State of the Humanitarian System

Development workers look at their checklist during an awareness raising drive in Dhaka
Photo: UN Women/Fahad Abdullah Kaizer | CC BY NC ND 2.0

ALNAP’s flagship report assesses the size, shape and performance of the humanitarian sector over time.

“Thanks to ALNAP, we can look at ourselves in the mirror every few years in the State of the Humanitarian System Report.”

Hugo Slim, Senior Research Fellow at Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, University of Oxford.

The State of the Humanitarian System (SOHS) report is the only independent, longitudinal study of humanitarian aid performance.

Produced since 2010 and covering 5 editions, the SOHS draws together a huge body of evidence including exclusive research with crisis-affected people and practitioners, and a synthesis of all publicly available evaluations of humanitarian response.

We have already started work on the 2026 study. We will soon be publishing the 2026 SOHS Inception report.

The SOHS is an indispensable resource for humanitarian policy makers and users of evidence, providing a robust assessment and a comprehensive picture of the trends in funding, resource flows, staffing and organisations.

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SOHS 2022: watch a summary of the key facts and figures from the report

Explore previous editions of the SOHS

Explore themes with the greatest potential to bring about positive change and improvements in the humanitarian sector

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