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Six big humanitarian policy trends for 2024

January 4, 2024
Irwin Loy and Will Worley have an excellent 2024 curtain raiser on The New Humanitarian, which is now by some distance my favourite aid blog. It’s a bit long by FP2P standards, so I’ve cut it down a bit: Money: Learning to do less with less  In 2023, humanitarians took a look in the mirror and admitted what everyone already knew: They don’t have
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5 Things we Learned from Evaluating the Impact of Research

September 28, 2023
Guest post by Cordelia Lonsdale and Dr Gloria Seruwagi The Research for Health in Humanitarian Crises (R2HC) programme has an explicit impact mission: the research funded through the programme should improve health outcomes for people affected by humanitarian crises. R2HC uses case studies to evaluate not only the outcomes and impacts of funded research, but to understand the processes, activities
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Amazing new Resource Guide on Humanitarianism

August 23, 2023
Woah, if you’re even slightly interested in knowing more about the world of humanitarian response, check out the new ALNAP Learning Links | Free academic resources and teaching tools for humanitarian courses and programmes. Here’s the blurb:  ‘ALNAP is the global network for advancing humanitarian learning. We want to provide future generations of humanitarians with unfettered access to our very best
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Can humanitarian experience guide the development of new loss and damage funding?

May 24, 2023
After years of political wrangling, we are finally seeing some progress in terms of wealthy nations shouldering some (small part) of the burden of Loss & Damage – but how do we make sure we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past?  Debbie Hillier of Mercy Corps and Paul Knox Clarke of Adapt Initiatives explore in a new paper how
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Five types of humanitarian influence

February 15, 2023
Loved this piece from Hugo Slim, first posted on the Humanitarian Law and Policy blog. Influence is typically conceived as a subtle form of power that is indirect, unconscious, or deliberately hidden. Influencers are often off-stage rather than on it, whispering behind a curtain, appearing in dreams, or using magic of some kind. Influence tends to work gradually, seeping gently
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Loss and Damage fund established at COP27: what happens next?

November 29, 2022
Saleemul Huq, one of the most persistent long-term advocates of a ‘loss and damage’ fund on climate change, explores the origins and potential of the breakthrough at the recent COP. For thirty years the vulnerable developing countries led by the small island states had been demanding under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) the creation of a fund
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‘Never let the Silence Reign’: in Conversation with William Chemaly on the future of Global Protection

October 12, 2022
I recently interviewed William Chemaly, coordinator of the Global Protection Cluster Here’s a transcript of the highlights DG: Hi William, you have one of those terribly important sounding jobs that no one outside the humanitarian sector understands. Maybe you could explain who you are and what you do to begin with? WC: Thanks Duncan. Protection is the heart and soul
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What did we learn from six months of training senior Aid people in Influencing?

October 4, 2022
Well that was intense. We’ve just come to the end of a one year programme to design and deliver a training course on ‘influencing’ to senior aid leaders (UN, INGOs, Red Cross/Crescent and National NGOs). 6 months to design the materials and methodology; the rest to deliver the training to 6 cohorts of 25 people in 5 locations around the
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Locked out. What do local leaders say about reforming the humanitarian system?

September 8, 2022
Oxfam’s Amy Croome reports back on a very different kind of localization discussion What happens when you bring together local activists and organisations to discuss how to reform the humanitarian system? I recently found out, attending a conference, where more than 85% of the speakers and moderators were from national and local organisations (compared to not even 10% at the
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The Humanitarian System is on the Edge of the Abyss. Where next?

September 7, 2022
Juliet Parker, Director of ALNAP (the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in humanitarian action), summarizes its new State of the Humanitarian System report 2022 “I am here to sound the alarm:  The world must wake up.” “We are on the edge of an abyss — and moving in the wrong direction.” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres offered a stark
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Starving civilians is an ancient military tactic, but today it’s a war crime in Ukraine, Yemen, Tigray and elsewhere

July 5, 2022
Aid organizations, including Oxfam, where I work part time, have been trying to draw attention to the looming hunger crisis across much of Sub-Saharan Africa. But some have been criticised for portraying the causes as mainly about drought, when in fact, war and conflict in countries such as Somalia and Ethiopia have been crucial factors. So I’m reposting this excellent
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East Africa v Ukraine. Two tragedies; two very different responses

May 19, 2022
There’s sometimes a fine line between ‘what aboutery’ – unhelpfully distracting from one claim for public or policy attention by saying ‘yes, but what about X? – and a genuine exposure of double standards. But when it comes to East Africa right now, it’s not a fine line, but a gulf distinguishing the world’s feeble response from the laudable, (if
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