Attachments
Introduction
VOICE (Voluntary Organisations in Cooperation in Emergencies) is the main NGO interlocutor on EU humanitarian affairs and brings together 84 NGOs. One of the main priorities of the network is to monitor funding for humanitarian aid and to use its collective influence to ensure NGOs’ expertise and experience are heard and brought into the relevant fora.
The first World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) is currently under preparation and strong focus is being given to humanitarian financing. As one of the major donors, the European Union is expected to play an important role in the run up to the Summit and its follow-up.
In parallel, EU Member States and the European Commission are also influential members of the Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD) which has recently expressed interest in looking at their funding practices1. This highlights the appropriateness of examining EU donors’ grant conditionalities attached to humanitarian funding to NGOs.
The European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid2 (the Consensus) states the following: “Collectively the EU provides the largest share of current official international humanitarian aid, comprised of Community and EU Member State bilateral contributions.” With rising humanitarian needs and an increasing pressure on humanitarian funding, VOICE considers it is timely to look at tendencies based on a selected number of European donors’ contributions to humanitarian aid.
However, while appropriate funding levels are essential, other conditions also need to be met for an effective humanitarian response to take place. NGOs remain main actors implementing humanitarian aid projects in the field. So, from a humanitarian practitioner’s point of view, there are other aspects which need to be considered when looking at donors’ funding policy and practice.
Indeed, in the Consensus, paragraph 94 reads “The Community undertakes to continue efforts to streamline and simplify its procedures for humanitarian aid in order to reduce the administrative burden on implementing organisations within the framework of the applicable rules. Harmonisation of reporting by the Community in the humanitarian sphere will take place in accordance with the applicable provisions on general financial accountability and control.”
In 2013, when DG ECHO revised its Framework Partnership Agreement (FPA), NGOs and DG ECHO worked together to enshrine the commitment concerning simplification into the new FPA which is valid from 2014 to 2018. In 2014, VOICE published a report ‘The European Consensus on Humanitarian Aid: an NGO perspective’3. Seven years on from the signing of the Consensus, the report highlights a strong concern amongst NGOs about the demands placed upon them by European donors through funding modalities throughout the project cycle.
Despite the commitments taken by donors, NGOs observe a very different reality. Feedback from VOICE members continues to stress an increasing complexity and workload when administrating humanitarian projects funded by bilateral and institutional donors. This trend has considerable impact on the way organisational resources are being used: the percentage allocated to compliance management is constantly increasing.
We hope this report therefore will be another element to take the issue of funding and conditions for working with NGOs forward.
The present study, commissioned by VOICE in July 2015, seeks to examine and compare the funding and grant modalities of four donors illustrating the institutional diversity within the EU:
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Denmark: DANIDA - due to its practice of awarding programme agreements to selected NGOs
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The European Commission’s Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection: DG ECHO - having a prominent funding relationship with many European NGOs
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France: Centre de Crise (CDC) - representing a smaller European humanitarian donor in terms of direct support to NGOs
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Germany: Auswärtiges Amt (AA) - representing a large European humanitarian donor in terms of direct support to NGOs