Blogs
The article titled "Navigating the Triple Nexus: Leveraging Diplomatic Synergies for Health Systems Strengthening" addresses the vital interplay between diplomacy and health system support in conflict-ridden areas. Through the lens of Humanitarian Diplomacy (HD) and Global Health Diplomacy (GHD), the piece advocates for a nuanced, integrated approach embodied by the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus. This approach seeks to unify immediate relief with long-term development and peace efforts, using diplomacy as a tool to navigate the complex challenges faced by health systems in such settings, thereby ensuring sustainable health improvements and the safeguarding of human rights.
In this article, Miguel Castillo, a healthcare professional with over 10 years of experience at field level and hospital-based facilities in conflict-affected, developing and western countries, discusses his experience during the Rohingya crisis, highlighting the critical role of digital solutions in enhancing healthcare in humanitarian settings. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of such technologies, improving healthcare coverage globally, including in crisis-affected areas. The focus is on the digital transformation of health services, emphasizing the importance of technological infrastructure and the challenges in transitioning to digital systems. Key aspects include the expansion of 5G technology and increased smartphone accessibility, especially in low-and-middle-income countries. The article projects a significant rise in smartphone adoption by 2030, driven by affordability, and explores how these advancements improve health coverage in humanitarian situations.
This article explores the integration of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in foresight practices. Foresight, at its core, involves diverse perspectives envisioning future scenarios. Matthew Thomas, as part of the British Red Cross, discusses the rapid use of AI tools, specifically ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Perplexity, to sketch scenarios with a case study related to the UK's cost of living crisis. Although, initial results were unimpressive, with limitations in scenario generation, the article highlights the potential for AI to augment foresight practice, aiding in analysis and content generation for scenario creation.
The following article is a personal story from our fellow Mariana Merelo: In the winter of 2019, after two decades as a humanitarian and development practitioner, Mariana found questioning her role in driving systemic change within the humanitarian ecosystem. Despite being surrounded by passionate change-makers, including foresight experts, partnership advocates, and local champions, she felt stuck in the wrong vehicle for change. Mariana had worked for a prominent INGO, which espoused a commitment to empower local actors and crisis-affected communities in decision-making and emergency responses. However, a glaring gap existed between the organization's rhetoric and tangible actions. It was not until she found collaborative foresight, as a co-created and co-evolving approach to explore alternative futures that she found a response to the previous challenge.
While anti-corruption efforts are on the rise, challenges persist, including declining global peace, weakening democracies, a shift to a multipolar world, cybersecurity threats, declining ethical standards, and evolving technology. Despite these obstacles, there's a growing global focus on anti-corruption measures, with organizations and governments working together. However, the future remains uncertain, with potential developments like AI-driven corruption and innovative technologies offering both risks and opportunities.
Mexico's demographic shift from a youthful population to an aging society by 2050 brings both challenges and opportunities. The median age is projected to rise from 27.9 to 42 years. Scenarios include a "Growth Scenario" with economic strength but pension system concerns, a "Collapse Scenario" depicting institutional breakdown and grassroots responses, a "Limits & Discipline Scenario" with elderly power leading to youth drain, and a "Transformation Scenario" driven by comprehensive reforms and a care economy. Proactive measures like nurturing a "silver economy," migrant integration, and financial education are recommended to shape a favorable future amid demographic changes.
Save the Children Italia is undergoing a strategic transformation guided by IARAN to navigate contemporary multidimensional shifts. Engaging around 100 staff, the organization employs a foresight-based approach to explore potential future contexts until 2030. Through a collaborative process, key drivers have been identified and detailed in "Driver Files." This article narrates the example of "Geopolitical Shifts" and highlights the evolving global political landscape's impact on democracy, civil liberties, populism, and international relations. This exercise encourages systemic thinking, breaks silos, and challenges hierarchical dynamics, emphasizing collective intelligence to inform strategic choices and adapt to a changing world.
"Unleashing Local Potential: Advancing Aid Localization in Ukraine" delves into the critical importance of bringing power and resources closer to the communities in need. The article highlights the crisis in Ukraine as a turning point for advancing the localization agenda in humanitarian aid. By recognizing the capabilities of local actors and addressing the challenges they face, the article advocates for a transformative approach that empowers Ukrainian civil society and fosters effective localization of aid.
Innovation in the humanitarian sector is a challenging journey, often hindered by cultural resistance. However, with a transformation strategy, leadership support, and a culture open to change, these obstacles can be overcome. Strategic foresight, which anticipates future trends and proactively develops solutions, can greatly enhance this process. External pressures, like the COVID-19 pandemic, can also catalyze cultural transformation, prompting organizations to rethink traditional ways and embrace innovation.
The world is facing a severe economic downturn, but the flow of remittances has been relatively stable and continues to provide support for many families in low and middle-income countries. According to the World Bank, global remittance flows reached $626 billion in 2022, an increase of 5% from the previous year. This growth is smaller than in previous years, but it is significant given the economic outlook. Investing in livelihoods support for migrants in high-income countries could be an effective way of supporting communities globally.
The humanitarian ecosystem is failing to adapt to global transformations and new types of crises. This failure is rooted in the opportunistic nature of ODA flow governance and the entrenched value chain of formal humanitarian actors. To break free from this short-termism trap, the humanitarian ecosystem must shift its approach and values, prioritizing the needs and voices of those affected by humanitarian crises. Only then can it fulfill its potential to provide effective and lasting assistance.
Two years of huge emergency after huge emergency - from the Covid-19 pandemic’s various variants to evacuations from Afghanistan and a series of storms battering the UK - our people are tired, yet the need for humanitarian aid continues to grow. And then the Ukraine crisis boiled over.
We have always struggled to plan for the many uncertainties the future may bring, but the massive disruptions of the last couple of years made us realise that grappling with uncertainty is not an option.
The British Red Cross’s Strategic Insight and Foresight team has been developing a way to rapidly construct scenarios about the future, helping our teams get a sense of likely people’s short-term and longer-term humanitarian needs, as well as the potential ripple effects caused by a crisis.
Evaluations of humanitarian interventions can broadly be divided into two categories: process and impact. While a process evaluation seeks to examine how the intervention was delivered and if the conduct or context influenced the outcome, an impact evaluation seeks to understand the causality between the intervention and the “positive and negative, primary and secondary long-term effects produced …, directly or indirectly, intended or unintended” (OECD-DAC 2010), in short, the impact. In my experience, this is the more commonly requested type of evaluation, particularly from, and to reassure, donors, who above all want to see and share tangible results.
Along with other organisations in the formal humanitarian aid sector, the way in which large INGOS operate has been under challenge for some time. They have been legitimately criticised for holding nearly all decision-making in programme design and financial power at international level in their “Global North” headquarters, while engaging with national and local partners in the “Global South” in sub-contracting relationships. The need for reform or even transformation is broadly defined as “localisation” – the shifting of power to the “South” and the “local.” Recently, the issue has taken on a new urgency due to practical challenges to traditional operating models posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, and moral-ethical challenges posed by a renewed focus on racial discrimination and injustices, alongside continued concerns about gender equity in the sector.
Whilst multilateral reform and changing the current models of humanitarian financing are ultimately what is needed for systemic change, every agency could adjust the way that it develops programmes- and this small change has the potential to transform aid. Designing and delivering aid programs is a core function of most humanitarian organizations and therefore it is in the process that all humanitarian aid sectors needs to revisit to begin their equity-based, decolonial journey.
Universities and research centers are important, non-traditional, humanitarian actors that actively participate in knowledge production and cadre formation for the sector, with a preponderance of global North institutions over the ones from the South.
There are, at least, three areas of opportunity for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the global North to engage productively with the principles and objectives of the Grand Bargain proposed during the World Humanitarian Summit of 2016, so that humanitarian knowledge production can also jump into the “localization” wagon:
Are you unsure about how technology may be able to help you to achieve your humanitarian sector objectives? Do you want to understand where emerging and existing technologies can assist people that are in need?
Matt Twilley would like to share with you some of his experiences and open up some ideas on how potentially the use of technology in the right way can give you more opportunity to really help those in need.
Featured news & op-eds
Michel Maietta, former Director of Strategy at Save the Children International and Action Against Hunger, IARAN director and facilitator, recently gave an interview regarding the issue of migration from the humanitarian and European perspective. The interview also touched on other matters, including media perception and the role of NGOs and civil society on the matter.
In this Shabka Inform & Debate series several authors answer the question what changes are to be expected for development policy as well as development and humanitarian aid in the polycrisis. Since the call for inputs was bilingual in character, the answers are both, in German and English language.
Heba Ali, director of The New Humanitarian, shares her analysis of what we thought COVID19 would change and the change we’ve seen to date. From mid-size INGOs struggling following the COVID19 crisis, to overwhelming needs in multiple countries and at transnational level: new actors are becoming more relevant while the formal humanitarian sector is digging in old-fashioned programming, behind walls of existentialist inertia.
L’ONG, fragilisée par un scandale sexuel en 2018 et par la crise du coronavirus qui réduit ses recettes, va fermer plusieurs bureaux. Elle en profite pour réinventer son action et laisser plus de place aux organisations du sud. Dans ce monde qui évolue, « Oxfam essaie de se remettre en question. Décroître n’est pas mourir. On meurt quand on n’accepte pas les changements du monde et que l’on refuse de se transformer », explique Michel Maietta.
Comment favoriser leur inclusion et leur visibilité dans les sociétés où ils et elles vivent? Comment répondre à une crise humanitaire qui n’en porte jamais le nom ? A l’occasion de la parution du rapport "A Global Outlook on LGBTI Social Exclusion through 2030" de l'Inter-Agency Research and Analysis Network (IARAN), Michel Maietta reponds aux questions de Xavier Martinet sur France Culture.
The persecution of LGBTI individuals is a crime against humanity. We can be under no illusion that this humanitarian protracted crisis will be resolved quickly, despite examples of recent progress with the decriminalisation of homosexuality. The humanitarian sector has already shown concerted efforts to ensure gender inclusion, we now need more than ever a leap in humanitarian leadership to enlarge this agenda to effectively encompass the whole of the LGBTI community.
There is no disputing that this growing global connectivity can provide more opportunities for self-organization and access to alternative sources of assistance to people affected by crisis. However, many people will also be left behind in the digital divide.
“Bringing flawed humans and organisations together to collaborate is no easy task. But faced with the daunting nature of global challenges, I believe networks offer an inspiring vision for collective change and that each of us should seize the opportunity to bring together our respective strengths to tackle multidimensional challenges. As I look ahead, I’m excited to be joining a network of fellows working on the future of humanitarian assistance, and to find new networks in my future home of Port au Prince, Haiti. I hope to collaborate with many of you along the way”. Isabelle Pelly
We, as humanitarians, are compelled to respond to the suffering of others, yet, when it comes to the distribution of aid, repeatedly people affected by crisis report having very limited ability to influence the decisions we take in our efforts to support them. Formal aid actors must choose to change and adapt, and use this moment to focus on supporting crisis-affected people to have stronger voices, more choices and greater influence over the aid they receive.
L’Indonésie a développé une expertise en matière de séisme et de tsunami. Elle tente de l’utiliser depuis le 28 septembre à Palu. « Les ONG internationales ne peuvent plus se permettre d’intervenir sans la société civile qui a la connaissance du terrain », affirme Michel Maietta.
“The Future of Aid” does not make any guarantees about the future. Nothing is set in stone, and the world stage is set to change at any time. However, INGOs and other organizations can benefit from taking heed of its predictions and advice. Through these forward-thinking strategies, aid organizations will be able to better anticipate the future and prepare accordingly.
By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in slums or shanties. In areas like these, conditions are squalid — residents have limited access to clean water, electricity and arable land, and without a central sewage system, will live amid pollution and waste. The humanitarian sector will need "fundamental, not incremental" change, state Eilidh Kennedy.
This blog is based on research from The Future of Aid, a foresight study on the future of aid through to 2030. It looks at current trends, presents 4 scenarios for the future, categorises crises that are likely to occur in the next 15 years and lays out 5 organisational profiles for INGOs to implement to ensure relevance through to 2030. Click here for the full report.
Ethique, financement : vers un changement de paradigme humanitaire ? Écoutez Michel Maietta répondre aux questions de Xavier Martinet
As global power and resources shift away from traditional bastions, researchers warn major aid organisations will be sidelined by 2030 unless they change tack.
Michel Maietta shares with the Huffington Post the 9 types of crises that we will have to deal with through to 2030. “Everyone will need to prepare for the crises that are on the horizon. We are seeing an increasing number of new aid actors delivering aid, such as private companies, the military, faith-based organisations, the diaspora, citizens' movements.”
Building foresight into humanitarian response and development: A call from IARAN for long-term thinking and participation precedes news from the front, from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Afghanistan is one of the countries that received the highest amount of ODI over the past 20 years, yet poverty has lately been on the rise. Aid is heavily politicized and the fight against corruption has shown limited success. Consequently, the aid sector is affected by a fundamental lack of trust: high ranking officials of the Afghan government have repeatedly expressed their distrust of aid actors