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• Spain's new Strategy for Humanitarian Action 2019-2026 includes the following strategy line: the promotion of the humanitarian principles, of International Humanitarian Law and other legal frameworks aiming at guaranteeing protection and rights of people affected by conflicts and disasters.
• Spain has participated in the Intergovernmental Process to Strengthen Respect for IHL.
• Spain has been active in encouraging the broadening of signatories to the Safe Schools Declaration to protect schools against attacks. Our country will host the III International Conference on Safe Schools Declaration in May 2019.
• Spain also takes part in the dissemination of the knowledge and obligations of UNSC Resolution 2286.
• Also, Spain participates annually in the questionnaire on responsibility to protect and the Group of Friends meetings convened by the United Nations in this regard in NY.
• Spain is a member of the humanitarian task force of the International Syria Support Group dealing with access and humanitarian protection of civilians in that crisis.

Spain actively cooperates with the International Criminal Court (ICC) when it comes to investigations, gathering and conservation of evidence. Moreover, Spain has contributed in 2018 to the Trust Fund for Victims.

Spain's support to the ICC has also been reflected on the visit of the Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister to the ICC on 18 October 2018 or during the Assembly of States Parties on 5-12 December. During this Assembly, Spain announced its intention to join negotiations for the Convention of International Cooperation on the Investigation and Prosecution of Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes.

On January 2019, Spain organized a seminar, along with AEPDIRI (Spanish Association of Professors on International Law and International Relations), on 'The ICC 20 years later: integrity of its statute and universality'.

Regarding attacks against critical infrastructure, the Spanish MFA regularly publishes press releases when attacks take place. Social media action is also developed.

Since 2016, Spain has an elected member (Francisco Rey) in the International Humanitarian Fact Finding Commission, a permanent body of the First Additional Protocol of 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 on the protection of victims of international armed conflicts to conduct investigations into events that constitute a serious breach of international humanitarian law.

Also, the Spanish professor Concepción Escobar is currently a member of the International Law Commission, which shows the prestige of the Spanish school of international law and Spain's firm commitment to promoting international law and the work of the Commission.

• Spain supported the two processes of negotiation led by the ICRC on strengthening the respect for International Humanitarian Law and protecting the persons deprived of their liberty.
• In recent years, humanitarian issues and the respect of International Humanitarian Law have become one of Spain's foreign policy priorities.
• Spain has given great political support to the International Commission against the Death Penalty. Furthermore, Spain made a voluntary contribution in 2018 to this institution.
• Spain champions LGTBI+ rigths at the global level, being part of the UN LGTBI core group of countries. The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) is increasingly integrating LGTBI concerns in its humanitarian programming and displacement interventions.
• As a demonstration of Spain's commitment to humanitarian affairs, in 2018 Spain was visited by the Director of OCHA, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, and the WFP's Executive Director. Spain is also a member of the Donor Support Group of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), having returned to the group in October 2017 after a five-year absence.

• Spain contributed to improve the joint approach to mixed flows and participated in the debates of both Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees taking into account their respective mandates, with a special focus on the response to the most vulnerable people.
• Spain, together with Bangladesh, is leading consultations to determine the modalities and organizational aspects of the International Migration Review Forum, established in the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which will take place every four years, beginning in 2020.
• In 2018, Spain's Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) carried out a specific training seminar for its staff on migration and international cooperation.
• In December 2018, Spain presented in the humanitarian week of New York a report with UNHCR and the University of Deusto, funded by AECID, on LGTBI displacement and protection needs in Central America.
• Spain has its first public-private partnership of the Spanish humanitarian aid in Ethiopia, called Alianza SHIRE. This project has achieved that more than 8,000 Eritreans from the Ari Harus refugee camp in the Tigray region had access to energy and public services by connecting them to the electricity grid, with an exponential impact in terms of environment, protection, livelihoods and field management. During 2018, Spain has been working on the enlargement of this project to other three camps.

Empowerment of women and girls

Spain's new Strategy for Humanitarian Action 2019-2026 fosters gender equality and empowerment of women and girls, including several priority actions and results on gender to be implemented in the next 8 years.

Spain will prioritize coordination on gender as a key priority during its upcoming chairmanship of OCHA's donor support group (ODSG). Spain consider that ODSG members could help OCHA’s efforts on: integrating gender analysis and disaggregated data in the whole Humanitarian Cycle; systematically mainstreaming gender in clusters; ensuring that Humanitarian Coordinators, Humanitarian Country Teams, and sectorial experts have a solid understanding of gender issues; reinforcing specific surge capacities such as GenCap, etc.

On humanitarian diplomacy, Spain contributed to drafting positioning papers and strategies in humanitarian fora such as UNHCR’s Revised Commitments to Women and Girls (2017-2021), UNICEF Gender Action Plan 2018-2021, humanitarian aspects of the EU GAP or WFP revised gender policy. Recently, Spain has fostered the inclusion of a gender panel in the discussions during the III International Conference on Safe Schools to be held in Spain in May.

In 2018, Spain appointed its first Ambassador at Large for Gender Equality.  

Gender equality programming

Spain prioritizes the funding of projects with a Gender and Age Marker (either ECHO or IASC methodologies) and, in this sense, the marker is included in our annual humanitarian call for Spanish humanitarian NGOs. In 2018, 28% of humanitarian actions were gender/age integrated according to these methodologies.

Sexual and reproductive health

Spain has contributed with 2.3 million EUR to the ICRC special appeal on sexual violence since 2015.

In September 2017, Spain adhered to the Call to Action Initiative, and committed to the implementation of its Road Map and to report annually on our progress and to support activities to this initiative. The period for achievement of our commitments was set for 2018–2020.

Other

Spain has proactively led at the UN level the women, peace and security (WPS) agenda (including resolution 2242 and the launching of the WPS network).

Spain commits to monitor the II National Action Plan (NAP) on women, peace and security by elaborating a monitoring report, that will include the monitoring of actions and indicators by different Ministries and units, as well as civil society.

Spain contributed in 2018 to the new Women Humanitarian Peace Fund (WHPF), to UN Women and the WPS Focal Points Network secretariat and will increase its percentage of humanitarian aid given to women, peace and security.

Spain has held in 2018 training programs on sexual and gender-based violence as well as on gender mainstreaming in the health sector for the staff of the Spanish Emergency Medical Team.

Strengthening national/local leadership and systems

• The new Spanish Humanitarian Strategy (2019-2026) includes among its objectives "to allocate an increasing percentage of aid to local actors and to ensure the leadership of national actors in the response, promoting the transfer of skills and resources to the local population and organizations”.
• Spain has promoted that local NGOs have access to Humanitarian Country Teams in order to improve local people's voice at strategic level (in 2018, this was done, for example, in Niger).
• The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) appointed a focal point for aid localization in 2018 that drafted an internal position paper in order to reflect on the main challenges, objectives and lines of work in this field. Complications in terms of reporting by local actors (who have difficulties in understanding the Spanish legislation and praxis) limit the possibilities of increasing direct localization on a large scale.
• In 2018 AECID allocated at least 10.6 % of its total humanitarian funding to local actors, slightly up from 10.3% in 2017.
• The AECID position paper points out that the easiest way to increase localized financing at present is through Country-based Pooled Funds (CBPF) and national societies of the Red Cross. In contexts where AECID's specialized personnel is available, local counterparts are identified and projects are underway (e.g. in Sahrawi refugee camps, Ethiopia or Colombia).

Building community resilience

In 2018, The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) funded several of OCHA's pooled funds which are partially implemented by local actors in Palestine, Yemen, Syria or Nigeria.

In 2019, we will keep working with local organizations. However, we will prioritize places where the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) is present on the ground so that Spain can keep close contact with the local organization and help with reporting and complying with Spanish legislation and praxis.

Cash-based programming

• An internal working group on cash-based transfers (CBT) composed by members of both the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) Humanitarian Office and NGOs Department has been created to promote the adaptation of regulation, applications, guidelines and reporting handbooks.
• The humanitarian call for proposals for NGOs encourages the use of CBT since 2017.
• Spain has worked in 2018 along with the Cash Learning Project (CaLP) on the translation of a new glossary of CBT terminology into Spanish. Spain will collaborate with CaLP in 2019 in the translation into Spanish of "no essential terms".
• AECID organized in 2018 a training session on cash transfer for the main departments involved in CBT: the Humanitarian Office and the NGO Department. AECID has also promoted the debate on the use of CBT between the State and regional governments.
• AECID has published in March 2019 the report of a consultation on the use of cash and vouchers by Spanish humanitarian NGO supported by the Spanish Cooperation.
• See further information on cash under the "other" category.

Other

• The Master Plan for the Spanish Cooperation 2018-2021 includes cash assistance as part of the  Grand Bargain principles that must inspire our humanitarian response.
• The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) integrated cash-based transfers (CBT) assistance as a priority in the new Humanitarian Strategy (2019-2026) and would also like to increase the use of cash and voucher assistance in its new humanitarian context strategies for 2020-2021.
• Our new humanitarian strategy has set the objective of increasing the use of cash and vouchers (C&V), reaching 15% of total humanitarian ODA in 2022 and 18% in 2026.
• In 2018, at least 7.11% of AECID's humanitarian funding was allocated to C&V assistance. In accordance with the latest GB indicators, Spain has not included operational and overhead costs in the percentage, which explains the slight decrease in relation to last year’s (a minimum of 9.25 % of AECID's humanitarian funding in 2017).
• AECID has drafted an internal position paper on CBT assistance in order to reflect on the main challenges, objectives and lines of work that Spanish aid has in these fields. The Humanitarian Action Office plans to continue training its staff to strengthen its capacity in this modality. An online course on C&V assistance for the Spanish Cooperation will be organized.

Joined-up humanitarian-development analysis and planning towards collective outcomes

The Master Plan for the Spanish Cooperation 2018-21 includes resilience as an overall and cross-cutting objective. Spain's new Humanitarian Strategy sets noteworthy commitments on this area: promoting common analyses between humanitarian and development actors in fragile settings, drafting common response plans for chronic crises, fostering multiyear funding for protracted long-term crises or systematically including exit strategies in humanitarian projects.

An internal position paper on the humanitarian-development nexus was finalized by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), which will be a cornerstone for our work on the area from a practical point of view. AECID is currently planning to implement the recommendations of this position paper on a pilot basis in several countries.

AECID has also drafted a reflection paper on humanitarian aid and the SDGs to better comprehend linkages between these two agendas. In its 2019 programming cycle, AECID includes information on the resilience impact of all interventions as a tool to improve the quality of analysis in future exercises.

The “Humanitarian call for proposals for NGOs in 2019” emphasizes the need to link humanitarian aid and development, as a way of establishing synergies between different instruments and modalities.

Spain has a nexus focal point within the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) to coordinate humanitarian-development engagement, determine the main nexus areas, and provide policy and operational guidance for this objective.

Spain has also taken a positive step by including humanitarian officers in the cooperation offices in the field. This has facilitated the interaction with development colleagues.

Investing in disaster risk reduction

The Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) has gradually increased its support on disaster risk reduction (DRR) in Latin America, in coordination with the development agenda. In 2019, Spain will finance a study by UNISDR to monitor efforts in the region to implement the Sendai Agreement commitments.