Measuring Commitment to Best Practice
HRI
NEWS
Sufficient, flexible and efficient funds
“Strive to ensure that funding of humanitarian action in new crises does not adversely affect the meeting of needs in ongoing crises”
Principle 11 of the Principles and Good Practices of Humanitarian Donorship
The constant emergence of different humanitarian crises directs the attention of donors from one part of the world to another. The need to offer rapid responses to the humanitarian demands generated by natural hazards or sudden conflicts lead to neglect of older situations or realities of extreme severity that require long term actions. Several factors contribute to this. On one hand, donors do not usually support crises they consider paralyzed and difficult to resolve. Furthermore, the way the media operates and their enormous influence on the international agenda means that a relevant emergency today could be dismissed from current affaires and replaced by a new situation that draws the attention of the public opinion. In addition to all of this, are the different economic, geo-strategic and political interests that define the importance attributed to each crisis.
In the end, this reality affects the funding allocated to humanitarian responses. At times, extreme situations occur in which certain emergencies receive more money than needed – as took place with the tsunami that destroyed south-western Asia – while others do not receive even the minimal amount required to respond to the most urgent needs. In the international response to conflicts and natural disasters, accountability should prevail over political, economic or strategic matters. As stated in the Principles of Good Humanitarian Donorship, neutral and impartial humanitarian aid means that aid must be based principally on the needs of those affected by emergencies, and not on other kinds of interests. Principle 11 of Good Humanitarian Donorship states the need to respond to ongoing crises in spite of the emergence of new situations requiring humanitarian actions. A goal whose fulfilment requires sufficient and flexible funds, as well as coordination among the different actors involved.
Fundraising Initiatives
With the purpose of providing rapid and effective responses to humanitarian crises, the United Nations created the Consolidate Appeal Processes (CAP) in 1992. It is a tool for coordination among the humanitarian organizations that compiles the needs identified for each crisis and based on these needs, launches appeals to the international community to allow the donors to make economic contributions. The CAP has made a meaningful contribution to the development of a more strategic and coordinated perspective. One of its most important contributions was to provide detailed information on the imbalance that sometimes arises between needs and the international community’s commitments. On occasions, the response does not completely cover the appeal; other times the responsibilities taken on do not materialize as quickly as needed, or they are simply not fulfilled. As a result, needs from some crises go unmet, which results in the persistence of highly vulnerable situations.
Given the difficulties in fulfilling the commitments for funding designated to emergencies or forgotten crises, the United Nations created the Central Emergency Fund (CERF) in 2006. It is an instrument whose objectives are to promote rapid responses, in order to ensure that actions taken are appropriate to the needs of those affected, and to strengthen the responses to under-funded crises. Managed by the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Action (OCHA), the CERF offers the possibility of having a common fund that can be available quickly in an emergency situation. Contributions to this fund are voluntary and come from both public and private actors. Since its creation in March 2006, the CERF has committed over 514 million dollars to humanitarian projects in more than 51 countries. In 2007, more than 252 million dollars were designated to rapid humanitarian responses in 34 countries and 125 million dollars were allocated to under-funded emergencies. One of the most important contributions of the CERF is the provision of resources to neglected crises. In fact, since its creation, it has made four aid payments to every long term crisis group. The most recent, was made at the beginning of August 2007, granting 40 million dollars to crises affecting Burkina Faso, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d´Ivoire, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritania, Niger, Zimbabwe and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
One of the challenges for the CERF´s success is determined by the fact that only UN agencies and programmes and the International Organization for Migration, have direct access to its funds. In practice, this means that both NGO’s and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement are excluded from using these resources – even though they can indirectly access CERF funds through agreements with UN agencies. Humanitarian NGO’s direct access to these resources is an issue that has been under debate for a long time and is a recurrent demand. Furthermore, there is widespread consensus on the fundamental role that NGO’s and the Red Cross Movement represent within the emergency responses. For this reason, it would be necessary to make the rules for using CERF funds more flexible and to facilitate humanitarian organisation’s access to the available resources.
Although the CERF is not the master key to attain totally effective humanitarian aid, it is, indeed, an important step to improve its operations and results. Undoubtedly, it will contribute to the consolidation of opportune aid and will promote the more equitable use of the largest amount of humanitarian resources in history among the emergencies that take place in the different regions of the world. Obviously, it will require consolidated and sustainable support from the entire humanitarian community, since it is still just one more element within a recently initiated overall reform process.