Recent and severe international funding cuts to the humanitarian and foreign aid sector have created an often-overlooked crisis: a critical shortfall in the digital infrastructure that underpins humanitarian and global health research, learning, and operations. As organisations work under intense pressure in emergency environments with diminishing budgets, data collection and the long-term preservation of institutional memory and knowledge is frequently deprioritised. Yet the consequences of this loss are profound and permanent, undermining future response capacity, accountability, and historical understanding.
This panel will outline the nature and scale of the problem and invite perspectives from leaders across the humanitarian, learning, and academic sectors. Together, speakers will explore what needs to be considered now to protect at-risk knowledge systems and how new collaborations and models might form the basis of practical, ethical, and sustainable solutions. The discussion will draw on emerging work within the Humanitarian Archive Emergency (HAE) initiative: an international cross sector network to identify at-risk digital humanitarian records and develop ethical salvage solutions for future research and humanitarian operations.
Through this session, participants will gain an understanding of how collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches can help preserve essential evidence during a period of sector-wide instability and diminishing resources. The panel will highlight opportunities for partnership, innovation, and shared responsibility to ensure that critical humanitarian memory is not irretrievably lost.
Panelists:
- Christina Wille | Director, Insecurity Insight
- Bertrand Taithe | Professor of Cultural History, HCRI
- Abby Stoddard | Director, Humanitarian Outcomes
- Dr Unni Karunakara | Senior Fellow, Global Health Justice Partnership, Yale Law School
Introductory remarks
- Stephanie Rinaldi | Research programmes manager, HCRI
Moderator
- Juliet Parker | Director, ALNAP
This event has now past. Catch up on the conversation by watching the recording of the event below.