Members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) continue to dominate government response in terms of volumes of humanitarian aid given. Preliminary data for 2010 estimates that OECD DAC donors gave US$11.8 billion compared to only US$623 million from non-DAC donors. Whilst the United States, the European institutions, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands were the biggest players, additional funding mechanisms and ways of channelling assistance created within the international community over the past decade have also helped increase the visibility of humanitarian assistance from other governments.
In 2010 two major humanitarian disasters, in Haiti and Pakistan, marked asignificant shift in the methods traditionally adopted by non-DAC donors for channelling humanitarian aid. Firstly, the top two donor governments contributing to the Haiti emergency response fund were non-DAC donors – Saudi Arabia, with US$50 million,and Brazil, with US$8 million. Secondly, eight of the ten governments making the largest contributions to this fund were non-DAC donors. Thirdly, India made the largest contribution to the Pakistan ERF, with US$20 million.
Non-DAC donor contributions are harder to count because they are not always made visible in the same way or systematically captured. Whilst their volumes of aid remain small (though almost certainly undercounted as well) they are increasingly influential actors in the fewer countries in which they prioritise their aid. For example in 2008 80% of government humanitarian contributions to Yemen came from non-DAC donors. Nations in crisis are also increasingly taking control of humanitarian situations, leading and directing how aid should be allocated and implemented, rather than just playing a part.
In addition some of the larger donors aren’t necessarily the most generous – we can see this by looking in terms of how much humanitarian aid is spent as a share of gross national income/domestic product (GNI or GDP) or how much is spent per citizen. Some smaller donors might not spend so much overall – but might be very generous when their response is looked at in this way. In 2009 the United Arab Emirates was the third most generous government donor in terms of humanitarian aid per capita, US$77, which was higher than Sweden (US$62). In 2008 Saudi Arabia was the most generous government donor in terms of humanitarian aid as a proportion of GNI, 0.13%.
Different governments have different policies on humanitarian aid expenditure. For many, an expanding humanitarian agenda means more integrated response within overall aid, diplomacy and security – peacekeeping programmes ‘bridging the gap’ with humanitarian aid in places where development aid is not possible, for example. All the DAC donors are signatory to the Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD) principles, but their actual policies and priorities are governed nationally. In 2010 Brazil became the 36th member of the GHD.
The Government workstream aims to pull together information on humanitarian aid expenditure – an easier task for DAC donors as its secretariat compiles and publishes comparable aid data each year. The task is more challenging for other governments. So our work focuses on:
- understanding the decision making processes of DAC donors
- building detailed donor profiles of the major government donors, both DAC and non-DAC
- producing in-depth case studies looking at non-DAC donor reporting processes, barriers to reporting, humanitarian structures, policies, approaches and decision making processes
- engaging and building relationships with key non-DAC donor government ministries and personnel
- coordinating and sharing information and knowledge with other organisations engaged in similar work.
