Impacts before instruments

The Impact Before Instruments series of technical discussion papers has been produced through a partnership of the Start Network, the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The series responds to the increasing interest in the use of disaster risk financing (DRF) systems and instruments by humanitarian actors. DRF, as originally conceived, aimed to strengthen the financial resilience of governments to respond to disasters. In recent years, donors, humanitarian actors and others have begun to explore the use of DRF approaches for earlier and more predictable humanitarian response. This series reflects on and discusses, what we, as a community of practice need to consider in order to make DRF work in the humanitarian context.

This series explores how evolving disaster risk financing approaches could indeed be a game changer, bringing a range of benefits:

- How “Humanitarian DRF” can incentivise enhanced pre-planned and coordinated disaster risk management systems for anticipation and effective disaster response
- How using objective risk information can aid decision-making, increasing the neutrality and impartiality of humanitarian decisions
- How it can bring in new, larger and more coordinated pre-arranged financing
- How using such a structured system allows for greater degrees of transparency and accountability. But, to achieve these benefits, impact must be placed before instruments in the system design.

This series sets out practical challenges and potential ways to adjust traditional DRF approaches to bring about enhanced humanitarian impact, exploring what a new lens for humanitarian DRF might look like, and what it might need to consider.