About the UN OCHA Civil-Military Coordination Service

The OCHA Civil Military Coordination Service (CMCS) is the designated focal point in the UN system for humanitarian civil-military coordination (UN-CMCoord). It supports relevant field and headquarter-level activities through the development of institutional strategies to enhance the capacity and preparedness of national and international partners and in the process, improve principled humanitarian action. As custodian of UN-CMCoord related guidelines and policy, CMCS helps humanitarian actors develop context-specific guidelines tailored to a particular situation.

Four key CMCS activities are: provide support to the field, guide development of civil-military coordination policy, and capacity building to ensure expertise in the field, and outreach and advocacy. CMCS provides support the field both remotely, as well as, at the request of OCHA Regional and Country Offices in-person CMCS expertise to assist in a response to humanitarian and disaster relief assistance. CMCS expertise is provided by maintaining and promoting UN-CMCoord handbooks, training courses, workshops, conferences, simulation exercises, in addition to developing needs-based policy and guidance.  CMCS activities also include numerous speaking engagements and training opportunities with academic, governmental and intergovernmental institutions, and militaries.

The training programme aims to equip humanitarian and military actors with the skills and knowledge necessary to communicate and, where appropriate, effectively interact and coordinate with each other. In addition, CMCS prepares and deploys personnel to the field to act as dedicated UN-CMCoord experts.