumstances, Sida will consider organisations that have a unique and critical humanitarian mandate in fewer than 15 crises.

By ”critical mandate”, Sida means organisations that have a unique mandate provided by the UN General Assembly to provide critical humanitarian assistance and protection in a specific country, region and/or sector. It does not refer to organisations that may play a unique operational role in a given context or set of contexts, due to for example geographical presence in a particular location or specialized sector expertise.