Humanitarian access refers to humanitarian actors’ ability to reach people affected by crisis, as well as, the affected population’s ability to access humanitarian assistance and services.

Rapid and unimpeded access is a fundamental prerequisite for effective humanitarian action. Access is critical to establish operations, assess needs, monitor assistance, move goods and personnel where needed, and enable affected people to benefit from assistance and access basic services. Facilitating and coordinating efforts to establish and maintain access is central to the mandates of the Emergency Relief Coordinator1 (ERC), Humanitarian Coordinators2 (HCs) and therefore OCHA.