The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is one of the world's leading displacement organisations, operating in over 35 countries with a focus on legal assistance, education, shelter, and food security. In 2019, NRC entered HQAI's Independent Verification cycle. In 2023, they achieved full CHS Certification. This is the story of that journey.
Why Verification First?
NRC's decision to begin with Independent Verification — rather than attempting Certification from the outset — was deliberate. At the scale NRC operates (annual turnover exceeding €800 million, 15,000+ staff globally), the certification requirements represent a significant organisational challenge. Verification allowed NRC to establish a baseline, identify gaps without a pass/fail outcome, and invest in systemic improvements over three years.
"We knew we had strong programmes," said NRC's Director of Quality and Accountability. "What we weren't sure of was whether our systems were consistent enough across contexts to meet the certification bar. Verification gave us honest external data on that question."
What the Verification Process Found
The 2019 HQAI verification report identified NRC's strengths clearly: robust humanitarian expertise, strong safety and security systems, and well-developed human resources management. It also identified priority areas for improvement — most significantly, the consistency of community feedback mechanisms across country programmes and the organisational integration of MEAL data into strategic decision-making.
These findings were published in full on hqai.org. NRC used the public report as an internal improvement agenda, assigning ownership of each recommendation to a specific team and tracking progress against a two-year action plan.
The Improvement Phase
Between 2019 and 2022, NRC invested significantly in accountability infrastructure. A global AAP framework was developed and rolled out to all country programmes. The organisation introduced mandatory community feedback analysis in quarterly programme reviews. A new digital data collection tool was deployed to enable real-time tracking of feedback trends across contexts.
Annual HQAI check-in audits documented progress at each stage — not just against the original recommendations, but against evidence of actual practice change in country programmes.
The Certification Result
The 2023 certification audit confirmed what the improvement data suggested: NRC had achieved a high degree of compliance with all nine CHS commitments. The certification report noted particular progress on Commitments 4 (accountability to affected populations) and 6 (coordination and complementarity) — two of the areas identified as priorities in 2019.
NRC's certification is a demonstration of what systematic, long-term investment in accountability can deliver. It is also a proof point for the value of the verification pathway — not as a softer alternative to certification, but as a structured route to achieving it.