CHS Certification gets most of the attention. But for many organisations — particularly those at an earlier stage of their accountability journey, or those operating at significant scale — CHS Independent Verification offers a rigorous and valuable alternative.
The Difference Between Verification and Certification
Both Certification and Independent Verification involve thorough external audits conducted by HQAI against the Core Humanitarian Standard. Both result in published audit reports. Both include field visits and community interviews.
The key difference is the outcome. CHS Certification is a binary determination: an organisation either meets the required standard across all nine CHS commitments, or it does not. CHS Independent Verification does not work this way. Instead, it asks a different question: is this organisation making demonstrable, measurable, continuous progress toward the CHS over a three-year period?
A Three-Year Progressive Cycle
Year one of the verification cycle focuses on baseline assessment. HQAI auditors establish where an organisation currently stands against each of the nine CHS commitments, identifying areas of good practice and gaps requiring attention. The organisation receives a detailed report and, in dialogue with HQAI, agrees on priority areas for improvement.
Year two is a progress audit — specifically focused on whether the improvements committed to in year one are being implemented. This is not a check of whether new policies have been written. It is a check of whether practice has changed.
Year three consolidates the cycle. HQAI assesses progress across the full three-year arc, evaluates whether the organisation has embedded accountability systems in a way that will sustain beyond the audit relationship, and issues a final verification statement.
Who Independent Verification Is For
Independent Verification works best for organisations that are serious about accountability improvement but recognise that achieving certification-level compliance requires time and investment. It is particularly appropriate for large or federated organisations where consistency across country programmes is a challenge; for organisations new to external quality auditing; or for organisations that have completed a benchmarking exercise and want to continue the journey with external support.
It is important to note that Independent Verification is not a "lite" version of the CHS. The audit methodology is equally rigorous. The commitment expected from the organisation — to improve, to be transparent about gaps, to invest in systems change — is equally demanding.
The Published Record
Like all HQAI services, Independent Verification results in published reports. Every year of the cycle, a report documenting progress and remaining gaps is published on hqai.org. This transparency is non-negotiable — and it is one of the most powerful aspects of the process.