Challenging Operating Environments

A third of Global Fund investments is targeted to countries or regions that experience infectious disease outbreaks, armed conflicts or civil unrest, natural disasters and climate change-related crises, and/or mass displacement. The Global Fund supports countries in these situations to adapt grant design and implementation through its policy for Challenging Operating Environments (COEs), according to country context. More information can be found in the Operational Policy Note on COE [ download in English ]. Further information and recommendations for countries subject to this policy can be found below.

Applying for Funding

When applying for funding, Country Dialogue should extend participation beyond traditional stakeholders to encompass a wider range of actors who can help assess the context, risks, and challenges. Depending on the country’s specific challenges, engaging with coordination mechanisms such as health, logistics, or protection clusters, as well as organizations with expertise in humanitarian response, forced displacement, or natural or climate-related disasters may be necessary. Such actors may provide insights into risk or gap analysis, and support planning needs or funding requests.

Grant-making

Continued Country Dialogue as per the previous stage of the cycle should be maintained during the grant-making stage. Depending on the unique set of challenges presented, stakeholders involved may need to design innovative, context-specific mechanisms to deliver services to key and vulnerable populations in the most remote and inaccessible areas. Stakeholders may also benefit from contingency planning, something which can be discussed and initiated during this phase of the process. A contingency plan should be based on a risk analysis. It should identify potential adaptations to the program design as early as possible and tailor the approach to the country context. Suitable assurance mechanisms should also be identified and tailored at this stage. Discussions should start as early as possible during the grant-making process to identify potential adaptations to the program design and tailor the approach to the context.

Grant Implementation

During the grant implementation phase, regular and continued context monitoring must be undertaken to identify any need for adaptation. Continued dialogue with key stakeholders in the country is needed to ensure not only timely decision-making and the optimization of resources, but also as a means of leveraging each other’s capacities to make outreach more effective and efficient.

In addition, countries can:

• Request for flexibility when it is deemed imperative to implement the differentiated approach and based on a clear rationale and analysis of the root causes, problem statement, risks, value at risk, and trade-offs. Note that current policies already allow for flexibility. However, if additional flexibility is required, implementers may discuss its feasibility with the relevant Global Fund Country Team.
• Assess whether their approach could benefit from the Results-based Contracting (RBC) modality. For example, contracting humanitarian organizations as service providers to deliver commodities in hard-to-reach areas within a specific timeframe may be considered.

The Global Fund allows for emergency reprogramming, according to the process outlined in the Operational Policy Note on Revise Grants [ download in English ].

For more information on COE classification criteria and the specific approaches for each stage of the grant life cycle, please refer to the Operational Policy Note on COE.