Attachments
Introduction
What does humanitarian assistance look like in a world with less money, less global solidarity and ever-increasing numbers of people in need?
Over two years and across 12 countries, Ground Truth Solutions held more than 34,000 conversations with people experiencing crisis to find out what they want and need humanitarian action to do for them. They offer some clear priorities that should help us navigate this funding crisis.
We are in a period of global upheaval. People on the front lines of crisis are paying the cost of an international community retreating from its responsibilities – on climate, on international law, on global solidarity. Needs were outstripping resources well before drastic cuts were made to humanitarian aid across the world this year. Overlapping crises are increasing in frequency and intensity, and exacerbating one another’s effects. The climate emergency is gathering pace, with both acute and slow-onset impacts battering frontline communities as global average temperatures near 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial averages. We are experiencing the most active conflicts since the end of World War II,1 with increasing attacks on civilians and on humanitarian workers. The global rise of populism has brought with it decreased respect for international law, with war crimes and other atrocities carried out in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with zero sanction while the world watches. Civic space is shrinking, and human rights are under attack across the globe.
A humanitarian reset is badly needed: the current system is no longer fit for purpose. An estimated 305 million people around the globe require humanitarian assistance2 and more people have been forcibly displaced from their homes than at any other time since records began.3 At the same time as needs are growing, aid is being called upon to do more and more, filling the gaps left by governments, development and climate actors, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.
And now the organisations there to help fulfil the basic rights of those in crisis are in crisis themselves. Humanitarian and other global support is being slashed. Even before dramatic cuts to US aid in early 2025 affected 40% of global humanitarian funding,4 the past two years have been marked by massive decreases in humanitarian funding and other global support streams. These cuts have left an already creaking global humanitarian system on its knees. Donors have made it clear that there is no going back: the US has left a gap they are unwilling to fill. Other countries, including the UK, the Netherlands and Germany, are stepping back, too. There will be no return to the humanitarian system of the past 20 years. If we have any chance of rebuilding the system for the better, things have to be done differently.
Humanitarian need is a consequence of global inequity. Listening to people in crisis starts with recognising that without governance structures stepping up to the plate to tackle resource management, conflict, climate change and unjust systems of wealth generation, a crumbling humanitarian system has little chance of doing its job.
We urgently need a humanitarian reset5 that makes resources work harder and go further to deliver the aid people tell us they need when they need it – not what we think they need, or what we have in surplus to give them. By driving long-overdue reforms to the way aid is designed, allocated and delivered, we can ensure lives and livelihoods are protected even as humanitarian funding plummets. As decisionmakers embark on a brutal prioritisation exercise, they’ll have to consider whose priorities count and whose preferences should drive cuts.
Our report synthesises data from conversations with more than 34,000 people in 12 countries about the challenges they face, their most pressing needs, fears and aspirations, and what they want global support actors to know and do differently.
The information they’ve shared with us shows that humanitarian assistance is not working: it’s not reaching the right people in sufficient amounts, and it’s not supporting their greatest needs or aspirations. Their feedback and recommendations must be both the starting point and the measure of success for the humanitarian reset.
From the past two years’ data we have identified five key imperatives – more necessary now than ever before – to make humanitarian assistance fit for today’s overlapping crises:
1. Support the growing importance of community-led response
2. Build a humanitarian response fit for a more violent world
3. Support people’s long-term aspirations and invest in crisis prevention
4. Make information work harder
5. Step up efforts to reach the most marginalised with the right assistance
The humanitarian reset must be led by what crisis-affected people need. The world cannot afford – morally or financially – a humanitarian system that isn’t shaped by this principle.