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.

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.

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.

Los actores humanitarios no pueden seguir reproduciendo modelos reaccionarios que al final benefician a las OING y no a las personas afectadas por las crisis. Una forma de hacerlo es dejar de reaccionar a cada crisis que surge de la nada.

The provision of impartial aid to affected populations has become everyone’s business in this post-globalized world. Aid actors cannot continue reproducing reactionary models that at the end benefit INGOs and not crisis-affected people.

Acabar con los encierros es, como lo define Paul Watzlawick, “una ultra-solución”: un intento de arreglar un problema deshaciéndose de todo lo que tenga que ver con el mismo. Al caer en esta trampa, los gobiernos están utilizando la ultra-solución, arriesgándose a destruir tanto la economía, como la vida de las personas al final del túnel.

Lockdowns are what Paul Watzlawick defines as “an ultra-solution”: an attempt to fix a problem by getting rid of it and everything that goes with it. Falling into this trap, governments are at risk of destroying both the economy and peoples lives.

Humanitarian aid in itself comes from a genuine and noble idea of helping people affected by crises. Nonetheless, it has grown to be based on unequal and neocolonialist practices. Why do I think this?

The international system is constantly evolving, why isn’t the humanitarian sector changing with it? New global crises demand a change of paradigm and a more strategic approach in order to better face future problems.

L’homophobie est entendue comme les discriminations de tous ordres à l’encontre des personnes LGBT (lesbiennes, gays, bisexuelles et transgenres). Si «l’homophobie politique» est déjà connue en tant qu’outil de duplicité en politique intérieure, Michel Maietta explore davantage son pouvoir de manipulation, jusqu’à sa dimension géopolitique. L’auteur nous rappelle à quel point la protection des droits des personnes LGBT revêt une importance stratégique dans la défense plus large des droits de l’homme.

Is it possible to use foresight analysis to tackle the geopolitics of homophobia? Michel Maietta discusses the progress made so far and how the futures technique could be beneficial to decriminalizing homosexuality everywhere

In this piece Leonie reflects on a workshop which she attended in mid-June where she spent 3 days with the IARAN fellows: a group of humanitarian professionals with expertise that spans urban planning and UK asylum law to GIS and social entrepreneurship. They discussed how each of them, in their separate organisations can bring change to the humanitarian sector, for the better.

For many across the world, May 17th takes a pertinent and personal meaning since becoming accustomed, and widely accepted, as the International Day against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, or more commonly known, and such referred to in this blog, as IDAHOBIT. 

We give a retrospective analysis of the level of global LGBTI social exclusion following the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in April.

Many have said it before: localisation needs to stop being a talking point and start being a reality. But we have been saying this since the advent of capacity building. So do we really mean it? If so, how can we bring about localised change effectively, and swiftly?

Why localisation is no longer an 'if', but firmly, a 'when'.