Are humanitarian agencies ‘value for money’?
The funding gap between rising humanitarian needs and shrinking donor budgets is widening, with recent efforts to present a more targeted approach to global appeals. It is debated whether the scare resources are targeted impartially to where humanitarian assistance is needed most or whether political interests make some crisis the priority and others neglected. Despite […]
Prioritisation is driving a lower funding requirement
Just before the start of each calendar year, the global scale of humanitarian needs and response is summarised in the Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO). And each year this comes with a price tag. But for the first time in the past decade, the cost of meeting humanitarian needs has fallen in this yearly snapshot. The […]
No, we are not ‘halfway through the year’ in July
It is often said around July and August that we’re more than halfway through the year, and a humanitarian sector or response plan is only funded by a small amount. Here’s a link to the Protection Cluster saying that, ‘as of mid-2022, only 28% of activities have been funded’. Or how about the oPt HRP […]
The Year Ahead 2023: 5 things not in the ‘GHO’
Another year and another Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) is published. The 2023 abridged version (only 19 pages this year!) sets out the funding required, and the number of people in need for the year ahead. But sometimes the most fascinating things to look at are those that are out of sight. We’ve picked out 5 […]
How do the big agencies spend their money?
In the past decade, the expenditure of five of the largest humanitarian agencies has ballooned. In 2012, the combined expenditure of WFP, UNICEF, UNHCR, IOM, and ICRC was $12.7bn – a huge amount. Nine years later and the combined expenditure of these agencies was over $25bn. These are vast amounts of money. In the 2012-2021 […]
🚨 NEW: Updated Q3 October 2022 Forecasts
The latest funding forecasts show that most sectors are likely to bring in more funding than they did last year. Mine Action and Early Recovery are forecast to do significantly better than last year, and most sectors are expected to see an uplift. Many sectors have nearly beaten 2021 funding levels already Nearly all higher […]
So you want to be a Humanitarian CEO?
As reported in The New Humanitarian, there are calls for the next head of UNHCR to be a refugee with lived experience as a refugee. But how likely is that? And who is most likely to rise to the top of a humanitarian organisation? You’re in luck if you’re aged around 52 years old, from […]
🚨 NEW: Updated Q2 July 2022 Forecasts
Latest analysis by Humanitarian Funding Forecasts shows that most humanitarian sectors in 2022 are forecast to grow more than what we thought at the start of the year. Of the 15 sectors analysed, 9 are forecast to grow more compared to our initial forecasts, 4 sectors have had their forecasts revised down, and another 2 […]
Response Plan Projects: A Red Herring for Localisation
The thing that sets the rhythm of humanitarian crises (or to be more precise: humanitarian coordination) are response plans. There are different types to do with refugee crises, non-refugee related crises and sudden onset crises – you can learn more about the different types here. But the one thing that they have in common is […]
Do more severe humanitarian crises get more money?
Humanitarian funding is an exercise in prioritisation by donors. Donors have a pot of money in their budgets that they need to distribute to different places, and they have to ask the question: where will this money make the most impact? Of course there are other considerations (e.g. national interests of governments), but for today […]