GovernanceGovernance arrangements
The Special Trust Fund for Afghanistan has a two-tier decision-making and coordination structures through the Advisory Board and Steering Committee.
The governance structure of the Fund is led by the Steering Committee (SC), which will be chaired by the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General/UN Resident Coordinator/Humanitarian Coordinator and co-chaired by a donor representative and will have Representatives of contributing donors, all Participating UN Organizations, the Fund Secretariat, and the Administrative Agent. To strengthen coherence and ensure strategic cooperation, the Head of the Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund Secretariat will be invited as an observer to the SC meetings. The Steering Committee is responsible for providing oversight and exercising overall accountability of the Fund, approving funding priorities, reviewing and approving funding for joint UN programmes, leading the resource mobilization efforts, instructing the Administrative Agent to disburse the resources to the Participating UN Organization, reviewing the Fund status and its overall progress, reviewing and approving the periodic progress reports, commissioning reviews and "lessons learned" reports on the performance of the Fund; and approving amendments to the Terms of Reference of the Fund, as required after due consultation with stakeholders.
The Technical Coordination Working Group (TCWG) will be composed of representatives of UN agencies and donors. It will be tasked to prepare and regularly review/update recommendations for the Fund’s ‘Allocation Strategy’, including geographic and thematic prioritization criteria, for the consideration of, and final decision by, the Steering Committee. The TCWG will, in this process, ensure that prioritization criteria are well informed by actual needs reported from the field, as well as with relevant Humanitarian coordination mechanisms (under the Humanitarian Response Plan), with a view to leverage their needs assessments and ensure complementarities in the prioritization exercise. It will also provide technical guidance and high-level oversight to ongoing projects and make recommendations to ensure synergies and efficiencies are capitalized across thematic windows and/or regions as much as possible – with a view to minimizing potential duplications and facilitating/promoting collaboration, complementarities, and economies of scale.
The Trust Fund Management Unit (TFMU) is the Fund Secretariat and is the entity responsible for the operational functioning of the Fund and provides technical and management support to the SC. The Secretariat, hosted within UNDP, is responsible for executing and coordinating all management functions of the Fund, planning and preparing meetings of the Steering Committee, facilitating the work of the technical coordination working group, submitting Fund Transfer Requests to the Administrative Agent, facilitating collaboration and communication between Participating Organizations, facilitating systematic cooperation with the Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund, elaborating on Operations Manual, monitoring, evaluating, and controlling operational risks and programme implementation, consolidating the narrative of annual and final reports and presenting them to the Steering Committee and the Administrative Agent, drafting the resource mobilization strategy, managing and supporting communication, public information, and visibility, liaising with the Administrative Agent on Fund administration issues, and bringing together technical expertise from the participating UN organisations.
The Secretariat can also use informal mechanisms to interact with donors at the technical level to prepare for the Steering Committee meetings. The costs of the Secretariat are charged to the Fund as direct costs. The budget for the Secretariat is submitted to the Steering Committee on an annual basis and the Secretariat staffing structure is adjusted by the Steering Committee as per needs and budget availability.
Resources will be allocated to Participating UN Organizations (PUNO) that have signed the Memorandum of Understanding with the Administrative Agent, based on eight regional joint UN programmes and allocation-specific work plans submitted by a designated lead/convening agency on behalf of PUNOs. While each PUNO will assume full programmatic and financial accountability for the funds disbursed to it by the Administrative Agent, the designated lead agency will be responsible for coordination of interventions at regional level between PUNOs. Allocated funds will be administered by each PUNO in accordance with its own regulations, rules, directives and procedures. Indirect costs of the PUNO recovered through programme support costs will be harmonized at 7%. Implementing Partners canreceive funding from the Fund through the PUNOs.
The Fund is administered by the UNDP Multi-Partner Trust Fund Office (MPTF Office), acting as the Administrative Agent. The Administrative Agent is entitled to allocate an administrative fee of one percent (1%) of the amount contributed by each donor, to meet the costs of performing the Administrative Agent function. The agent is responsible for supporting the design of the Fund, concluding the Memorandum of Understanding with relevant stakeholders, receiving contributions from donors; transferring the funds to Participating UN Organizations upon instructions from the Steering Committee, providing an annual consolidated report and a final consolidated report to the donors, disbursing the funds for any additional costs of the tasks that the Steering Committee may decide to allocate, and ensuring that the Steering Committee and Secretariat are duly informed of the applicable UN(DG) policies and procedures.
> $55M 
$55M - $25M
$25M - $5M
< $5M
