Cause for Hope? DFID’s Response to the Humanitarian Emergency

The British government’s humanitarian aid policy seems set for some significant changes in the wake of its response to the Humanitarian Emergency Response Review (HERR), delivered on 15 June. The HERR insisted that humanitarian response be placed in the broader aid context: the vastly bigger ‘development’ aid budget and humanitarian response should be seen and used as a coherent whole, with ‘development’ given the key responsibility for helping to prevent disasters and making states, communities and households better able to withstand and bounce back from crises. The current global humanitarian system was described as not ‘fit for purpose’, and requiring radical overhaul. To bring about real change, the HERR argued for a new and wider set of relationships with governments, communities and people affected by crises, more robust ways to measure impact and greater accountability to the real world – demonstrating the changes we make and the way in which we try to make them. Taken as a whole, the HERR called for what amounted to a paradigm shift in the way we conceive of and deliver humanitarian aid.