Attachments
Introduction
Humanitarian funding is increasingly directed to contexts and crises that are lasting longer and affecting more people. This is one of the trends that has become the hallmark of international humanitarian assistance in the 21st century.
The most recent Global Humanitarian Overview notes that the average length of humanitarian response plans has increased from 5.2 years in 2014 to 9.3 years in 2018. In the same period, the number of people targeted to receive assistance under these plans grew from 77 million to 101 million. While humanitarian funding to support people in crises also continues to grow (although not at the same pace) it is designed to be short-term, providing life-saving interventions to people in crises. As the average length of crises continues to rise, this mode of assistance is increasingly drawn upon to provide short-term interventions for extended periods of time. Short -term aid is forced to act as a substitute for development programs that are generally better equipped to address underlying conditions of vulnerability and need. Identifying a better way of working in these contexts is a pressing challenge for all actors.
The 2016 World Humanitarian Summit was convened in part to address this challenge. The Secretary General’s report to the summit notes millions of people are “trapped in dependency on short-term aid that keeps them alive but falls short of ensuring their safety, dignity and ability to thrive and be self-reliant over the long term.” The Grand Bargain adopted at the summit’s completion committed donors, including Australia, to among other things enhancing engagement between humanitarian and development actors – addressing the humanitarian-development nexus. Signatories sought to bridge the gap between the two approaches, actors, funding and ways of working, and not to replace development work with humanitarian assistance in addressing the root causes of crises. Grand Bargain signatories also committed to increasing collaborative humanitarian multi-year planning and funding which, it was recognised, “lowers administrative costs and catalyses more responsive programming, notably where humanitarian needs are protracted or recurrent and where livelihood needs and local markets can be analysed and monitored”. For the millions of people in situations of recurrent or protracted crises, progress on these commitments has never been more important.
This analysis explores the impact of World Vision’s long-term, resilience-focused programs in situations of recurrent or protracted crises – contexts where we have sought to bridge the humanitarian-development nexus. This paper explores World Vision’s work in three contexts highly dependent on humanitarian assistance and where communities face recurrent crises – Somalia, South Sudan and Afghanistan.
• In Somalia, World Vision leads the Somalia Resilience a consortium of seven organisations (Action Contre Le Faim, ADRA, CARE, COOPI, Danish Refugee Council and Oxfam).
• In South Sudan, World Vision has had three recent projects focused on building resilience and food security:
o FEED – a partnership between the Government of Canada, World Vision,
Oxfam and CARE;
o a three-year ANCP project supporting integrated food security and livelihoods; and
o an EU/EC funded par tnership in collaboration with government and THESO, a local South Sudan organisation.
• In Afghanistan, World Vision has been a partner to the Australian Afghanistan Community Resilience Scheme, a six-year project with ActionAid, Aga Khan Foundation and Oxfam , funded by the Australian Government.
World Vision is a multi-mandated organisation which has had a long-term presence in many crisis affected contexts around the world. Community resilience is improving through our longer-term approaches to supporting communities affected by recurrent crises. This paper explores these stories of resilience building in Somalia, South Sudan and Afghanistan, and identifies some of the key factors that have enabled better food security and resilience outcomes for populations facing recurrent crises.