Future of Humanitarian Aid

By Riya Saxena, Associate Asha Impact

I had the opportunity to share my views on the future of financing in the humanitarian aid sector at the 5th Humanitarian Congress in Vienna last month. A big shout out to the organizing team for curating highly engaging and meaningful discussions that incorporated views of stakeholders from across the spectrum. Here’s what caught my attention and really got me thinking:

https://www.facebook.com/humanitaerer.kongress.wien/videos/2225891760994204/

Media plays a pivotal role in shaping and defining how people react to humanitarian crises.

There is a concerning rise in the use of national media for spreading hate and prejudice which attracts mass audiences. Media company business models in present shape and form are not conducive to reporting independent and neutral news. They face high pressure to draw more eyeballs and TRPs which often leads to reporting only specific news items that may be partial, over- exaggerated and dramatized for grabbing public attention. Additionally, the cost associated with insurance, travel, and research in war-torn areas is very expensive, causing a dearth of stories from the field. To fill this gap, while social media has gained prominence in spreading news at the speed of lighting, it further re-emphasis the biases and discriminatory sentiments. The negative and hatred driven reporting narrative combined with the innate human tendency of turning away from a crisis that seems ‘too big to handle’ creates an atmosphere of ignorance and inaction.

There is a strong need for modernizing humanitarian aid financing models.

Financing models for the humanitarian sector need to grow and evolve beyond the simple charity models as these are not sustainable. International development organizations are moving towards allocating greater sums of capital towards preventive solutions. An example of this is Red Cross’s Forecast based Financing model in Togo. Funds are released for necessary rapid risk reduction before floods hit based on a self-learning algorithm that predicts the level of flooding. We must remember that our goal is to eventually taper down the amount of humanitarian aid needed and hence our models should not support wasteful expenditure.

Yet, innovative financing structures are not a silver bullet to solving humanitarian crises.

While innovative financing structures that leverage new sources of capital can help bring down the funding gap required to service the ongoing crises, they are not enough to move the needle on establishing long term solutions. Often in the hype of exploring innovative financing instruments, stakeholders forget the core outcomes they are working towards. Thus it is critical to tangibly evaluate whether a particular instrument is suitable to achieve the laid out outcomes. My biggest take away from the discussions at the Congress can be summarized as below:

A humanitarian crisis is not solved by throwing money or aid at the problem. The secret to solving conflict lies in building socio — political governance systems that can nudge behavior change right from the grass-roots level to the top bureaucracy and political leaders.

I would like to leave you with the following questions to ponder over and would love to hear your views:

• How do we get the right data to analyze crises situations to make aid more effective? How are we allocating our resources to solve these challenges?
• What is the right mix of deployment of funds through traditional funding channels versus innovative funding instruments?
• What kind of partnerships are needed to build strategic and lasting alliances?
• What kind of incentives can create greater transparency in the flow of aid?
• What is our language and thought — process for developing crisis solutions?