Welcome to the Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (LEGS) website
The Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (LEGS) have been developed as a set of international guidelines and standards for the design, implementation and assessment of livestock interventions to assist people affected by humanitarian crises.
The LEGS process...
... grew out of recognition that livestock are a crucial livelihoods asset for people throughout the world, and livestock interventions are often a feature of relief responses. Yet to date, there are no widely-available guidelines to assist donors, programme managers or technical experts in the design or implementation of livestock interventions in disasters
... recognises that climatic trends are causing more frequent and varied humanitarian crises, particularly affecting communities who rely heavily on livestock
.... mirrors the process for developing the Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response - the Sphere Project. The process is based on multi-agency contributions, broad reviews and collation of practitioner experience
... has resulted in an independent publication available as hard copy and CD-ROM. Soft copies are also available on this website. LEGS will also run a series of awareness-raising and training events to promote the use and future revision of the standards and guidelines – see LEGS Training page.
... in line with Sphere, LEGS aims to be a dynamic process and will be reviewed and updated every four years; LEGS emphasises the need for better impact assessment of interventions with a view to feeding new lessons learned into the revision process
Read the ODI Humanitarian Practice Network Paper on LEGS: Livelihoods, livestock and humanitarian response: the Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards by Cathy Watson and Andy Catley here.
