No Lost Generation at World Humanitarian Summit Istanbul.jpg

The Grand Bargain: Agenda for Humanity, usually called the Grand Bargain, is an agreement to reform the delivery of humanitarian aid, that was struck at the at the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016. The agreement contains 51 specific commitments, grouped into ten focus areas, with activity targets to be completed by January 1, 2020.

Parties to the agreement are national governments and humanitarian aid agencies, 30 of which initially signed up, rising to 48 within the first year; the 48 signatories controlled 95% of global humanitarian aid spending at the time.

By 2020, only partial progress had occurred, prompting criticism from some humanitarian practitioners and reflection from others that the original ambitions has an unrealistic time frame.

Negotiations for a second set of agreements, the Grand Bargain 2.0, started in 2021.

Background

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, 2016

As part of his 2012 goal to improve the humanitarian system, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convened the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul with the goal of knowledge sharing and creating best practices.[1] Ki-moon created the High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing, appointing Kristalina Georgieva and Nazrin Shah of Perak, as co-chairs.[2][3]

High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing[3]
Name Nationality Affiliation Role
Kristalina Georgieva Bulgaria Vice President for Budget and Human Resources, the European Commission co-chair
Sultan Nazrin Shah Malaysia Ruler of Perak, Malaysia co-chair
Hadeel Ibrahim United Kingdom Executive Director, Mo Ibrahim Foundation member
Badr Jafar United Arab Emirates Managing Director, the Crescent Group member
Walt Macnee Canada Vice Chairman, Mastercard member
Trevor Manuel South Africa Senior Advisor, Rothschild Group member
Linah Mohohlo Botswana Governor, Bank of Botswana member
Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah Sri Lanka Secretary-General, CIVICUS member
Margot Wallström Sweden Minister for Foreign Affairs member

The High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing produced the report Too important to fail - addressing the humanitarian financing gap[4] which was presented at the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016. The report highlighted a US$15 billion shortfall between the cost of addressing humanitarian needs and the global budget to respond. It called for new ways to fund growing humanitarian needs, such as taxation for luxury goods and services.[5][6][2] The group's report called for a Grand Bargain between nations to address the unmet humanitarian needs.[7]

Agreement

Negotiations

Governments reached an agreement, called the Grand Bargain, after a “messy”, “disjointed”, and “incredibly bureaucratic” process.[8] In particular, donor governments struggled with the logistical consequences of adjusting aid spending away from United Nations agencies.[9] As such, the negotiations were heated and compared to what was suggested in the report, the final commitments were diluted, for example the degree of enthusiasm to disburse cash in humanitarian relief, due to the US Government's preference to give tangible aid items.[9][10]

Focus areas

Parties to the agreement committed to better transparency to “publish timely, transparent, harmonised and open high-quality data on humanitarian funding within two years.” They also commitment to increase spending on local organizations from 0.4% of the overall budget to 25% by 2020. In subsequent years, this effort became known as Localisation. On cash and voucher assistance, conflicting statements were made simultaneously mentioning the benefits of giving people with humanitarian needs cash, but also calling for more research.Parties agreed to reduce duplication and management costs; to harmonize the templates for grant agreements between government donors and humanitarian agencies. There was agreement for unification of assessments of unmet humanitarian needs, although it criticized by ACAPS for not addressing the necessary changes they called for. A commitment was made to better include the perspectives of the people in communities affected by humanitarian crisis. Parties committed to multi-year funding; to provide aid agencies with agreements to fund their activities for multiple years at a time, rather than requiring annual requests for funding. Parties committed to put more funding into emergency funds, such as the Central Emergency Relief Fund, in order to increase flexibility of how funds can be used in emergencies. Government donors agreed to harmonize the reporting requirements they put on humanitarian agencies by 2018, and reduce the reporting volume.There was agreement to improve collaboration and coordination between groups working on prevention of humanitarian crisis, those working on mitigating the effects of crisis and those responding to emergencies.[9] In total, the Grand Bargain included 51 specific commitments each grouped under the aforementioned themes.[9]

Commitments

The Grand Bargain contains contains commitments that apply to aid agencies, donors, or both. In total 51 commitments apply to donors:

Summary of the Grand Bargain donor (and aid agency) commitments[11]
Topic Stakeholder(s) Commitment
Transparency Aid agencies

and donors

Publishing transparency, timely, open, and harmonized high quality data on funding, within two years of the summmit
To make use of data that explains the distinctness of aid agencies, and the contexts in which they work
To improve use of digital tools for accountability, decision making, efficiency, and funding traceability
To support others with regards to data access and data publishing
Localisation Aid agencies

and donors

Provide multi-year funding to local and national aid agencies
Remove barriers that block partnerships with local and national aid agencies
To support and collaborate with national governments coordination of humanitarian aid
To provide 25% of funding to local or national organizations as directly as possible
To agree, with the Inter Agency Standing Committee, key performance indicator about localisation efforts
To increase the use of funding tools that enable more funding to local and national aid agencies
Use of cash Aid agencies

and donors

To increase the use of cash, vouchers and in-kind in humanitarian aid.
To fund new aid delivery models that can increase the scale of aid
To assess the cost and benefits of cash (including for protection) compared to in-kind aid.
To agree standards and share information about cash programming to better understand the costs and benefits
To monitor and evaluate cash programming in a coordinated way
To do more cash programming, where appropriate
Cost efficiency Aid agencies

and donors

To increase efficiencies of delivery aid with a focus on technology and innovation
Harmonize partnership agreements and share information about the needs of people affected by crises
Aid agencies To provide transparent and comparable cost structures
To maximize efficiency with regards to procurement of goods and services
Donors To reduce individual donors monitoring and evaluations and to make joined assessments
Needs assessment Aid agencies

and donors

To collaborate on one centralised needs assessment for each individual humanitarian emergency
To coordinate data collection with a view to reduce intrusion for people affected by crises
To quickly share needs assessment data, while being mindful of privacy and protection needs
To fund expert third-party support for data collection to improve collaboration
To prioritize activities based on evidence.
To fund independent evaluation of needs assessments
To undertake risk and vulnerability assessments in collaboration with local authorities and international development agencies
Participation

and inclusion

Aid agencies

and donors

Improve national leadership and governance capacity
Create common standards for community participation and engagement
Improve dialogue with local stakeholders
Create systems to ensure that feedback from local stakeholders is acted upon
Donors To be flexible with funding to allow adaptions to local community feedback
To fund and invest time in participation and inclusion
Aid agencies To ensure that monitoring and evaluation plans include community feedback by 2017
Multi-year

funding

Aid agencies

and donors

To increase funding agreements to cover multiple years, to document efficiency and effectiveness, and to pass on multi-year funding agreements to implementing sub-contractors.
To provide multi year funding and associated monitoring and evaluation to at least five national response plans by 2017
To improve coordination and collaboration on sharing needs assessments between humanitarian aid and international development stakeholders.
Reducing the

earmarking of funds by nation

Aid agencies

and donors

To collectively annually agree the most effective mechanism to report on unearmarked or "softly earmarked" funds by 2017
To increase flexibility of funding, to reduce earmarking funding to certain nations
Aid agencies To transparently and regularly share information on how unearmarked funds are spent.
To publicly acknowledge donors who provide flexible funds
Donors To reduce national earmarked funds
Reporting Aid agencies

and donors

To harmonize and simplify donor reporting by the end of 2018
To increase use of digital technology in donor reporting
To improve the efficiency and quality of reporting
Coordination Aid agencies

and donors

To increase efforts to prevent humanitarian needs
To invest in sustainable solutions for people who are forcibly displaced and those returning
To bolder local systems and to improve local social protection
To undertake collaborative vulnerability and risk analysis with international development agencies
To engage better with multilateral development banks.

In addition to improving the humanitarian system, the commitments were expected to save US$1 billion per year.[9][12]

Each of the ten focus areas has two co-conveners, a government donor and a humanitarian aid agency who report into a facilitation group that coordinates the work between the ten focus areas.[8] The administration of the process is done by the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations.[8]

Signatories

United Nations headquarters, Geneva

30 governments and aid agencies signed up to the Grand Bargain initially, expanding to 48 by March 2017.[8] At the time, the 48 signatories controlled 95% of global spending on humanitarian aid.[13] By December 2021, 64 organizations had signed up.[14] Government signatories included USA, UK, Germany, France, and Japan; aid agency signatories included the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.[12]

Aid agency, Medecins Sans Frontieres, did not sign the agreement, criticizing the process for its non-binding commitments, a decision itself that was criticized as "cynical" by Nancy Lindborg of the United States Institute of Peace.[15]

Critical reception in 2016

Peter Maurer of the ICRC

In 2016, the Grand Bargain was met with a mixture of enthusiasm, pragmatic caution, and dismay.[9] Lilianne Ploumen pointed out how difficult it is to get multiple governments to all agree to big changes. The Overseas Development Institute criticized the Grand Bargain for its similarity with the status quo, pointing out a need for more specific targets and timelines.[9] Colin Bruce of the World Bank said that the agreement was owned by no-one and stressed the importance of following up on the commitments.[9] Peter Maurer of the International Committee of the Red Cross praised the focus on reducing reporting to donor governments.[9]

Andras Derzsi-Horvath and Julia Steets of the Global Public Policy Institute published an op-ed in DW News criticizing the Grand Bargain for having only voluntary obligations.[16]

Progress towards commitments and critique in the 2020s

In 2021, The New Humanitarian reported that many of the 51 commitments had only been partly met.[17] Wendy Fenton of the Humanitarian Practice Network and Overseas Development Institute said that the 51 commitments were too much to have attempted in five years.[17]

A June 2021 independent review of the Grand Bargain by the Overseas Development Institute praised the progress towards policy shifts around provision of cash assistance, increasing funding to local aid groups, harmonized needs assessments and reporting. It was noted that the policy had a lower impact on actual practice.[18] The Overseas Development Institute review criticized the way the transparency commitments were written, noted the lack of global agreement on how to distribute cash to people in need, and lamented the poor progress towards cost savings. The review reported a lack of political interest in including the perspectives of the people living in humanitarian crises in designing emergency responses.[18]

UK-based group Development Initiatives reported in 2021 that the percentage of funding going to local organizations between 2016 and 2020 actually reduced from 3.5% to 2.1%.[19][20][21] Degan Ali, of Adeso writing in OpenDemocracy in 2020, described the Grand Bargain as a "failed effort".[22]

Grand Bargain 2.0

Jan Egeland of the Norwegian Refugee Council

In 2021, 60 donors started new negotiations to create an updated Grand Bargain 2.0 that will cover 2020 to 2023.[17] Grand Bargain 2.0 focuses on greater support to local humanitarian agencies, improved participation of people from communities affected by humanitarian crisis and more flexible funding to aid agencies.[17] The June 2021 meeting to agree details was led by Jan Egeland, of the Norwegian Refugee Council.[17]

The Grand Bargain 2.0 agreement attempts to address concerns raised about the original agreement with a focus on an improved consultation process with local organizations.[23]p. 36

See also

References

  1. ^ Ki-Moon, Ban (25 Jan 2012). "THE SECRETARY-GENERAL'S FIVE-YEAR ACTION AGENDA" (PDF). United Nations.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  2. ^ a b Mosselmans, Michael (2016-02-05). "Only a fraction of humanitarian aid goes through local organisations. Why?". the Guardian. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  3. ^ a b "Too important to fail—addressing the humanitarian financing gap" (PDF).
  4. ^ "Fix the aid system or you will fail the poor, experts warn world leaders". the Guardian. 2016-01-17. Retrieved 2022-04-10.
  5. ^ "High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing Report to the Secretary-General: Too important to fail - addressing the humanitarian financing gap". ReliefWeb. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  6. ^ Esslemont, Tom (2016-01-17). "Get Uber, FIFA and rich Muslims to help plug aid gap- experts". Reuters. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  7. ^ Redvers, Louise (2016-01-18). "UN aid panel calls for 'grand bargain' on finance". The New Humanitarian. Retrieved 2021-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. ^ a b c d Redvers, Louise (2017-03-22). "Hunting for the Grand Bargain". The New Humanitarian. Retrieved 2021-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h i Parker, Ben (2016-05-24). "Is the Grand Bargain a Big Deal?". The New Humanitarian. Retrieved 2021-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  10. ^ Johnson, Erik; Baizan, Paula Gil (2016-06-27). "What people in humanitarian crises need is cash, not commodities". the Guardian. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  11. ^ "The Grand Bargain" (PDF). 2015.
  12. ^ a b "First day of Humanitarian Summit ends with 'grand bargain'". TRT World. 24 May 2016. Retrieved 2021-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  13. ^ "Governmental funding for humanitarian aid 2016 ($ m)". datawrapper.dwcdn.net. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  14. ^ "The Grand Bargain Signatories Last update: December 2021" (PDF). Inter Agency Standing Committee. Dec 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  15. ^ Kenyon, Peter (24 May 2016). "The World Promises To Do A Better Job Aiding Refugees From Violence". www.wbur.org. Retrieved 2021-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  16. ^ Steets, Julie; Derzsi-Horvath, Andras (2016-05-24). "Old habits die hard at World Humanitarian Summit". DW. Retrieved 2021-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  17. ^ a b c d e Alexander, Jessica (2021-06-10). "A renewed push to make aid more efficient". The New Humanitarian. Retrieved 2021-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  18. ^ a b Metcalfe-Hough, Victoria; Fenton, Wendy; Willitts-King, Barnaby; Spencer, Alexandra (2021). The Grand Bargain at five years - An independent review (PDF). Overseas Development Institute.
  19. ^ The Editorial Board (2021-02-13). "Opinion | Foreign Aid Is Having a Reckoning". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-12-27.
  20. ^ Mwaura, Gitura (2021-02-21). "Does Africa need foreign aid?". The New Times | Rwanda. Retrieved 2021-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  21. ^ "Funding for effectiveness and efficiency". Development Initiatives. Retrieved 2021-12-28.
  22. ^ Ali, Degan; Murphy, Marie-Rose Romain (19 July 2020). "Black Lives Matter is also a reckoning for foreign aid and international NGOs". openDemocracy. Retrieved 2021-12-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  23. ^ Robillard, Sabina; Atim, Teddy; Maxwell, Daniel (December 2021). "Localization: A "Landscape" Report" (PDF). Tufts University.

Further reading

External links