Analyzing gaps in the humanitarian aid and disaster risk financing landscape

A global mapping of humanitarian and disaster-related financing in the preceding paper has highlighted the range of flows received by countries experiencing crisis. Whilst this has demonstrated a varied landscape of financing mechanisms, further analysis has also drawn attention to the potential gaps in the current humanitarian system. The following paper explores such gaps between the global humanitarian caseload and existing financing flows along the dimensions of predictability, severity and timing, in order to understand the potential for a new risk finance facility for NGOs.

Key messages

• Predictability: Analysis of previous UN appeals suggests that at least 55% of crises are somewhat predictable. This means that they are ‘known knowns’ or ‘know unknowns’ whereby risks could be managed and planned for to some extent in advance. Despite this, it is estimated that predictable funding released based on pre-agreed triggers or plans through regional risk pools and early action systems is equivalent to less than 1% of the UN appeals funding channelled to these crises.

• Severity: Analysis suggests that smaller crises affecting less than 1 million people make up the vast majority of natural hazard related disasters. However, the available data indicates that they were responsible for only 6% of reported crisisaffected people. We know that numbers of people affected are not well captured for smaller crises. It is also difficult to capture funding flows to smaller and underthe-radar events as they tend not to feature in UN appeals. From what information is available, between 9% and 32% of humanitarian assistance went to countries experiencing ‘forgotten’ or ‘under the radar’ crises during this period. For those countries most affected, needs clearly surpassed humanitarian funding.

• Timing: The vast majority (over 90%) of humanitarian funding is allocated to response, versus less than 1% to anticipation 3.8% to preparedness, and 5.5% to recovery and reconstruction. This is despite growing evidence of the benefits of investment in preparedness, anticipation and early response, representing a significant gap in best practice versus actual practice.