Annual Report 2016: Learning and Innovating to Improve Crisis Response

In 1997, Groupe URD became an official organisation and embarked on the journey to establish the first French humanitarian think tank in a farm in the South of France. It was quite a gamble, but as can be seen in the 2016 Annual Report, it paid off. 2016 was the year of the first World Humanitarian Summit. Groupe URD played an active role at different levels, and it gave us the opportunity to promote themes we have been developing for more than 20 years, such as the role of local actors in humanitarian responses, the importance of context, the development of urban approaches to humanitarian action and LRRD. For us, and many of our partners, these topics are our trademark and the basis of our mandate. These same topics emerged from the Summit as the main areas on which the aid community needs to take action and make progress, notably as part of the “Grand Bargain”.