KEY MESSAGES
• Protracted is the new normal. The majority of today’s humanitarian crises are protracted in nature. More than 90 per cent of humanitarian appeals last longer than three years and the average length of a humanitarian appeal is now seven years. About 89 per cent of humanitarian funding from OECD DAC members goes to crises lasting from the medium to the long term.
• Humanitarian crises are mostly predictable, both in contexts of natural hazards and conflict. Most crises are a complex combination of both and require context-specific responses. There is a growing body of evidence emerging from humanitarian risk modelling that can support all actors to take a more anticipatory approach to crisis response. For example, 62 of the 64 countries that had one or more humanitarian appeals in the past 10 years were ranked among the 100 most at-risk countries. Moreover, of the 50 countries with the highest risk of humanitarian crises, more than three-quarters had an inter-agency humanitarian appeal in the last ten years.
• Strategic plans must define clear, collectively agreed outcomes. Crises are an intrinsic part of the development process and managing their risk is essential to avoid development setbacks and leverage opportunities for a more resilient future. A clear definition of the shared outcomes that all crises respondents, including development actors, aim to achieve in protracted crises over a multi-year horizon is essential for meeting and reducing needs, and for setting the path for a gradual reduction of humanitarian appeals in contexts where other actors may be better able to support in a more sustainable and localized way.
• Strengthen local capacity for response as part of humanitarian action. Wherever gaps are identified, build local response capacity, or at least do not undermine existing ones, as part of regular humanitarian operations to gradually reduce the international humanitarian footprint in some protracted crises. This entails reversing the response/capacity-building ratio of humanitarian operations over time as international humanitarian actors gradually rely on local actors to respond to future crises.
• Move from assessing to analysing. The humanitarian system in particular must make the move from merely assessing needs after humanitarian crises to proactively and systematically analysing risks, severity trends and coping capacities, through qualitative and quantitative indicators. It must also make better use of baseline data, in addition to strengthening needs-analysis capacity.
• Transforming multi-year planning into multi-year action. Multi-year planning already is a reality in protracted crises. But in many contexts it hasn’t translated into multi-year programming. Resident/Humanitarian Coordinators must be empowered to act more like CEOs with overall responsibility over programme management and act as brokers of solutions, and less as coordinators of inter-agency interests.
• Shift from spending to investing. The siloed funding mechanisms used to support humanitarian and development action in protracted crises are not fit for purpose. A more diverse and predictable financing pool, in addition to existing voluntary donations to humanitarian assistance, would contribute to a more sustainable approach to crisis management and overall effectiveness.