I know these blog posts are meant to create questions as much as answers. Here’s mine: does the humanitarian funding that we currently have go to the right place? There are significant barriers to national and regional actors accessing humanitarian finance. At the moment I couldn’t answer the question of whether the system prioritises the best placed actors to respond. Complex due diligence processes and partner capacity assessments can be an important part of accountability to the taxpayer (and are often borne of a low risk appetite from donors), but can come at the cost of ensuring the integration of local, national, in response funding.

And apart from that – spot on, Carsten. I can’t remember arguing that assistance after a crisis is more effective than risk reduction before it. When will this system-wide consensus translate into financial recognition?

We don’t have the answers, but we think it’s worth putting the questions out.
Sandrine

1) Does Humanitarian Relief activities need more money?
2) or is the money being used wisely, and
3) can things be more efficient in the way that it is being delivered?

The second set questions would be around the words of Kristina Georgieva “We feel it is always easier to raise money for a crisis that is on the front page, that is on the 6 o’clock news, but it is difficult to raise money for those that are unseen, that are invisibly suffering.”

1) People don’t care if it’s not on the 6 O clock news?
2) or there is a donor fatigue?
3) organizations are bad in communicating their needs and showing impact?

Maybe it’s time to think about innovative ways of funding the needs associated with Humanitarian Assistance…now it’s becoming fashionable to think that loans or military spending can count as ODA …maybe countries will find a new models to lend for Humanitarian Assistance and meet their ODA commitment that way.

>>>But given the lack of political will to tackle causes I also think you need a much larger amount to alleviate consequences – 50 billion not 25 for starters.>>>

No arguments for an increased humanitarian spend but it is precisely because there is little political will, I would invest more funds on programmes addressing the causes and the advocacy to change that political will or lack thereof.

>>> And in the absence of a more generous world there’s a need for humanitarian spending to be a larger % of overall development aid. >>>

If you run with the assumption that the world is not generous and is not likely to get more, my thinking dictates that we should be careful of how much we spend on humanitarian aid and which crises do we spend on. To be fair, the world is a bit tired of crises that do not go away at all. I do not speak of all crises, just a few that are cyclical enough to merit being called “this is normal” rather than calling it an abnormal crisis. Let us look at the repeated food crises in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel. As I argue here, https://makarandimpressions.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/are-development-actors-inadvertently-supporting-unviable-livelihoods/, it is perhaps humanitarian aid that is exacerbating issues in some cases.

As it were, funds available for development of the more stable areas is reducing by the day. This merely results in a ridiculous situation where the poor in stable areas are constantly denied support because the poor in unstable areas absorb it all. I remember a situation in Afghanistan in 2008-10 when the provinces affected by Taliban insurgency (Helmund, Kandahar etc) attracted many times the funds of the more stable (Badakshan, Kunduz etc) provinces leading the Governors in the stable provinces to wonder if they would not be better off with some insurgency in their midst.

Also when funds available are reducing, one may want to think of where they are likely to make the most lasting impact on a larger number of people. Not always a pleasant choice to make but alas, one that most development actors make all the time anyway. Would you therefore spend US $ 100,000 digging a borewell in South Sudan for 5000 households knowing that there was no way anyone was going to be able to maintain it in a warlike situation or use that $100,000 to dig 5 borewells in Tanzania where many more households would benefit for longer?

It is not my case that humanitarian programming has no value. Saving lives is always valuable but I would not like it to come at the expense of making a long term, sustainable impact across generations somewhere else.

So yes we need to deal with causes and consequences. But given the lack of political will to tackle causes I also think you need a much larger amount to alleviate consequences – 50 billion not 25 for starters. And in the absence of a more generous world there’s a need for humanitarian spending to be a larger % of overall development aid.