Reducing the humanitarian financing gap: Review of progress since the report of the High-level Panel on Humanitarian Financing

In January 2016, the United Nations Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing (HLP) published its report Too important to fail – addressing the humanitarian financing gap, which formed the basis for the Grand Bargain negotiations in early 2016.

Besides the Grand Bargain, the HLP made recommendations under two other pillars:

Shrinking needs by bringing development financing into crisis situations; it also referenced reducing conflict but did not make specific recommendations.

Broadening the resource base, including bringing in new donors and the private sector.

Five years on, this report seeks to identify, assess and analyse initiatives taken in the spirit of the HLP’s recommendations under these two pillars, and to identify possible links with progress on the Grand Bargain.

The key recommendations from the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing (HLP) in 2016, to reduce need by adopting more development approaches to crises and to broaden the resource base by increasing the diversity of donors, continue to be valid and even more relevant today. Needs measured by inter-agency appeals have doubled since then, and conflicts have persisted in Syria and Yemen, and flared up in new areas, with little optimism for a reduction in conflict globally.

• The HLP’s solutions to the ‘financing gap’ between humanitarian need and resourcing therefore continue to be relevant. In hindsight this was clearly a long-term agenda, that required a strategy, focus and leadership to drive it forward, rather than one that could be achieved within five years.