About us

The vision of the GNC is to safeguard and improve the nutritional status of emergency affected populations by ensuring an appropriate response that is predictable, timely and effective and at scale. The GNC is first and foremost a coordination mechanism. The GNC’s core purpose is to enable country coordination mechanisms to achieve timely, quality, and appropriate nutrition response to emergencies. The GNC supports country coordination in strategic decision-making, planning and strategy development, capacity building on coordination and IM/KM, advocacy, monitoring and reporting, and contingency planning/preparedness.

Clusters are groups of humanitarian organizations, both UN and non-UN, in each of the main sectors of humanitarian action, e.g. nutrition. They are designated by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) and have clear responsibilities for coordination. The aim of the cluster approach is to strengthen system-wide preparedness and technical capacity to respond to humanitarian emergencies, and provide clear leadership and accountability in the main areas of humanitarian response. At country level, it aims to strengthen partnerships, and the predictability and accountability of international humanitarian action, by improving prioritization and clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of humanitarian organizations.
 

The Global Nutrition Cluster Coordination Team (GNC-CT) provides leadership and stewardship for coordination and functions as the secretariat and leadership for the Global Nutrition Cluster. The GNC-CT is staffed by UNICEF and housed within UNICEF Geneva.
The GNC-CT represents the GNC partners in global fora and provides operational support to country nutrition clusters while linking stakeholders and ensuring effective communications.

GNC Partners  are entities (organizations, groups or individuals) committed to respecting fundamental humanitarian principles, working in Nutrition in Emergencies, who are willing to actively help the GNC fulfill its role and contribute to the GNC work plan. Observers are organisations that are interested in the GNC work, but are not actively contributing to the GNC work plan.  At global level, the GNC has 46 partners and observers representing International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs), research and development groups, academic institutions, UN agencies, donors and individuals. At a country level, in addition to these partners, local authorities, national NGOs and community based organisations are an integral part of each Nutrition Cluster.

GNC Strategic Advisory Group (SAG) provides strategic support to the GNC-CT to guide direction of GNC affairs. The SAG is composed of representatives from GNC partners: three NGO partners, four UN agencies (UNICEF, WFP and UNHCR are standing members), two donor representatives and one Nutrition Cluster Coordinator.

The Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) are one option for sourcing surge/temporary staff for Clusters and AoRs. The RRT ensures that high level deployable surge staff are secured to ensure that the cluster functions can be supported or established in the event of a sudden onset crisis or if an existing crisis escalates dramatically. Each UNICEF led or co-led Cluster and AoR has an RRT, made up of high quality, rapidly deployable cluster coordinators and information management specialists. This enables timely and coordinated response, which then ensures improved emergency interventions. The RRT members are deployed to UNICEF through Standby Arrangements or hired directly by UNICEF, are hosted by UNICEF at the country level and work with all partners in the cluster. The Global Nutrition Cluster’s Rapid Response Team (RRT) is a partnership between the Global Nutrition Cluster (GNC) and INGO partners. The purpose of creating the RRT is to increase the capacity of the GNC to support cluster coordination and information management functions through rapidly deployable Nutrition Cluster Coordinators’ (NCC) and Information Management Officers’ (IMO) technical capacity in humanitarian situations. For more information please read the RRT flyer.

The Global Technical Assistance Mechanism for Nutrition is a common global approach endorsed by over 40 Global Nutrition Cluster partners to provide systematic, predictable, timely and coordinated nutrition technical support to countries in order to meet the nutrition rights and needs of people affected by emergencies. The Global Technical Assistance Mechanism for Nutrition (GTAM) is co-led by UNICEF as the Cluster Lead Agency & World Vision.