The High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing and Core Responsibility Four of the Secretary General’s Report (change people’s lives – from delivering aid to ending need) both articulate the importance of shrinking humanitarian needs while also recognizing the humanitarian financing gap. This is particularly important in situations of fragility and protracted crises. A better way of working is not about shifting funding from development to humanitarian programmes or from humanitarian to development actors. Rather, it is about working collaboratively across institutional boundaries on the basis of comparative advantage. This way of working does also not deviate from the primacy of humanitarian principles.
The work-stream has been closed and mainstreamed with the other nine work-streams.
Aid organisations and donors commit to:
- Use existing resources and capabilities better to shrink humanitarian needs over the long term with the view of contributing to the outcomes of the Sustainable Development Goals. Significantly increase prevention, mitigation and preparedness for early action to anticipate and secure resources for recovery. This will need to be the focus not only of aid organisations and donors but also of national governments at all levels, civil society, and the private sector.
- Invest in durable solutions for refugees, internally displaced people and sustainable support to migrants, returnees and host/receiving communities, as well as for other situations of recurring vulnerabilities.
- Increase social protection programmes and strengthen national and local systems and coping mechanisms in order to build resilience in fragile contexts.
- Perform joint multi-hazard risk and vulnerability analysis, and multi-year planning where feasible and relevant, with national, regional and local coordination in order to achieve a shared vision for outcomes. Such a shared vision for outcomes will be developed on the basis of shared risk analysis between humanitarian, development, stabilisation and peacebuilding communities.
- Galvanise new partnerships that bring additional capabilities and resources to crisis affected states through Multilateral Development Banks within their mandate and foster innovative partnerships with the private sector.
Note: While being unable to make these commitments in their entirety, the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement commits to enhancing its engagement with development actors