OCHA Organization Types: Controlled Vocabulary with ReliefWeb Definitions

OCHA Digital Services maintains this controlled vocabulary of humanitarian organization types, updated as of March 2026. The data provides standardized categories and definitions sourced from ReliefWeb and the Grand Bargain framework. It is distributed in CSV and Google Sheet formats to support humanitarian data interoperability.

Use Cases

• Standardizing organization type labels in humanitarian information systems using ReliefWeb definitions
• Aligning internal datasets with the Grand Bargain reporting standards
• Providing human-readable definitions for organization categories in data portals

Strengths

• Uses official ReliefWeb and Grand Bargain definitions
• Maintained by OCHA Digital Services for global humanitarian standards
• Available in machine-readable CSV format

Limitations

• Contains only classification categories, not a directory of specific organizations
• Small scope focused strictly on taxonomy rather than operational data

Provenance

Source

OCHA Digital Services

Collection Method

Expert curation

Freshness

Last updated March 2026 according to source metadata.

Geography

Global