A new era of competition for aid

Devex recently published an interview of Kevin Watkins, Chief Executive of Save the Children. The interview, inter alia, also covers the emerging challenges in fundraising and how the international organisations are adjusting their strategies to continue sustaining and improving their profiles. Save the Children is evidently quite successful on that, and that is why it’s budget has topped £400 million ($539 million) for the first time in 2016/17. In order to do that, Save has also started bidding for grants, while competing with large for-profit contractors such as Adam Smith International, Crown Agents and Price Waterhouse Cooper.

While it is certainly helpful to an organisation like Save, which manages operations in 68 countries, there is also a reason to feel concerned about in the light of current debate on the localisation process. Save the Children is one of the best funded charities in U.K., next only to Oxfam, because of U.K. government’s renewed commitment to give 0.7% of the grass national income for aid. It also has the capacity to access funds from other donors, aid agencies and individuals. Now it is also competing with for-profit and in order to do that, further strengthening its procurement systems, supply chains, proper fiduciary reporting, etc.

Watkins feels that NGOs have advantage over private sectors as they have deep roots in the communities they work for. Fair enough. But what about the local and national NGOs, who are actually rooted in the communities, and still used by aid organisations as ‘cheap implementers’? Are these organisations in a position to compete with INGOs for fundraising within their national boundaries, as Save the Children can do while competing with mighty private sector? The answer is clearly ‘No’.

Save the Children is registered in India as ‘Bal Raksha Bharat’, and considers it quite legitimate to keep expanding fundraising base in India too, which it does quite successfully given the strength of its fundraising team. In the fiscal year 2015-16, Bal Raksha Bharat incurred expenditure of approximately $2.82 million on fundraising activities in India. The financial report doesn’t specify that how much funding was raised within India out of its total income of approximately $27 million during the year. However, given the success of some other nationally registered INGOs, the income must be good (World Vision raised $8.44 million and Oxfam raised $2.77 million) during the same year.

While the traditional fundraising structure is rapidly under change, it is normal for aid agencies to look for new markets. However, would it not be appropriate if the fundraising strategies also respect the solutions what is being prescribed globally? On the one hand, aid agencies have committed to pass on at least 25% humanitarian funding to local and national actors by 2020, and on the other, not sparing even national market for local and national actors to directly access the funding available within their national boundaries.

Grand Bargain has triggered a good process, and if we don’t want another good-intentioned process to fail, the resource rich organisations must rethink about their fundraising strategies. Even after one and half years of Grand Bargain, Humanitarian Advisory Group in its paper ‘When the Rubber Hits the Road‘ found out that only 4% of the funding for Rohingya response was passed on to national actors. Even this funding was accessed by BRAC (the largest NGO in the world) and Bangladesh Red Crescent Society. Clearly, the barriers for grassroots NGOs to access funding continue. There is reluctance to pass on better funding, with overheads, to local and national actors.

As an Indian organisation we feel, it is fine if you want to retain control over the funding you mobilise internationally. However, would you please spare the local fundraising space for homegrown organisations? We are not on level playing field. We can’t compete with you as you can do even with for-profit sector. We neither have millions to invest on fundraising, nor a desire to do so. We hope, all of us would remind ourselves the very reason of our existence, which is certainly not to keep expanding our fundraising base.

#localisation #GrandBargain #fundraising

Global Refugee Crisis

Total number of refugee population has crossed 22.5 million in 2017, and the number is still growing in absence of desire and efforts to seek durable solutions to conflicts and protracted crises. In 2017, maximum displacement is happening from the countries of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Burma, Ukraine, Bhutan, Iran, Eritrea and Afghanistan. The countries hosting maximum of refugees are, Jordon, Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, DRC and Chad.

 

#Rohingya crisis is the most latest which seems to be heading towards becoming another protracted crisis. As of now, Bangladesh is hosting over 750,000 Rohingyas. The worrying point is, we see scant efforts being made to resolve the conflict. This has largely become another opportunity for aid agencies to seek aid, and inadvertently trying to turn refugee camps into permanent settlements. UN has issued its appeal for US$434 million. But do we see, enough efforts to resolve conflicts?

 

Countries are being asked to accommodate #Rohingya refugees and they should. But how long? Is that the permanent solution we look for? Could global powers and mandated UN agencies keep asking other countries to grant asylum for their failure to seek solutions?

 

Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh has already started facing problem. The water table has started depleting. Food prices have gone up. Employment rate has gone down, as Rohingya refugees, though they are not allowed legally, are willing wo work on any wage.

 

This is why, if the global powers and #UNSC don’t seek timely solutions, they are merely expanding the universe of problems. This is the reason, #HAI gives emphasis on humanitarian advocacy and seeking solutions to problems instead of treating symptoms. Rohingyas need to be living in Myanmar. For that, proper conducive environment should be prepared.

Towards a Localised Humanitarian Response in India

Prelude

Approximately US$ 25 billion is spent every year to provide life-saving assistance to 125 million people devastated by wars and natural disasters[1]. Although the current funding level is significantly higher than it was 15 years ago, increase is not in proportion to exponential rise in the scale and frequency of conflicts and natural disasters during that period. A conservative US$ 40 billions required every year to meet humanitarian emergencies is just a fraction of the US$ 78 trillion annual global GDP.

Poor are the most vulnerable to disasters. Going by the current trend, by 2030, 62% of the world’s poor will be living in fragile and conflict prone areas. Choice is clear – either increase humanitarian assistance to meet increasing need or invest in seeking sustainable, risk resilient solutions to conflicts and calamities. Credible and pragmatic frameworks and roadmaps offered by Sustainable Development Goals, Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and Paris Agreement for Climate Change cannot be realized unless a clear, pragmatic and collective political leadership commits to find solutions.

Current Humanitarian Architecture and Financing Mechanism

In the year 2015, International humanitarian assistance went to 145 countries of which, more than half went to five countries – Syria, Yemen, Iraq, South Sudan and Ethiopia[2]. While the scale and nature of emergencies and underlying political priorities may have warranted larger share of the humanitarian finance to five countries, many other communities across the world were denied of reasonable assistance.

In 2016, while OCED-DAC funding is channelized through intermediary organization, about 46% funding was channelled through multilateral agencies, mainly the 8 UN agencies. Of the remaining portion, more than 85% went through international NGOs, of which more than half went to largest ten recipients; more than a third to the largest five recipients. Southern international NGOs received just 1.65% of the funding available to NGOs and local and national actors received just 1.5% of that part of the funding pie. In 2015, local and national actors received just 0.3%! There is a clear pattern emerging, with powerful and resourceful organizations controlling humanitarian architecture and funding mechanisms while local and national actors who are the first respondents and best placed to extend assistance to affected community languishing for want of means and resources. Grand Bargain was launched to address this particular anomaly and flaw in humanitarian system.

The Grand Bargain

Grand Bargain[3] (GB) is one of the significant outcomes of the World Humanitarian Summit, which brought together some 50 donors and aid agencies, controlling maximum percentage of humanitarian funding. The GB commitments, grouped under 10 work streams, intend to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian action. The GB expected some major changes in the working practices of signatories, including gearing up cash programming, greater funding for national and local responders and cutting bureaucracy through harmonised reporting requirements.

Altogether, 51 commitments were made to improve the humanitarian architecture, including more funding directly accessible to local and national actors, with more un-earmarked money and increased multi-year funding to ensure greater predictability and continuity in humanitarian response.

Out of the 10 work streams, the work stream 2, “more support and funding tools to local and national responders as directly as possible”, popularly known as ‘localisation’, drew maximum attention as that committed providing at least 25 per cent of global humanitarian funding to local and national responders by 2020 as directly as possible, against less than 2% funding in 2016 and less than 0.3% in 2015. Meaningful implementation of this work stream would not only significantly alter the humanitarian landscape, but may also adversely impact the ambitious growth of INGOs and UN agencies, which are the prime recipients of humanitarian funding.

The Localisation Process

Humanitarian Financing Task Team (HFTT) of IASC set up a Localisation Marker Working Group (LMWG), which was inclusive of IASC members, southern actors, donors, OECD and technical bodies like IATI. This group was led by OCHA, CAFOD and Development Initiatives to define ‘local and national actors’ and ‘as directly as possible’. This group proposed that the local and national actors are:

The local and national NGOs, local and national governments, local and national private sector and Red Cross/Red Crescent National Societies, working in an aid recipient county, but without affiliation to international organisations, hence eligible to receive 25% global humanitarian funding directly or through a country based pooled fund.

However, this definition was significantly changed and diluted right before the ECOSOC Humanitarian Affairs Segment (HAS), held in Geneva in June 2017. The revised definition says, the local and national actors are “Organizations engaged in relief who are headquartered and operating in their own aid recipient country and with autonomous governance, financial and operational decision-making”. This definition drops the term ‘international affiliation’, and also includes one intermediary international organisation in ‘as directly as possible’ before funds reach local and national actors. Thus this definition dilutes the localization process in letter and spirit.

In simple words it means, status quo will largely be maintained; as some of the 25% will be taken away by affiliates and some of the 25% will entail one intermediary.

A unique opportunity to revise and transform humanitarian system will probably be lost and the purpose defeated. Direct access to funding, multiyear financing and long term partnership would have brought financial sustainability to local and national actors, enhanced their response capacity which would have eventually helped the disaster affected communities. That is not going to happen as effectively now as envisaged because localised chapters of international NGOs will remain eligible to call themselves ‘local and national actors’. Armed with international support and seed funding, nationalized chapters of international NGOs will continue to rule the humanitarian space in global South.

Mark Dubois, an independent analyst and formally head of MSF UK observes, “The accommodation of political and bureaucratic interests means that a local outpost of a billion-dollars-per-year INGO could be considered ‘local’, and that funding funnelled to local responders via the same old rent-extracting Western INGO intermediaries may count towards the Grand Bargain’s target of going 25 percent local (an issue still to be settled)[4].

Optimistically, everything is not lost as of now. Different donors, UN actors and INGOs show different levels of low and high commitment to honour this agenda, and different visions of what should be allowed. Michael Mosselmans, a passionate advocate of the localisation process from Christian Aid, U.K. feels, “The watering down will slow the progress, but slowly, patchily and gradually local actors will achieve access to more resources and power. Vested interests will inevitably do their best to stem the tide, but justice will ultimately prevail. It is too late to close the stable door”.

Indian Context – A case study

One may argue that India largely remains unaffected with whatever is happening at global stage regarding localisation. Since the beginning of this century, from being a predominantly aid receiving country, India has transformed herself to play the dual role of an aid recipient as well as a major donor to other developing countries. Since independence till 1990s, India was a major aid recipient nation. It even received food aid from the United States and was also one of the largest borrowers of the World Bank and IMF. However, from being a net borrower, India has successfully transformed herself to become a net creditor of aid[5]. According to Dr Sachin Chaturvedi, Director General of Research and Information System for Developing Countries, in the year 2016, India received US$ 4.57 billion as bilateral aid, but provided US$ 4.67 billion as aid to other developing countries.

India has dedicated institutions and mechanisms under Ministry of Home Affairs, such as Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC), the National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA), State Disaster Management Authorities (SDMA), National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF)[6].

The states are primarily responsible for disaster response and for that they get yearly allocations under State Disaster Response Fund, which gets complemented by National Disaster Response Fund, if a disaster overwhelms response capacity of a state. In addition to that, India has National Disaster Mitigation Fund, and also Prime Ministers National Relief Fund (PMNRF), which accepts voluntary contribution from individuals, organisations, companies and institutions.

As a matter of policy, the Government of India does not issue any appeal for foreign assistance in the wake of a disaster. However, if the national government of another country voluntarily offers assistance as a goodwill gesture in solidarity with the disaster victims, the Central Government may accept the offer[7].

India has United Nations Disaster Management Team (UNDMT) comprising of FAO, ILO, UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNFPA, UNHCR, WFP and WHO. However, any assistance from the UN agencies is accepted only if the government considers it necessary. The central government also supports states for reconstruction and rehabilitation in the aftermath of major disasters, often through aid from the World Bank and other multilateral financial institutions or aid agencies. India also allows international NGOs already operating in the country at the time of the disaster to continue their humanitarian assistance to the affected population.

Almost all UN agencies and several international NGOs operating in India, are signatory to Grand Bargain, thereby, inter alia, also committing to channel at least 25% of international funding to ‘local and national actors’, ‘as directly as possible’ by 2020. Link of the list of the Grand Bargain signatories is presented in the footnote[8].

There are an estimated 3.1 million working NGOs in India, the vast majority of which are national or local Indian civil society organisations. India has largest number of NGOs of any country in the world. Most of these NGOs rely on governments, multilateral agencies and international NGOs for their field operations and administrative sustenance. Only a few have the capacity to raise resources through direct fundraising. Given that, meaningful implementation of localisation will greatly impact the humanitarian architecture in India, and a failure of which will impact response capacity and sustenance of local and home grown NGOs.

Evolution of intense fundraising in India

In 2003, India laid out its new aid policy and decided not to accept tied aid any more. The high growth rate of the economy together with accumulation of large foreign exchange reserves have provided India the flexibility to stop accepting aid from all the donor countries by setting a minimum ceiling for incoming aid (US$25 million) and opened memorandum of partnership with only a handful of donors such as EU, UK, US, Russia, Germany and Japan. . During the same period, India also cancelled debts worth US$24 million owed to it by seven Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) of Africa[9].

These policy changes and fast growth trajectory meant that India became a preferred country for international NGOs to receive funding from bilateral and multilateral donors, and, with a burgeoning wealthy middle class, a market with tremendous potential to raise money locally. Growing economy in India coupled with increasing donor fatigue in West and global recession in 2008 may have been another reason for international organisations to invest more on fundraising in India. This was the year when CARE India, Save the Children and a several other INGOs got registered in India. As presented in the table below, nationalised chapters of INGOs are far more successful in raising funds within India, while retaining their traditional funding base[10]:

Name	Head	2016		2015
		In INR	In USD	In INR	In USD
World Vision India	Total income	3,657,586,125	57,411,500	4,020,393,968	63,106,300
	Raised in India	537,618,400	8,438,760	485,007,358	7,612,940
	Incurred on fundraising	173,299,884	2,720,210	247,045,365	3,877,760
Oxfam India	Total income	843,122,000	13,234,100	747,385,000	11,731,400
	Raised in India	176,404,000	2,768,940	284,587,000	4,467,040
	Incurred on fundraising	26,681,000	418,129	n.a.	n.a.
CARE India	Total income	2,236,661,971	35,107,900	1,695,935,261	26,620,300
	Raised from individuals	103,685,859	1,627,510	79,621,620	1,249,790
	From corporates	216,806,172	3,403,110	199,200,134	3,126,760
	From Govt	357,521,489	5,611,680	361,542,781	5,674,980
Save the Children India	Total income	1,719,670,760	26,992,900	1,508,970455	23,685,600
	Raised in India	n.a.		133,374,730	2,093,520
Action Aid India	Total income	867,387,002	13,615,000	833,523,,019	13,083,400
	Raised in India	41,875,585	657,302	57,855,632	908,134
	Fundraising expense	34,133,934	535,785	2,298,327	36,076
Plan India	Total income	1,252,439,706	19,659,000	1,280,525,946	20,099,800
	Raised in India	321,782,273	5,050,870	270,741,021	4,249,700
	Fundraising expense	98,559,463	1,547,040	120,829,489	1,896,610
Caritas India	Total income	99,88,88,362	15,679,100	94,34,43,274	14,808,800
	Raised in India	32,40,19,622	5,085,990	192,615,249	3,023,400
Habitat for Humanity	Total income	251,044,155	3,941,039	146,206,611	2,295,237
	Voluntary local India	40,964,082	643,078	3,3049,555	518,831
	Voluntary overseas contribution	72,255,008	1,134,302	49,562,607	778,063

Note: The real amount raised in India could be a lot more as funding received from multinational companies working in India, also requires FCRA routing.

ADRA India, Change Alliance (affiliated to Christian Aid), Islamic Relief, etc. are some other nationalised organizations though their financials are not updated for public view. UNICEF India does massive fundraising in India. The figures are not in public domain but it has base of 150,000 individual donors who contribute every month and half-a-dozen corporate partners, besides having global partners like Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, IKEA Foundation, Barclays Pic, H&M, Starwood Hotels etc[11].

Let’s now look at the financial overview of some of the prominent Indian humanitarian NGOs.

Name	Head	2016		2015
		In INR	In USD	In INR	In USD
Goonj	Total income	188,384,669	2,956,990	364,503,276	5,721,450
	Raised in India	110,831,346	1,739,670	73,598,867	1,155,250
SEEDS India	Total income	101,935,346	1,600,030	65,921,941	1,034,750
	Raised in India	70,915,545	1,113,130	32,203,155	505,479
Sewa International	Total income	195,958,900	3,074,160	76,343,833	1,197,670
	Raised in India	86,483,680	1,356,740	17,575,920	275,727

A comparison of above two tables indicates that the nationalised chapters of international NGOs dominate the humanitarian and development architecture in India. They have the leverage to continue receiving funding of OECD-DAC donors through their parent organisation, such as USAID, DFID, ECHO etc., which a homegrown Indian organisation can’t do. They have the capacity to mobilise resources from most resource rich corporate houses and foundations and have ability and leverage to go for public fundraising in Europe and America. In addition to that, given their strong brand, now they are far better positioned in India for partnership with central and state governments, corporate houses as well as go for public fundraising. If we just analyse funding pattern of Save the Children India, in the year 2016 it had 34 institutional partners including Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, DFID, EU, ECHO, IKEA, Finland, Netherlands, NORAD, Australia, Denmark, Canada, Ford Foundation, World Bank, UNICEF, USAID and 44 corporate partners including Punjab National Bank. In this era of suave communication and brand packaging, there is no wonder that resourceful NGOs garner bulk of resources. Rich getting richer and poor getting poorer is not restricted to the population alone!

As mentioned in the table above, some of the nationalised INGOs has marketing and fundraising budgets equivalent to years of revenues of local NGOs, in addition to having corporate partnerships and celebrity brand ambassadors.

It has its serious consequences over humanitarian architecture in India and elsewhere. It is also not honouring the commitments made towards ‘localisation’, to which Anne Street of CAFOD, a strong champion of the localisation process, calls satirically ‘localwashing’. It is the local organisations who respond first and remain longer in a disaster affected area. They keep the overheads low to ensure that maximum resources reach the affected population. However, they are neither the primary beneficiaries of global funding, nor the funding available within their own countries. That impacts the overall timeliness of response, inclusion of local practices in response plan, completion of humanitarian response cycle, Linking Relief and Rehabilitation with Development (LRRD), and on top of that sustainability of the institutions rooted closer to the vulnerable communities.

A look on the matrix of actors recently responded to floods in the Northeast highlights the marginalisation of local organisations and aid-dependency on national INGOs.

Since local actors lack financial clout, they even get marginalised in the coordination process. A look at the structure of Sphere India will make it clear.

Sphere India, established in 2003, is the largest humanitarian network in India, drawing membership from the government, national and international NGOs, other networks, UN agencies and also the corporate sector. Since the inception, it has done commendable work on assessment, dissemination, coordination, capacity building, advocacy, and so on.

Election of Sphere India board was held in September 2016 to elect new office bearers and board members. According to the Sphere constitution, in addition to having a chair, a vice-chair and a treasurer, it should have two representatives from INGOs, two from national NGOs and one representative each coming from network and UN agencies. The outcome of the election, and present constitution of Sphere India Board is an interesting case study on localization. All the board positions, save one, have gone to international NGOs or their India chapters nominated as local NGOs. ADRA India and CARITAS India find a board seat as national NGOs. Technically, this may be correct but with 3.1 million NGOs, were there no other suitable or credible locally grown institutions to represent the largest and most powerful humanitarian network in India?

Recommendations

It is clear that a lot of meaningful discussion is happening at global level to bring about reform in the humanitarian architecture, but the change process is slow than expected and with lots of impediments from vested interest groups who fear having adverse impact on their size, budget and growth ambition. In addition to some resource-rich INGOs, UN agencies, particularly UNHCR, UNICEF and WFP are possibly the major blockers to transformational reform, because they control so many resources that any change is not in their interest. Some of the donors are very strongly pressing for one intermediary because they have some procedural and philosophical challenges with direct support. IFRC is anxious to optimise its own resources, which implies that it has its own interest if the definition of localisation is diluted.

Ironically, most of the global debates happen without adequate inclusion of southern actors. In absence of awareness, they are unable to influence the decision-making and to hold international actors accountable for the commitments they have made. Therefore, the process should be reversed and the local organisations should be more assertive about their inclusion in global processes, and also more control over the resources available within their own national boundaries. Governments from global South need to be supportive of this localisation process. HAI makes following recommendations in this regard:

Role of Government to support localisation

1. Central and state governments shall allocate at least 75% of their funding directly to local and national actors
2. Central and state governments shall partner with only such civil society networks and associations that has at least 50% representation of local and national actors in their governance structure
3. CSR Act should be amended to ensure that at least 50% of CSR funding directly goes to local and national actors

Governance and compliance by international NGOs

4. Nationalized INGOs, their international affiliates and parent organizations shall by law make public on all fund raising expenses and income, their partnership policies and recruitment policies to help donors make informed choices
5. Wherever possible, Nationalised INGOs should work through partnership with local and national NGOs rather than being operational directly, unless such partnerships are not available
6. INGOs and their affiliate shall ensure that the global discourse on Grand Bargain, Charter4Change and localization processes are discussed with their partners in particular and national or local actors in general and facilitate participation of local and national actors in such global discourses.

Humanitarian Financing and Country Pool Fund

7. To ensure efficiency of financing, a country pool fund shall be created with direct involvement of national networks, national/local actors in partnership with INGOs and their national affiliates, with clear mandate of making resources accessible and available to national and local actors

INGOs and other stakeholders shall invest in building capacities and resources of national and local actors so that they can not have improved access to humanitarian funding, but also significantly contribute to global decision making system

About Humanitarian Aid International

Humanitarian Aid International (HAI) is an Indian organisation, established by a group of highly experienced humanitarian and development professionals. HAI is an attempt to make the process of localisation more meaningful by bringing frontline responders at the forefront of implementation as well as global discourse.

HAI aims to become the first Indian organisation working across India and internationally with support from Indians including the Diaspora, on four thematic areas, i.e., Humanitarian response, Disaster risk reduction, Climate change & adaptation and Humanitarian advocacy

In order to work effectively on the four thematic areas, our focus is on building three pillars in India, i.e., 1) a national platform (of local and national actors, faith-based institutions, corporate houses and media, 2) a national pool fund (to respond to sudden onset disasters), and 3) a national roster (to provide comprehensive surge capacity to local and national actors at the time of disaster response).

[1] Too Important to fail

[2] Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2017

[3] Agenda for Humanity

[4] The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Localization

[5] Future of Development Cooperation

[6] National Disaster Management Plan

[7] Page 145; National Disaster Management Plan

[8] List of Grand Bargain signatories

[9] Future of Development Cooperation

[10] All the figures have been taken from annual reports available on websites

[11] UNICEF India

As Local as Possible, As International as Necessary: Humanitarian Aid International’s Position on Localisation

Charter for Change

Sudhanshu S. Singh is the Executive Director of Humanitarian Aid International-an Indian NGO and endorser of the Charter4Change

Background

Humanitarian aid and humanitarian organizations have been constantly aiming to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of response. Standards, codes and frameworks have evolved. Still, long lasting dichotomy has plagued international humanitarian architecture.

In recent times, there have been growing realization for the need to empower local communities and local organizations as they are the first to respond, better positioned to respond and last to leave, perhaps never to leave. Despite this much articulated fact, humanitarian financing remains severely lopsided with grassroots communities and organizations receiving only a fraction of what should be rightfully theirs.

Since eye-opening revelations post Rwanda genocide, there have been many an attempt towards humanitarian reform. Every major calamity revived the global interest in reform, be it the Humanitarian Reform[1] initiative post Indian Ocean Tsunami or the Transformative…

View original post 1,458 more words

Moving Beyond Rhetorics

The humanitarian sector is grappling with similar problems after Hurricane Matthew. There is again a race to get maximum funds, rush to Haiti to set up response mechanism, finding local actors inef…

Source: Moving Beyond Rhetorics

Moving Beyond Rhetorics

The humanitarian sector is grappling with similar problems after Hurricane Matthew. There is again a race to get maximum funds, rush to Haiti to set up response mechanism, finding local actors inefficient, a chaotic coordination mechanism and so on. This is happening right after the World Humanitarian Summit, in which almost all major actors came up with huge commitments while talking in favour of localisation and empowerment of national response mechanism.

I came across this article which sounds a brutal criticism of the humanitarian sector. However, those who have spent years in the sector, will find themselves in agreement, however reluctant they might be. After every mega disaster, we diagnose the same problems, come up with a global process to fix them up, only to find next time that nothing got changed. Then where does the problem lies? In my opinion, the problem lies in the patronising attitude of western organisations, which believes that they got solutions to every problems facing the developing world, and which they must transfer to local actors for their larger good. Unless this attitude gets changed, no global processes will bring about the desired changes in the humanitarian sector. Finance is not the only resource one needs for an efficient humanitarian response. Human resources and knowledge of context are equally important. It is the local people and organisations who better understand the problems and their possible solutions. They who should be at driving seat?

Accountability has been a key theme during all global processes and the standards emerged during recent years. However, we need to be clear how do we define accountability and how do we we hold ourselves accountable to what we have defined. Shouldn’t we hold someone accountable if the commitments made during all global processes fail? If we don’t move beyond jargons and rhetorics, we will continue discrediting the humanitarian sector at the cost of increasing population of those suffering from natural disasters as well as conflicts.

International Community pledged $10 billion for Haiti after the 2010 earthquake to Build Back Better. One expected that the reconstruction would take care of vulnerability of Haitians and strengthen resilience to protect them from future disasters. The failure of coordination also inspired UN to come up with Transformative Agenda to be more effective while dealing with next mega disasters. Six years down the line, we find little outcome of both.

So far, death toll in Haiti has already reached 1,027 which is still mounting. Only in southwest Haiti 750,000 people need lifesaving assistance and protection. The humanitarian response is again dominated by international actors with little visibility of local organisations and the government. Are we going to plan another global process or a summit which will eventually yield the same result?

National organisations can’t find the solution if they share the belief of western organisations that power lies elsewhere which need to be disseminated at the local level. Humanitarian Aid International (HAI) is trying for an approach with is independent of this western narrative. We believe that power lies with us. We are better aware of the contexts, the problems and the solutions. The financial resources may not be enough for which we welcome collaboration with international community.

HAI is coming up with a national platform in India which consists of homegrown NGOS, civil society organisations and corporate houses. This platform is expected to be self-sufficient to deal with most of the disasters affecting India. There are enough resources within the country to take care of domestic needs. We only need to restore trust of the civil society and corporate sector on the NGO sector. That can be done through utmost operational efficiency, cost-efficiency, accountability and transparency.

Hopefully, HAI will be able to come up with a replicable model within a year or two.

#HurricaneMatthew #Haiti #earthquake #HAI #HumanitarianAidInternational

 

 

HAI Humanitarian Response

In Brief: HAI humanitarian response is an endeavour to bring Indian humanitarian NGOs, corporate sector and faith-based organisations at one platform to coordinate in order to make the humanitarian…

Source: HAI Humanitarian Response

HAI Humanitarian Response

In Brief:

HAI humanitarian response is an endeavour to bring Indian humanitarian NGOs, corporate sector and faith-based organisations at one platform to coordinate in order to make the humanitarian response timely, efficient and cost effective. HAI works through appeals, supported through advocacy so as to make sure that the funds are mobilised adequately, even for forgotten disasters, and reach those on time who are in dire need of it.

The HAI Response Platform (HRP) will also approach media and government departments and ministries for wider coordination around humanitarian issues. The prime objectives of the HRP will be to reduce the response time and maximize cost-efficiency by bringing down administrative expenses. A membership based humanitarian response will help in reaching out to most vulnerable affected communities and enhance community led response capacities for effective humanitarian response. HAI will also intervene in conflicts and protracted crises with thrust on protection issues.

Rationale:

The humanitarian system has existed with one dichotomy since long. There is realisation at all levels that the local communities and organisations are the first to respond, and they have the best capacity to respond to disasters with much more efficiency. Yet, they are at disadvantage when it comes to receiving funding. Until now their funding share is less that 2 per cent, while majority of the funding goes to UN agencies and the INGOs.

The humanitarian architecture continues being dominated be Western NGOs, though many attempts have been made to address the flaws.

The first humanitarian reform was brought about after the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004, and with the realisation that the humanitarian system was not functioning as efficiently as warranted. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) embarked on the process of Humanitarian Reform with three primary purposes[1]:

1. More adequate, timely, flexible and effective humanitarian financing
2. Strengthened humanitarian coordination system
3. Cluster approach

However, couple of mega disasters of 2010, including the Pakistan floods and the Haiti earthquake exposed many weaknesses and inefficiencies in the international humanitarian response mechanism. Given that, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, together with IASC, set off the process of Transformative Agenda (TA) in the year 2011, with three focus areas; 1) leadership, 2) coordination, and 3) accountability.

The TA process aimed to make the humanitarian response timely and efficient by strengthening local actors while ensuring more accountability to the affected population. However, a review undertaken in December 2014, jointly by IASC emergency directors and major humanitarian donors found out that the TA helped little in areas such as leadership, accountability to affected population and protection. Coordination often remained centralised with exclusion of local actors.

The World Humanitarian Summit[2] (WHS) held on May 23-24, 2016 is another key event in the process of reforming the humanitarian sector to make it more responsive and efficient. The TA review committee had made following recommendations to the WHS[3]:

• Do not launch a new global reform process, but consolidate the Transformative Agenda, and focus on its contextualization and rollout.
• Slim down inter-agency processes and focus on delivery.
• Address critical gaps in protection, decentralization of the response, longer-term human resources solutions, longer-term planning and links to local actors and security/risk management.
• Refocus on crisis-affected people with, for instance, an accelerated shift to cash.

The WHS process, which started almost three years ago and culminated in Turkey on May 23-24, 2016, had started with following four themes:

1. Humanitarian effectiveness
2. Reducing vulnerability and managing risk
3. Transformation through innovation
4. Serving the needs of people in conflict

In the summary report of the Summit, the UN secretary general said, “…..humanitarian assistance alone can neither adequately address nor sustainably reduce the needs of over 130 million of the world’s most vulnerable people. A new and coherent approach is required based on addressing root causes, increasing political diplomacy for prevention and conflict resolution, and bringing humanitarian, development and peace-building efforts together[4]”.

The secretary general laid out his vision in his report One Humanity: Shared Responsibility and its Annex, the Agenda for Humanity. The report covers five core responsibilities and committed to use them as a framework to improve collective response to humanity. These five core responsibilities are:

1. Political leadership to prevent and end conflict
2. Uphold the norms that safeguard humanity

• Leave no one behind

1. Change people’s lives: From delivering aid to ending need
2. Invest in humanity

HAI has also developed its own commitments towards these five core responsibilities, which can be read here: HAI commitments towards the WHS.

The Summit has ended on a high note, but even the secretary general gave a caveat that this was not an end of a process, but the beginning. Of course, there are sceptics, who feel that WHS may also end up being just another event without much impact on the way the sector has been functioning. However, even if that is true, each of us need to be a change agent than expecting any other institution or process to overhaul the system, we are very much part of.

There have been some encouraging outcomes of the WHS, such as, formation of Network for Empowered Aid Response (NEAR)[5], which is a network of southern NGOs, and also a decision to increase funding for local organisations up to 25% through Charter for Change.

The Platform:

The proposed platform of humanitarian actors in India is one concrete step to address the flaws; the humanitarian sector has been struggling with.

There is absolute dominance of UN agencies and Western organisations over the humanitarian architecture despite the fact that maximum programmes are carried out in the third world countries, and through the national organisations rooted locally. The paradigm is such that it continues to disempower national organisations, keeps them dependent upon international actors and makes their functioning unsustainable.

In spite of the attempts made so far, scant regard has been paid on putting the recommendations to practice. Consequently, the status quo continues. Following are some areas, which affect operational efficiency of local NGOs the most:

Staffing: Local organisations operate on low budget. They often recruit staff from local communities and train them to be efficient. International actors, with deep pockets, don’t hesitate to take away such staff if they appear all of a sudden on the scene to respond to a disaster. In some cases, local NGOs lost their 100% staff to international organisations, when they needed them the most to respond to disasters.

This pattern has serious ramifications. The local organisations are the first to respond to disasters, and they stay back to continue working on rehabilitation and disaster risk reduction, even when the international actors have gone. However, presence of INGOs seriously erodes their operational capacity. Charter for Change addresses this issue. HAI, as a national organisation, will make sure that the charter is implemented with its full spirit.

Inflated Operation: In the event of a mega disaster, all the international organisations try to be closer to the scene as it helps to justify their existence and also helps in mobilising funds so that they survive and grow. However, often they have little time and desire to assess local economy. They just replicate their international pattern, which inflates operational cost in no time in each disaster-affected zones. This sudden surge in rents, vehicle hire, hotel tariffs, salaries, consultancies and so on, overwhelms operational capacity of local organisations. Consequently either they wind up or continue as sub-contractors to international organisations. By the time early relief phase is over, and most of the international organisations gone, local actors are left with reduced capacity to cope in an inflated economy.

Humanitarian Financing: Humanitarian financing is going through a sea change. Most of the countries from Europe and North America, from where the funding agencies originate, are facing financial decline or stagnation. As a result, they had to downsize and close several of their operations. Refer this report on Funding Crisis with UK NGOs. Many western NGOs are now registering themselves in third world countries, particularly in growing economies to start raising funds. Within no time, they have become prime beneficiaries of CRS funding. The Charter for Change recommends giving funding to southern-based NGOs, and that will remain a grey area. If funding continues to western NGOs, now registered in the south, the charter recommendation will be fulfilled without changing anything in reality.

India, which is now the fastest growing economy, has almost all the western NGOs registered here as Indian entity. Evidently they have the brand and capacity to reach out to individual donors and corporate houses. Indian local organisations will continue to be the sub-contractors. The humanitarian paradigm will continue to function with similar flaws. Shouldn’t we change that by bringing Indian local organisations at the forefront? HRP exactly plans to do the same to make Charter for Change more meaningful.

HAI will bring grass root Indian organisations at one platform and further strengthen their capacity to be much more quicker, efficient and accountable in their responses. HAI will keep contingency plans ready, and will seek sustainable solutions to natural disasters and conflicts. The fundamental principles of the HEC will be:

1. Reduced response time
2. Reach out to most vulnerable affected communities
3. Operating with minimal administrative expenditure
4. Maximum accountability to the affected population, donors and the government
5. Strengthening resilience at the core of the programming
6. Ensuring that response adhere with most appropriate humanitarian standards while maintaining dignity of affected population
7. Breaking the silos of humanitarian response, DRR and development programmes
8. Humanitarian advocacy
9. Innovate new technologies for quality humanitarian assistance and monitoring, such as, cash transfer, mobile monitoring technology etc.

Who could be member of HEC?

There will be two types or memberships part of the HEC:

1. Implementing members
2. Resource agencies
3. Media houses

1. Implementing members:

Indian humanitarian organisations registered under Societies Registration Act, Indian Trust Act or Section 8 of the Indian Companies Act, could apply for membership of HEC as implementing members.

2. Resource agencies:

Indian corporate bodies, their apex institutions, media houses, faith-based institutions and civil society organisations willing to contribute resources – finance, human resource, material, and visibility and advocacy support, can seek membership under this category. These institutions will apply for membership with the understanding that partnership with HAI will solely be based on humanitarian principles, not to push for any corporate, faith based or any other vested agenda.

3. Media houses:

Media plays critical role in creating public awareness at large, which helps in mobilising resources as well as taking up related advocacy issues. At the same time, lack of media attention, particularly towards recurring disasters becomes an impediment. Given that, HAI will bring in national media at its platform, so as recurring and silent disasters also get attention. Media partnership will also be helpful in taking up humanitarian advocacy and building up public opinion around the issues of resilience, DRR and climate.

HAI believes that the success of HRP will provide a replicable model to the rest of the humanitarian community.

For more information please contact:

 

Sudhanshu S. Singh

Executive Director

Email:                         humaidint@gmail.com

Website:         www.humanitarianaidinternational.org

[1] http://www.unocha.org/annualreport/2006/html/part1_humanitarian.html

[2] https://www.worldhumanitariansummit.org/

[3] http://reliefweb.int/report/world/iasc-transformative-agenda-review-reviews-and-their-follow

[4] http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Chairs%20Summary.pdf

[5] http://www.near.ngo/

Indian Role in Humanitarian Financing

Humanitarian Aid International (HAI) has been founded by a group of Indian development and humanitarian professionals, with a dream of setting up an Indian organisation, which operates globally with exclusive support from Indians, including the Indian diaspora. Disaster management remains at the core whether we respond to a disaster or carry out a development programme.

The need for setting up this international Indian organisation was felt primarily for two reasons:

1. Complete absence of an Indian organisation working globally on alleviation of poverty, hunger and suffering while having its roots in India

2. Current global humanitarian architecture, which is faulty, disempowering for national actors with scant desire among global (Western) actors to fix them

Absence of a global Indian organisation:

The Founding Document of HAI analyses the prevailing humanitarian architecture, changing pattern of humanitarian financing, political environment and ambition in India to be at centre stage, and the growing affluence of Indian middle class, Indian corporate houses and Indian diaspora making them new actors in contributing to global goals on development, climate and risk reduction.

Please refer Founding Document here.

Global Humanitarian Architecture:

There is absolute dominance of UN agencies and Western organisations over the humanitarian architecture despite the fact that maximum programmes are carried out in the third world countries, and through the national organisations rooted locally. The paradigm is such that it continues to disempower national organisations, keeps them dependent upon international actors and makes their functioning unsustainable.

Several attempts have been made to fix the flaws, such as Humanitarian Reform (2005), Transformative Agenda (2011) and World Humanitarian Summit (2016), but with scant intentions to put the recommendations to practice. Consequently, the status quo continues. Following are some areas, which affect operational efficiency of local NGOs the most:

Staffing: Local organisations operate on low budget. They often recruit staff from local communities and train them to be efficient. International actors, with deep pockets, don’t hesitate to take away such staff if they appear all of a sudden on the scene to respond to a disaster. In some cases, local NGOs lost their 100% staff to international organisations, when they needed them the most to respond to disasters.

This pattern has serious ramifications. The local organisations are the first to respond to disasters, and they stay back to continue working on rehabilitation and disaster risk reduction, even when the international actors have gone. However, presence of INGOs seriously erodes their operational capacity. World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) came up with Charter for Change to address the problem, but instead of helping the local organisations, it legitimises the process of taking away staff by compensating the local organisations.

Inflated Operation: In the event of a mega disaster, all the international organisations try to be closer to the scene as it helps to justify their existence and also helps in mobilising funds so that they survive and grow. However, often they have little time and desire to assess local economy. They just replicate their international pattern, which inflates operational cost in no time in each disaster-affected zones. This sudden surge in rents, vehicle hire, hotel tariffs, salaries, consultancies and so on, overwhelms operational capacity of local organisations. Consequently either they wind up or continue as sub-contractors to international organisations. By the time early relief phase is over, and most of the international organisations gone, local actors are left with reduced capacity to cope in an inflated economy.

Humanitarian Financing: Humanitarian financing is going through a sea change. Most of the countries from Europe and North America, from where the funding agencies originate, are facing financial decline or stagnation. As a result, they had to downsize and close several of their operations. Refer this report on Funding Crisis with UK NGOs. However, many of them are smart to adapt quickly to survive and flourish, albeit again at the cost of local NGOs. Many western NGOs are now registering themselves in third world countries, particularly in growing economies to start raising funds. Within no time, they have become prime beneficiaries of CRS funding.

India, which is now the fastest growing economy, has almost all the western NGOs registered here as Indian entity. Most of them have an annual target of USD 5 million from India alone. Christian Aid – a UK NGO is now registered as Change Alliance in India. Handicap International is registered as Standing Tall. World Vision, which recruits staff only from one denomination of a particular faith, raises more than USD 5 million from India alone and 30% of its overall funding from Asia. Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC), which is a group of 13 leading UK funding agencies, is now replicating the model in India. In the Indian group of DEC, all but one, organisations are international. Evidently they have the brand and capacity to reach out to individual donors and corporate houses.

Indian local organisations will continue to be the sub-contractors. The humanitarian paradigm will continue to function with similar flaws. Shouldn’t we change that by bringing Indian local organisations at the forefront? HAI has been conceived to do exactly the same. However, in order to do that, HAI needs active support from Indians and Indian corporate houses. HAI needs support in the following areas:

Enhancing functional capacity of HAI: As of now HAI has inadequate infrastructure to function. Presently the voluntary spirit of some of the founding members and a few volunteers are driving the activities. However, that is not sustainable. HAI needs a functional office with a core team of staff. During the first year, we need approximately INR 63 lakhs to set up a fully functional office with a core team of staff. Please see the Institution Building proposal here.

National platform: HAI is establishing a national platform, consisting of local NGOs, faith-based institutions, corporate and media houses. The platform will ensure that responses to disasters are quicker to save more lives, and also more cost efficient so that maximum resources are utilised on direct programmes. During peacetime, the platform will work on three other thematic areas of HAI, which are Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Change & Adaptation, and Humanitarian Advocacy.  The approximate budget for strengthening the platform with proper capacity building of the platform members is INR 39 lakhs. Please see National Platform proposal here.

Flood Response Appeal: HAI has launched its flood-response appeal for the states of Assam and Bihar. The response is carried out through three local members of HAI. The appeal budget is INR 1,20,00,000. Full appeal can be downloaded from here.

National Programme: HAI has identified four thematic areas to work on: 1) humanitarian response, 2) disaster risk reduction, 3) climate change & adaptation, and 4) humanitarian advocacy.

While humanitarian response will be reactive to disasters, other programmes will run in the identified areas under a national programme. During the first year, HAI will develop a national programme, with budget, which will be implemented through the platform members.

International Programmes: At this stage we are negotiating with the government, seeking permission to operate internationally as an Indian entity.

Through this article, we are reaching out to Indian corporate houses and individuals (including Indian diaspora) seeking financial so that we can strengthen an Indian system, which is low-cost, sustainable and indigenous. The humanitarian and development sector is full of Indian professionals, but without a single international Indian organisation. Through HAI, we aspire to take Indian knowledge, practice, expertise and resources to the rest of the world to make our own contribution. We sincerely hope to receive support from you to realise this big plan, dreamt by a few individuals.

We hope to build a global Indian brand through your support. Please visit http://www.humanitarianaidinternational.org.

Contributions can be made through several options. Please check this link: https://eazypay.icicibank.com/homePage or find the account details at the website. Please do notify your contribution at humaidint@gmail.com

 

Sudhanshu S. Singh

Executive Director

Knowledge is power or power is knowledge

Source: Knowledge is power or power is knowledge