Blog

Haiti earthquake: how much is too much?

The Haiti earthquake has obviously been an disaster of huge proportions with current UN estimates citing three million affected and 112,000 killed, placing it in the company of some of the most devastating natural disasters of the last decade, second only to the Indian Ocean earthquake-tsunami of 2004 in terms of numbers killed and just behind the Kashmir earthquake in terms of numbers affected.

 

Our case studies on domestic response are underway!

I’ve just come back from Bangladesh and Uganda where the teams have begun the domestic response pilot case studies. We are trying to understand how a nation responds when there is a humanitarian crisis affecting their country. For example, how did Ugandans respond to the conflict in the north of the country and what resources do Bangladeshis mobilise after a cyclone or flood? The studies will try to map out the different sources and types of domestic response.

 

"Change" arriving at USAID?

The new head of USAID, Rajiv Shah, took up his position late last year, filling a ten month vacancy and immediately facing tremendous hopes and expectations for change from within the agency. Commentators around Capitol Hill note that he has his work cut out. Over the last decade USAID has watched as large volumes of aid funding were hived off to other government agencies, notably the Department of Defence, and in 2006 USAID was ushered under the State Department.
 

Latest DAC data release reveals big rise in humanitarian expenditure in 2008

The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) released its full final data on official development assistance (ODA) last week, allowing us to update our analysis of humanitarian aid expenditure by donor and recipient country for 2008.

The headlines are:

    total humanitarian assistance from DAC donors (22 countries plus the European Commission) reached US$11.2 billion in 2008. This is US$2.5 billion (nearly 29%) higher than in 2007 (US$8.7 billion)
  • US$11.2bn is 9.3% of total ODA in 2008 (excluding debt relief).
 

Korea becomes 24th member of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC)

The Republic of Korea has just become the 24th member of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

In a meeting that took place last Wednesday, 25 November, Korean Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Oh Joon, commented: “Half a century ago, Korea was one of the poorest nations in the world, endeavouring to emerge from the ashes of the Korean War to rebuild itself”.

Now the world’s 13th largest economy, Korea was heavily reliant on foreign assistance right up until the late 1990s. It joined the OECD in 1996.

 

CERF call for public donations

In November 2009 the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) launched a new public service announcement (PSA) to help raise awareness of the fund among the general public. "Help us Help in Time" illustrates the support given following an emergency. The PSA has been launched on YouTube and other social media sites and is being distributed to television networks in the United States. The video calls for donations to the UN Foundation which in return contributes to the CERF.

You can see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhXXpgb9RTI

 

Humanitarian aid is not just about the money

We've just uploaded the Summary GHA Report 2009. If you want to know what we believe were the main trends of humanitarian financial flows for 2008 then this may be for you, especially if you don’t have time to read the full, in-depth version.
 

Donor contributions to pooled financing mechanism down on last year

According to initial OCHA figures, donor contributions to the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and country-level pooled funding mechanisms – namely the Common Humanitarian Funds (CHF) and Emergency Response Funds (ERF) – are down on last year.

 

Officially recorded remittance flows to developing countries reached $338 billion in 2008

If you’re after information about migration, remittances and development, the World Bank’s People Move blog, is worth a look. Particularly interesting is a recent post on the latest migration and remittance trends, which shows officially recorded remittance flows to developing countries reaching $338 billion in 2008.

 

Recognising the importance of domestic response

It’s good to see that others are thinking about how people from affected areas respond to crisis. This article on Alertnet 'Local is more effective, say disaster relief experts' echoes our thoughts about why we need to take actions by local people seriously. Local people are immediately on hand when disaster strikes and local staff have a much better understanding of the context than outsiders do. We also believe that the volume of resources mobilised by households, communities, the Diaspora, local civil society and local and national governments could be quite significant.