The Global Humanitarian Assistance 2018 report is out today. Here are some of the headline findings and supporting numbers:
1. Humanitarian Assistance (HA) mainly goes to a small number of countries: ‘60% of all assistance was channelled to 10 countries only, with 14% going to Syria, the largest recipient, and 8% to Yemen, the second-largest.’
2. HA is growing in absolute terms and as a percentage of overall aid budgets: ‘2017 saw a record US$27.3 billion allocated to humanitarian responses. Although both show an upward trend from 2007, the level of humanitarian assistance within overall ODA is growing faster (at 124% since 2007) than overall ODA (at 41% since 2007).’
3. HA still mainly flows via the big aid organizations: ‘In 2016, US$12.3 billion or 60% of all direct government funding went to multilateral agencies (primarily UN agencies) in the first instance. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) received US$4.0 billion directly – 20% of the total. A growing majority of this went to international NGOs who received 94% of all funding to NGOs in 2017, up from 85% in 2016.’
4. Local NGOs are still living off scraps – localization ain’t happening: ‘Local and national NGOs received just 0.4% directly of all international humanitarian assistance reported to FTS in 2017, a rise of just 0.1% from 2016’.
5. Emergencies aren’t emergencies any more – they are long term crises: ‘17 of the 20 largest recipients of international humanitarian assistance in 2017 were either long-term or medium-term recipients.’
6. Cash Transfers are on a roll: ‘An estimated US$2.8 billion of international humanitarian assistance was allocated to this in 2016, a 40% increase from 2015.’
And here’s a handy (if crowded) summary infographic
