* Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
With humanitarian needs increasing worldwide, NGOs continue to deliver the majority of humanitarian aid to disaster-affected populations. How funding modalities function is crucial to ensuring quality humanitarian aid. Hence the focus of this issue is on institutional humanitarian donors, as a key element in the humanitarian system. However, relationships between donors and the organisations they fund often goes beyond the funding itself; when real partnerships exist, it is very much appreciated by NGOs.
Through a variety of articles, VOICE’s newsletter VOICE Out Loud 17: Humanitarian donors: policy and practice explores the different aspects and challenges of humanitarian donors’ work and their relationship with partners.
A group of key donors have agreed amongst themselves on clear standards for their work: the Good Humanitarian Donorship principles. An article on donor peer reviews undertaken by OECD-DAC which makes reference to these standards to assess humanitarian donorship, brings to light some of the common challenges faced by donors. These reviews are very interesting exercises with useful outcomes, as is reflected upon by one of the NGOs involved in the process. A clear lesson learnt from the peer reviews is the need to invest more in Disaster Risk Reduction, which is a topic that increasingly receives attention from donors such as Dutch government. However, making decisions on funding allocations is not always straightforward, especially for smaller donors, as illustrated in an article from Belgium.
Each donor obviously has its own policy priorities, but they also have their own requirements such as in terms of financial cycles, reporting and procurement guidelines. Hence two VOICE members reflect on the challenges related to fundraising from a multitude of donors and the differences in working with two of the largest humanitarian donors worldwide: the US and the European Commission.
Lastly, while the United Nations are a well-known humanitarian actor, what is less known is that they also often act as a donor for NGOs, either by partnering with NGOs for implementation of their programmes, or through the administration of pooled funds, which two VOICE members reflect on.
Humanitarian donors are of course part of a wider government structure, which may make decisions to the detriment of humanitarian objectives. In the ‘View on the EU’ section, the author reflects on the discussions related to the EU ‘comprehensive approach’ and opportunities and risks related to this for humanitarians. Finally, this issue’s field focus looks at the increasingly forgotten crisis in Pakistan.
Previous newsletters can be found here: http://www.ngovoice.org/
