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Humanitarian assistance is a subset of aid. It is designed to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain and protect human dignity in the aftermath of emergencies. Improving the quality of humanitarian response for people affected by crisis means not only increasing the size of the resources – but also getting better value from those resources. In 2007, more than a quarter of the highest priority humanitarian needs as identified by the UN through the consolidated appeal process (CAP) were still going unmet. |
Analysis of aid flows
Download Global Humanitarian Assistance 2007/2008 (published March 2008) in full
Read more about Development Initiatives' work on global humanitarian assistance: globalhumanitarianassistance.org
| How much humanitarian assistance is there? |
The latest Global Humanitarian Assistance report puts the official humanitarian expenditure of the 23 members of the OECD DAC at US$9.2 billion in 2006.
But what about other government humanitarian assistance expenditure? And what about voluntary contributions to NGOs, UN agencies and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement?
| What is being done about adequacy and equity? |
Initiatives and reforms of international funding mechanisms have been near the top of the humanitarian community's agenda for the last few years. Efforts include a focus on:
- providing flexible and timely funding
- allocating funding in proportion to needs
- reducing earmarking.
Funding and reform
The CERF represented 3% of total humanitarian assistance in 2006
Read our OCHA emergency response fund (ERF) review, Jan 2007
| Good Humanitarian Donorship |
Many donors are monitoring their humanitarian funding progress against a set of collective indicators in support of the Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD) initiative.
How soon is money committed to sudden onset disasters and ongoing crises? What proportion of funds are earmarked at the country level or above? Is funding allocated on the basis of needs assessments? How equitable is funding across emergencies?
These indicators, drawn up by Development Initiatives in 2005, are designed to measure and improve the flexibility and timeliness of humanitarian funding in support of the broader aid effectiveness agenda.
Download the Development Initiatives GHD indicators report for 2006 (a PDF extract from Global Humanitarian Assistance 2006).
The GHD indicators report for 2007/2008 will be published in advance of the next GHD meeting in July 2008.
Monitoring progress
Read GHD indicators report 2006 (265k)
