Boost local Quick Response Funds to strengthen local humanitarian leadership

The call for local humanitarian leadership, where decision-making and funding models intentionally shift power to local and national actors before, during and after a crisis, has been around for at least the last 10 years, and was reinforced with pledges and commitments made at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. Pivotal events over the past year – the Covid-19 pandemic, calls to decolonise aid and the Black Lives Matter Campaign – highlight why this must be so. The People’s Disaster Risk Reduction Network (PDRRN),36 an NGO that has been delivering humanitarian action in the Philippines for almost two decades now, offers a deep dive perspective on various types of Quick Response Funds that are helping local actors be in the driver’s seat again and could potentially reform the aid sector to be locally led.