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"OCHA" redirects there. See Ocha for other possible meanings.

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is a United Nations body formed in December 1991 by General Assembly Resolution 46/182. The resolution was designed to strengthen the UN's response to complex emergencies and natural disasters by creating the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), and replacing the Office of the United Nations Disaster Relief Coordinator, which had been formed in 1972. The OCHA was therefore the result of a 1998 reorganisation of the DHA and was designed to be the UN focal point on major disasters. Its mandate was also expanded to include the coordination of humanitarian response, policy development and humanitarian advocacy.

OCHA is headed by the Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, currently John Holmes.

OCHA has some 1,064 staff^[1], distributed across the world, with some support staff in New York City and Geneva. Major OCHA country offices are located in Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Colombia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, the Palestinian territories, and Sudan (including a sub-office in Southern Sudan's capital Juba). Regional offices are located in Panama City, Dakar, Nairobi, Dubai, and Bangkok.

OCHA has built up a range of services in the execution of its mandate. Some of the larger ones are:

• IRIN, Integrated Regional Information Networks, an humanitarian news and analysis service^[2] (1995)

• ReliefWeb time-critical humanitarian information on Complex Emergencies and Natural Disasters (1996)
• Central Emergency Response Fund (2006)
• Humanitarian Information Centers, an emergency-specific, data exchange platform^[2], supported by the Field Information Support Unit
• Humanitarian Reform, supporting cluster information management (2007)
• Who does What Where Database and Contact Management Directory, To ensure that appropriate and timely humanitarian response is delivered during a disaster or emergency situation, information must be managed efficiently. The key information that are important to assess and ensure that humanitarian needs are met in any emergency/disaster are, to know which organizations(Who) are carrying out what activities (What) in which locations (Where) which is also universally referred to as the 3W (Who does What Where). The Who does What Where database (3W) is one product that is universally agreed to be the most important priority for any co-ordination activity. The integrated Contact Management Directory, complements the 3W database, making it easy for the user to navigate through the application.(2006)
• SAHIMS The Southern African Human-development Information Management Network for Coordinated Humanitarian & Development Action (2003)
• Geonetwork A large database of map information using eponymous GeoNetwork opensource software.

• The OCHA official web site
• UN/OCHA Geonetwork
• ReliefWeb
• Field Information Services Unit
• SAHIMS
• Humanitarian Reform
• Who does What Where Database and Contact Management Directory

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