Executive summary: Mapping of needs, capacities and resources to risk-inform humanitarian action

This mapping of existing and needed capacities and resources available to Humanitarian Country Teams (HCTs) makes recommendations on how to best pool, coordinate and strengthen existing capacities and resources to support humanitarian actors better in this endeavour to address needs in a more sustainable way. In the current state of the world where humanitarian needs are at an all-time high, where funding remains well below needs, and humanitarian access is extremely constrained in many contexts, there is an urgent need to reduce future humanitarian needs by addressing risks and vulnerabilities through a more holistic, localised and people-centred approach.

General recommendations on how to best address gaps in capacities and resources are proposed:

• In a context with minimal access, the way humanitarian assistance is delivered becomes ever more important - that it be principled, rights-based and according to needs, people-centred, localised, conflict-sensitive, and risk-informed in order to avoid doing harm.
• Removing some of the structural barriers to risk-informing humanitarian action will be essential to achieving positive impact.
• Dedicated capacities and resources for risk-informing and risk understanding support could help design and implement joint programming that reduces and manages risks for building resilience across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace nexus and across sectors or systems.