Humanitarian reform in evolution
- Page updated on18 de April de 2025
Since the creation in 1991 of the humanitarian system framework that we still use today, humanitarian action has continued to change and adapt to humanitarian crises. Thus, technical and accountability standards improved. One of the biggest changes came in 2005. That year the Transformative Agenda involved substantial humanitarian reform of coordination among actors. Many of the changes introduced then, such as humanitarian clusters or procedures for the activation of humanitarian response in case of emergency, are still in force.
Time, however, has revealed that the humanitarian system still needs more changes. Today, and following a new humanitarian reform launched in 2016, a transformation is proposed around community engagement, localization, improved funding and the link between development and emergency assistance. Moreover, as progress is made in these directions, new priorities and initiatives continue to emerge.
Table of contents:
The 2016 Grand Bargain
The World Humanitarian Summit 2016 was the event that sparked a new cycle of humanitarian reform that continues to this day, known as the Grand Bargain. Over the years this cycle has been updated with the Grand Bargain 2.0 and the Grand Bargain beyond 2023, while other pilot projects such as the Flagship Initiative have emerged.
Grand Bargain
An Agenda for Humanity with 51 commitments and 10 thematic areas of work.
Grand Bargain 2.0
More focus on key priorities and a new approach to advocacy, with a simpler format.
Brand Bargain beyond 2023
An updated roadmap to 2026.
Flagship Initiative
Reimagining humanitarian action, from the bottom up, from the community and towards sustainability.
A rapprochement between donors and humanitarian organizations
The Grand Bargain pact, agreed between 18 donor countries and 16 international humanitarian organizations in May 2016, was born to bring positions closer between both groups. On the one hand, donors wanted humanitarian organizations to be more accountable and transparent with the funding received. On the other hand, the remaining humanitarian organizations wanted donors to offer better quality funding, with better conditions.
The pact reached between all parties took the form of 51 commitments and 10 thematic areas of work (workstreams):
- Greater transparency.
- Increased support and funding for local and national stakeholders (localization).
- Increase the use and coordination of monetary transfers (cash).
- Reduce duplication and management costs.
- Improve impartial and joint needs assessments.
- A revolution of participation.
- Improved quality funding with more multi-year funding.
- More flexible quality financing with fewer restrictions (earmarking).
- Harmonize and simplify reporting requirements.
- Improve collaboration between humanitarian and development actors.
A pact with lights and shadows
The Grand Bargain, until 2021, had important positive aspects. Among them, the achievement of more signatories (reaching a total of 63) and the creation of a platform for collaboration and problem solving with all of them. In addition, much progress was made with cash transfers, and the tools and procedures for conducting needs assessments and harmonized reporting were improved. There was also progress, albeit insufficient, in localization, and in the introduction of gender equality and women's empowerment as a new cross-cutting theme.
Other thematic areas, however, made less progress, or failed to overcome barriers to change. For example, despite some initiatives, hardly more transparency about the use and impact of funding was achieved. Important problems for the coordination of cash transfers were also not solved, nor were there hardly any changes in financing mechanisms. Other aspects, such as increasing participation or studying how to reduce management costs, were also almost forgotten.
Beyond the initial Grand Bargain: upgrades in 2021 and 2023
Grand Bargain 2.0: learning from successes and mistakes
In 2021, the Grand Bargain was revised and redefined in a second version of the global compact: Grand Bargain 2.0. In this update, the agreement between donors and humanitarian organizations, now with more participation of local and national actors, set its objective on better effectiveness, efficiency and accountability of humanitarian aid. At the same time, attention was focused on two key priorities-which are actually three:
- Quality of financing.
- More support to ensure leadership and capacity of local actors.
- More support for increasing the participation of affected communities.
The update retained many of the thematic areas of the previous agreement and highlighted gender and improved shared risk management as cross-cutting themes of humanitarian reform. It also established a simpler way to organize and advocate with key actors for change.
Grand Bargain beyond 2023
A new proposal: the Flagship initiative
In 2023, and with the purpose of "renewing humanitarian action from below," the Flagship Initiative in 4 pilot countries (Colombia, Niger, Philippines and South Sudan). Since then, several high-level forums and meetings have been held, along with several learning documents.
The idea of the Flagship initiative is not to propose a new model that can be applied in all countries, but simply to propose a set of key principles, which humanitarian actors in the pilot countries, together with the communities they work with, can decide how to articulate and apply, tailored to their own context. Those principles are basically to work with communities to understand their priorities, capacities and aspirations, and then form a coalition of humanitarian actors to program and plan their actions based on those priorities from the local level, covering both emergency response and resilience building.
The various pilots appear to be prioritizing many of the elements already identified in previous humanitarian reform initiatives, such as fostering community engagement, localization, and the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, as well as changes in funding of programs, that enable the changes to be made.
Examples of new developments emerging in the piloting of the initiative include funding in Colombia with the CERF for forgotten crises, long-term community resilience-building actions, and not just emergency actions, prioritizing investment in income-generating activities over food aid in highly insecure areas of Niger, at the wish of the community itself, or developing humanitarian response plans in small geographic areas (barangays) in the Philippines, in the absence of a national plan.
Reforms and changes to the system
External links
- OCHA, 2024. The Flagship Initiative: Redesigning Humanitarian Response (Status Update Two: July 2024).
- The New Humanitarian, 2023. What’s the ‘Flagship Initiative’, and how might it transform emergency aid?
- IASC. Transformative agenda.
- IASC. Grand Bargain.
- OCHA, 2023. Global Humanitarian Overview 2024.
- ALNAP, 2022. State of the Humanitarian System.
- ODI, 2021. The Grand Bargain at five years: an independent review.
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