Coordinating Humanitarian Action: the Changing Role of Official Donors

Over the past decade, there have been significant changes in the way official donors finance and organise their response to humanitarian crises. These changes have been dubbed the ‘bilateralisation’ of humanitarian response - a catchy, but often misleading, label.This Briefing Paper reports on one aspect of a larger study of these trends: how donors’ roles in the coordination of humanitarian response are changing, both at field level and globally.
As levels of humanitarian aid have increased and the number of agencies providing it has multiplied, so donors have become more involved in the coordination of humanitarian action. They are doing this at a global level, establishing new mechanisms to influence humanitarian organisations,and in relation to specific humanitarian operations. This shift has been partly driven by the proliferation of agencies providing humanitarian assistance, particularly in high-profile crises. In this crowded environment, donors have shown increased interest in funding NGOs, and funding to UN agencies has been subject to greater earmarking, reducing multilaterals’ room for independent manoeuvre. The involvement of military actors or assets in the provision of humanitar ian assistance is an added facet, as is the drive for humanitarian action to be coherent with other policy responses to crises and complex political emergencies. These factors – the increased profile of humanitarian action, the proliferation of actors, the shifting fortunes of bilateral and multilateral agencies and the push for coherence – are all aspects of the changing face of humanitarian coordination.