Each year, humanitarian aid organizations save and protect tens of millions of people caught up in crises across the world.
Their interventions are more timely, relevant and effective than ever. But humanitarian action is not always as fast as it should be, and needs are unevenly met. Even as record sums are raised, growing levels of vulnerability worldwide have resulted in a stubborn and harmful gap between need and response. Historically, donors have financed a little more than half of what the United Nations asks for each year. So, what do we need to do better?
To boost the percentage of coverage, humanitarian agencies need to break out of traditional funding models that are no longer sufficient for the complex and protracted crises we face. Humanitarian organizations – and their backers – will need to embrace one of the most important drivers of success: the ability to adapt and innovate their way out of problems.
“I propose three approaches to closing the funding gap and revamping humanitarian financing: first, we need to shift from responding only when a crisis is visibly costing lives and suffering, to a default position of anticipatory prevention, as well as early action. Second, we must create new, sustainable revenue streams by expanding our collaboration with the private sector. And third, we must promote development that can build resilience and shrink need, while also improving the targeting, efficiency and coordination of humanitarian responses so that we maximize the value of every dollar,” said Mark Lowcock, Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
1. Anticipatory and contingency financing
Many disasters and emergencies are predictable, with early warning signals mounting over many months. The drought-prone and chronically food-insecure Sahel and Horn of Africa regions are two examples. In these scenarios, we need to boost both early action and response through predictable funding.
2. Market-based funding streams
The humanitarian system is still overly reliant on a traditional, donor-driven funding model. Humanitarian groups are starting to collaborate with the private sector on investment solutions to take revenue to scale and to pioneer alternative funding models and paradigms, but we have a lot to learn.
Greater engagement with the private sector models will mean humanitarians improving our data collection and analytics, and boosting our financial analysis. Just as important to pursue alongside these innovations to humanitarian financing is finding better ways to reduce the number of people who need assistance in the first place.
3. Shrinking needs and improved effectiveness
Shrinking vulnerability and need is central to the UN secretary-general’s system-wide emphasis on prevention. Doing so requires us to work in a more joined-up way with development organizations to ensure their efforts include even the most marginalized, crisis-affected people in their development investments and plans.
At the same time, the humanitarian system must show that it can maximize the value of every single dollar invested. We must ensure that our systems and processes are flexible, efficient, transparent and well coordinated.
The response plans of today need to be complemented by the forward-looking approaches outlined above to escape chronic underfunding. These approaches, if undertaken, connected and scaled up, can go a long way to building a more sustainable and nimble financial model that is fit for the future of humanitarianism.
Original source: World Economic Forum
Published on 02 January 2019
