Attachments
Author(s): Kerkvliet, E.; Bobin, K.; Hafiz, S.; Morrison-Metois, S.
1 The humanitarian community needs a blueprint for effective coordination of global emergencies that prioritises bottom-up, inclusive planning over top-down, UN- centric approaches.
Humanitarian coordination and major funding decisions for the COVID-19 response were largely top-down and dominated by UN agencies, with funding decisions taken in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC). While this led to the rapid establishment of the GHRP and quick mobilisation of funding, the lack of an existing global coordination mechanism and the limited participation of non- UN actors concentrated humanitarian resources among large international agencies. This raises questions about the inclusivity of humanitarian coordination structures, particularly as the humanitarian response to COVID-19 depended on local and national actors to deliver assistance. The IASC should develop a clearer protocol and process for inclusive global response planning.
2 Local civil society and communities will be at the forefront of the response to the next global crisis. As more than just implementing partners, they need a voice in programmatic decisions and greater access to funding.
Despite early optimism that the pandemic might accelerate a shift towards locally led response, international actors yielded little ground. Local NGOs, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), community leaders and frontline responders shouldered the risk and burden of the response but were not granted greater access to funding or included in programmatic decisions. Only 3% of humanitarian funding for COVID was provided directly to local actors. CBPFs channelled a greater proportion of funding to local actors but only had a small fraction of global funding at their disposal. Greater use of CBPFs is an easy step in the right direction.
Local organisations were poorly represented in Humanitarian Country Teams, the IASC and other key coordination structures, but their inclusion in coordination goes beyond the number of seats at the table. Humanitarians must also consider the language meetings are held in and who leads. Partnerships with local actors require greater investment in the long term, and humanitarians need to consider pre-positioned partnerships as a key aspect of preparedness. In addition, donors and agencies must find practical ways of building new partnerships during a crisis response, while local partners require the space to identify their own capacity-building needs. Humanitarians must invest in new funding models and frameworks now, so the system doesn’t default to the usual ‘system of convenience’ when a major crisis hits.
3 Humanitarians must look up and out. In treating the symptoms, the humanitarian system is failing to grasp opportunities to complement the work of others across the HDP nexus to mitigate the risks and address the causes of crisis.
The HDP nexus is a major policy objective of the international community, yet the humanitarian system remains largely insular. Given that COVID-19 was simultaneously a health, governance, economic, development, human rights and humanitarian crisis, surprisingly few attempts were made to build greater linkages and look for areas of complementarity. Social protection is one important exception. There was no real attempt to develop a unified COVID-19 response plan or to generate collective outcomes. These could have helped to bridge the humanitarian– development divide and facilitated greater alignment across the international aid community. Looking up and out could help humanitarians think more broadly about the impact of a crisis and find ways to build links with other systems. In addition, dual-mandate organisations should ensure that all staff have emergency response capacity and are prepared to work across the humanitarian–development divide.
4 The COVID-19 response showed that, when pushed, humanitarians can adapt. This skill needs practice – and funding, sustained over the lifetime of a crisis. The agility to pivot, and pivot again, will be key in future global responses.
Donors and humanitarian agencies both showed great flexibility in the pandemic response. Their adaptability is commendable, particularly in enabling existing programmes to pivot to short-term COVID-19 response. Although difficult to quantify the extent of reprogramming, this indicates that, under pressure, organisations can make deeper adaptations to programme objectives and outcomes to react to change. And yet, as the wider impacts of the pandemic became known, the inability of humanitarians to adequately address broader needs suggests they struggled to change direction for a second time, not least because funding declined after 2020. Organisations must get used to adapting to changes in need and context over time, even if this means adapting multiple times. Donors must recognise that global crises are unlikely to pass quickly and must be prepared to fund a response over a multi-year period.
5 Humanitarian actors must establish new duty of care frameworks for implementing partners and permanently strengthen their internal frameworks for duty of care for staff.
Many humanitarian actors have not yet developed comprehensive duty of care frameworks for staff and partners. During the pandemic, humanitarian organisations quickly put in place or reinforced efforts to support staff who faced increased levels of stress, and they adopted measures to protect staff from the virus. But these same measures were not always extended to local staff and were rarely extended to local implementing partners, resulting in a transfer of risk. Staff at all levels can be personally affected in a global crisis, regardless of their location. Humanitarians need to urgently clarify their obligations towards local staff and partners and ensure these are fair and ethical.
6 Digital innovations are valuable tools for humanitarians, but proximity to communities matters. Greater collaboration and investment are needed to overcome the digital divide.
Humanitarians adapted to COVID-19 by shifting to remote aid modalities and means of communication, but the most vulnerable were the least well-served by this. The digital divide means that remote approaches on their own are insufficient. Proximity with communities was weakened during COVID-19 and many expressed a preference for in-person communication. Digital and in-person communication channels should be made available at all times, with substantial investments made to close the digital divide. This may require greater collaboration with actors outside the sector.
7 The humanitarian community needs joined-up monitoring mechanisms to adequately assess the key outcomes and effectiveness of future global responses.
Collective monitoring of the global COVID-19 response was weak, with poorly defined metrics and incomplete reporting. In a global, multidimensional crisis, a robust monitoring mechanism is needed, accompanied by clear guidance, to enable adequate assessment of key outcomes and effectiveness of the global response. Outcomes should be jointly defined with other systems, particularly governments and development actors. A flexible monitoring framework with comprehensive guidance should be designed now and adapted when the next crisis hits.