Financing in Crisis? Making humanitarian finance fit for the future

Building on the useful recommendations of the Future Humanitarian Financing initiative, this paper takes the view that ensuring enough quality money for humanitarian crises is not just about writing a bigger cheque. The money also needs to arrive in the right place, in the right way, and at the right time.

The paper focuses on the following areas, learning from good practices by DAC members and attempting to find solutions to common challenges:

• Predictable funding for predicable costs.
• Funding for longer-term – protracted – crises that helps boost the resilience of crisis-affected communities; going beyond immediate life-threatening needs and supporting self-reliance.
• Reworking funding tools and approaches for crises in middle income countries – learning from the challenges facing the Syrian Arab Republic affected region.
• Thinking differently about funding disaster response and recovery, and about funding disaster affected states and local response actors.
• Making the money go further; reducing the cost, and increasing the cost-benefit, of humanitarian operations.