Press release Global Humanitarian Assistance 14 July 2010

Uploaded: 14/07/2010 Author: Lisa Walmsley

Humanitarian aid fell by US$1.8 billion in 2009. It is only one part of a complex picture.

New York, 14 July 2010 – Today the Global Humanitarian Assistance programme publishes its GHA Report 2010, presenting the very latest data on financial flows to humanitarian crises. Chapters on conflict and the military, domestic response, the scale of needs, donor and recipient governments, pooled financing and delivery agencies, reveal the complexity of humanitarian response – multiple international and national actors working in highly varied contexts where the line between humanitarian and other interventions is continually blurred.

How much is given and by whom?
Which countries receive the most money and for what?
Who implements and whose money do they spend?
How much money is spent on alleviating conflict-related suffering?
What is the context for humanitarian aid, what about recovery, peacekeeping, stabilisation and state-building?
Is funding according to need and is that funding equitable between crises?
Are we spending huge amounts of humanitarian resources in the same country year after year without much change?
Why does it remain so difficult to count every single humanitarian resource?

The GHA report tackles each of these questions and more.

“The money is only half the story,” says Programme Leader, Jan Kellett. “What is important is that the money is used better, and that is all about understanding the context. Firstly a much better understanding of need is required, one that focuses on what appears to be sustained inequalities in funding across similar crises, and secondly a much better relationship between all the resources available. Humanitarian aid does not exist in a vacuum. Beneficiaries are unlikely to care what we call the funding support they receive but what we use that money for, whether humanitarian, development, recovery, stabilisation, state-building, peacekeeping, will affect what support they do receive.”

How can an aid architecture that draws such firm lines between humanitarian and development activities serve the world’s poorest people, many of whom are living their lives vulnerable to repeated crises?

For editors

Global Humanitarian Assistance is a programme that attempts to track the myriad interconnections involved in humanitarian response: the response to need; the provision of finance; the actors involved; the funding mechanisms used; and the countries and projects prioritised.
We provide a ‘no spin’ service to anybody involved in humanitarian programming and performance – that means governments, UN and NGOs, journalists and researchers, and individuals in countries giving and receiving aid.
Our programme receives funding from the governments of Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom and is led by the not-for-profit wing of Development Initiatives – an independent UK-based organisation with an established track record of research and analysis on aid flows and poverty reduction.