Intense pressure to respond to multiple humanitarian crises will have a deadly effect on the world’s poorest people unless leaders step up with more effective, increased financing at the World Humanitarian Summit, warns The ONE Campaign.

ONE’s new Financing Stability report – released today – illustrates how existing efforts to support refugees and end poverty are inadequate and have no hope of meeting current and future needs.

From the Syrian refugee crisis and the Zika virus to weather disasters and extreme poverty, the need for donor assistance is at its highest level in decades – and growing.

If current trends continue, by 2030 the costs of humanitarian assistance alone are projected to double to $50 billion – just when the world should be achieving the Sustainable Development Goals to end extreme poverty.

But budget trade-offs are resulting in some donors becoming the single biggest recipients of their own overseas aid as they divert development resources to cover the costs of supporting refugees at home.

Substantial new resources and sweeping policy reforms, such as those set out in the Grand Bargain*, are therefore urgently required for the world’s most vulnerable people to have a hope of leading productive lives.

The international community needs to think bigger and move faster in addressing current crises at this, the first ever World Humanitarian Summit.  It needs to agree to invest more strategically in preventing future ones through life-saving overseas aid to the world’s poorest people.

Global stability is in all our interests, but won’t be achieved until humanitarian and development financing is on a surer footing.

Bono, co-founder of ONE and lead singer of U2 said:

“More conflicts and disasters mean more vulnerable people in the world, but the safety net to catch them is full of holes. Despite the heroic efforts of the UN Refugee Agency, the World Food Programme and others, millions of refugees lack adequate shelter and food and only half of refugee children are in primary school.

“Leaders need to protect long term development funding to tackle extreme poverty while providing the humanitarian aid needed to support some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

“Global leaders meeting at the UN Humanitarian Summit next week should sign on to the Grand Bargain and its call for multi-year funding, backed by strong transparency mandates. It’s smart policy and smart money, and it is in all our interests to end the current piecemeal and uncoordinated approach.”

ENDS:

ONE’s Financing Stability report*

• This short report with a foreword by Kristalina Georgieva, Vice President of the European Commission and Co-chair of the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing, provides new analysis of the latest OECD/DAC figures in relation to the refugee crisis and the impact on overseas aid.
• ONE recommends in its report that leaders seek to implement without delay increased resources to fund both long-term development and humanitarian needs in developing countries –  particularly those that are supporting refugees and fighting extreme poverty, and introduce more budget flexibility.
• It also calls on governments to immediately stop using development assistance to fund in-donor costs, and retain the fundamental and valuable principles around development spending, and commit to greater transparency as well as greater effectiveness, through measures such as reducing management costs and more joint needs assessments.

Grand Bargain*

• The Grand Bargain is a common set of principles that governments are being asked to agree to at the World Humanitarian Summit. It calls for a new way of coordinating and planning humanitarian aid – including multi-annual funding – making it more effective and flexible in order to meet demands.