Humanitarian Financing

The question of how to better finance humanitarian operations – including how to finance some of emerging good practices and new ways of working in humanitarian crises – remains a critical topic for OECD member states. Many humanitarian crises remain underfunded, unfunded, forgotten. Donors and operational agencies are forced to make hard decisions about which life-saving operations to prioritise, and which to let go Lives, leaving livelihoods, and the future prospects of whole societies in limbo.

In May 2016, the World Humanitarian Summit reflected on the shifting nature of crises and the need for new delivery mechanisms. The OECD is working to ensure that OECD Development Assistance Committee members and other humanitarian donors are properly equipped to deliver solid results with their humanitarian programmes, with a particular focus on delivering better quality results in the field.

In short, the OECD helps ensure that there is sufficient quality money - money that reaches all those in need, to provide what they need, when they need it. See the latest humanitarian aid data here.

Supporting OECD DAC donors to implement the Grand Bargain

One of the main outcomes of the World Humanitarian Summit is the Grand Bargain, A Shared Commitment to Better Serve People in Need. Fifty donors, most of them DAC members, and aid agencies produced a package of reforms – 51 commitments – to make humanitarian financing and response more efficient and effective.

'Commitments into Action' series

‌Under the OECD’s mandate to monitor the effectiveness of aid and to promote peer learning, The OECD supports its members to deliver on the commitments they made at the Summit, especially the commitments around better humanitarian financing, notably the Grand Bargain.

As part of this work, the Commitments into Action series is developed to provide straightforward, practical guidance for OECD Development Assistance Committee members and other humanitarian donors, helping them translate their humanitarian policy commitments into quality results in the field.

The series has been developed to help professionals with limited knowledge in humanitarian donorship, to better engage and deliver on the “new way of working” following the World Humanitarian Summit – supporting them to deliver better finance and better engagement with the humanitarian community on the key issues surrounding humanitarian responses in modern crisis situations. This series specifically targets professionals in donor agencies making decisions about humanitarian funding.

All guidelines are available on a dedicated website designed especially for humanitarian donors.

Better policies for better lives ?

Since policy changes are only meaningful if they help those affected by humanitarian crises, the OECD started to collect some qualitative data at the beneficiary and frontline workers level to assess whether these changes are making a difference to the people affected by a crisis - or simply making the humanitarian system more efficient in and of itself. First surveys were performed with our partner Ground Truth Solutions in the Lebanon, Afghanistan and Haiti. Results will be consolidated in June 2017 before a second batch of surveys are launched in Northern Iraq, Norther Uganda and Somalia later this year.

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DAC Peer Reviews, what can we learn from each other?

Peer reviews are robust, independent evaluations of DAC member countries’ humanitarian and development programmes, providing in-depth examinations of their development systems and policies, including lessons learned.

Each DAC member country is peer reviewed approximately every five years according to the DAC Peer Review Content Guide. Compliance with the principles of Good Humanitarian Donorship has been a part of the peer reviews since 2004.

See how the DAC members are doing on different aspects of humanitarian assistance What can we learn from each other?