The humanitarian sector is facing an unprecedented funding gap, and organisations are making hard choices in prioritising which populations to reach. This article outlines four principles for effective humanitarian boundary-setting.

In 2023, the humanitarian system faced its biggest funding gap in history. Spurred by new violence in Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza along with numerous protracted crises, the 2023 Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) put forward a record-high global appeal of USD 56.7 billion. Yet by January 2024, only 40% was funded – leaving a USD 33.6 billion shortfall. In the end, fewer people were reached in 2023 compared to 2022 – 128 million versus 157 million – and all signs point to shortfalls continuing as traditional donors either fail to increase funding in pace with needs or cut assistance.

The funding gap has prompted a scramble to reboot. In their Global Humanitarian Overview 2024 the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reduced the overall funding request compared to 2023 and reduced the number of people in need it aimed to reach, by over 63 million.

This reduction reflects an increased emphasis by OCHA and within country humanitarian response plans on ‘boundary-setting’ and ‘prioritisation’ over the past two years. Boundary-setting involves determining what sectors, activities and geographic areas are included within a response based on needs assessments, as well as an evaluation of the capacity of individual organisations, broader response capacity and operational constraints. Prioritisation can include targeting responses based on the most critical and life-saving needs, focusing on specific geographic areas, or context-specific factors such as a focus on programming aimed at building or strengthening service delivery systems.

Although challenging and sometimes controversial, boundary-setting and prioritisation are intrinsically important for the humanitarian sector to effectively meet the needs of the world’s most vulnerable people. Donors are not responding commensurately to years of increasing humanitarian need and rising appeals. The humanitarian sector also faces a reckoning over whether it is not just broke, but broken. Translating this reckoning into concrete reform is long overdue.

Yet, there is a risk this process will leave millions of people in need behind and undermine progress on longer-term resilience approaches, particularly for IDPs and refugees in protracted crises and marginalised groups. Boundary-setting and prioritisation alone will not solve the massive gap between needs and donor funding. Donors must respond to increases in forced displacement caused by a collective political failure to prevent new conflicts and resolve long-running crises. In the current ‘new normal’ of funding, however, a collective, intentional approach by the humanitarian sector is necessary to ensure that scarce resources reach as many people in need as possible.

Impacts of boundary-setting and prioritisation

The increased focus on boundary-setting and prioritisation has manifested differently across country responses. In many cases, it has meant narrower geographic targeting and overall cuts to the number of people who receive humanitarian assistance. According to an analysis by Humanitarian Funding Forecast, in 2023 the Global Humanitarian Overview (GHO) aimed to reach 68% of those in need, while the 2024 GHO aims to reach 60%.

It has also meant a renewed focus in the GHO and country humanitarian response plans on emergency assistance while advocating for complementary development efforts. The 2024 Somalia humanitarian response plan removed resilience, non-emergency livelihoods and durable solutions for internally displaced persons (IDPs) from prioritised programming, emphasising that these programmes need to be coordinated through non-humanitarian mechanisms. The 2024 Syria regional refugee response plan focuses on providing only for the most critically in need with cash assistance and food interventions, and emphasises strengthening national systems to provide for displaced people..

This process is, in many ways, simply a reflection of the status quo. Syrian refugees have faced progressive cuts to basic assistance as a result of declining aid – the 2023 response was only 31% funded. Ensuring that scarce funding reaches those most in need is essential, and prioritisation has taken place alongside efforts to enhance vulnerability assessments. Yet when nine in ten Syrian refugees in Lebanon live in extreme poverty and face intensifying protection threats and exclusion from national services, the impact is that some of those critically in need have access to life-saving assistance while others do not.[i]

During a recent visit to Somalia, we heard how geographical prioritisation has meant that more stable areas have been deprioritised as part of the humanitarian response. But development donors have yet to fill the vacuum, meaning that hard-won gains in areas hosting thousands of IDPs and recovering from drought may be reversed.

To ensure that boundary-setting and prioritisation translate into a more efficient, effective and inclusive global humanitarian response for displaced communities, we emphasise four key principles: cost-effectiveness and efficiency, ensuring inclusion of the most vulnerable, local ownership over responses and deliberate partnerships with development actors.

Principle 1: Cost-effectiveness and efficiency

Cost-effectiveness and efficiency must be central to humanitarian responses. This requires the best allocation of resources to achieve the maximum impact in addressing humanitarian needs for as many people in fragile and conflict-affected settings as possible. It involves improving individual organisational operations as well as changing the way programmes are designed and funded at a sector level, in collaboration with donors, governments and local civil society.

As part of the prioritisation and boundary-setting process, actors must look at how to collaborate to ensure that the costs of similar interventions do not vary widely and engage in sharing learning around efficiency and effectiveness. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has developed an innovative costing tool, called Dioptra, and joined with other INGOs to use it. This tool allows us to analyse programme intervention costs relative to their outputs and achievements.

We must also integrate evidence of cost-effectiveness into programming decisions. The sector’s expansion of cash assistance as a cost-effective, impactful and empowering modality where markets are functioning is a key example of this evidence-based approach. However, much more work needs to be done to ensure that we are making the best use of resources.

Finally, the cost gains of scale must be taken into account. A 2015 IRC Cost Efficiency Analysis indicated that the biggest factor driving cost efficiency was the scale at which programmes were implemented – enabling fixed costs of interventions to be spread over a wider pool of clients. Reducing the number of clients without reducing the costs per client, and potentially losing the gains of scale, is ultimately counterproductive to the goal of developing more effective humanitarian responses.

Principle 2: Ensuring inclusion of the most vulnerable

Humanitarian actors must ensure that the voices of affected populations and the needs of marginalised groups are central at both the needs assessment and prioritisation stages of humanitarian responses. Prioritisation must also pay attention to how conflict and displacement unequally impact marginalised groups, including refugees living with disabilities, gender-based violence (GBV) survivors and displaced populations in hard-to-reach areas.

Prioritising cost-effectiveness and efficiency involves using resources to maximise impact for affected populations, not simply a utilitarian approach to programming. Providing mental health programming for displaced GBV survivors arriving at a remote transit camp can be more expensive than delivering cash assistance, but it still needs to be prioritised. Without effective inclusion of the most marginalised, humanitarian responses risk exacerbating inequalities rather than mitigating them.

IDP and refugee voices are also consistently excluded from planning and policymaking in humanitarian responses. The recent Independent Review on the Humanitarian Response to Internal Displacement recommended forming IDP representative bodies in large-scale internal displacement responses as a possible way to ensure their perspectives are included in priority setting and planning.

Principle 3: Local ownership over responses

The third key principle should be enhancing local ownership of responses through funding and partnerships with local organisations and governments. Despite an ongoing push for localisation within the sector, as of 2022, only USD 485 million –1.2% of humanitarian assistance – went directly to local and national actors, with inconsistent data on the amount reaching local organisations through partnerships.[ii] The picture for refugee-led organisations is even worse – only USD 26.4 million was allocated to them across both humanitarian and development funding in 2022.[iii] The sector can and must do better in following through on commitments to localisation. Donors such as the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation offer a roadmap. They currently provide 46% of all funding for refugee-led organisations globally.

Government partnerships are also central to ensuring sustainability and achieving scale. In some conflict-affected contexts where the government itself may be targeting displaced populations or is not present in affected areas, this approach may be impossible. However, in many contexts, potential municipal or national government partners do exist, and should not be supplanted in service delivery.

An example is the IRC’s Ahlan Simsim programme which aimed to integrate Early Childhood Development (ECD) into national services for the education, health and protection of refugee, IDP and host communities in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In Iraq, the programme partnered with the Ministry of Education to integrate ECD materials into the national curriculum, and fully transferred ownership to the Ministry. In Syria, where government partnerships were not possible, IRC helped convene local civil society organisation partners in an ECD civil society network, ensuring local ownership which is essential for sustainable impact.

Principle 4: Partnerships with development actors

The final principle is partnerships with development actors. Humanitarian boundary-setting is not about building a fence and ignoring everything outside it. It explicitly relies on complementary development assistance to help communities move from the shock of conflict and displacement to longer-term recovery. Yet conflict-affected countries are less likely to receive development financing, leaving humanitarian resources stretched in attempting to cover basic service delivery.

While multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank, are expanding much-needed programmes in conflict settings, operational constraints can lead to project delays and suspensions. Risk thresholds and access concerns often prevent agencies from reaching regions outside of government control, leaving displaced and host communities without vital development support. Humanitarian and refugee response coordination mechanisms are also often siloed from development coordination, creating additional barriers to long-term recovery for communities.

To make sure that complementary development responses translate into better outcomes for displaced populations, humanitarians must proactively coordinate and partner with development actors outside of humanitarian response plans. Partnerships can range from humanitarian consultations to ensure refugee and IDP-inclusive, context-sensitive delivery of a government-implemented infrastructure project, to full project implementation for IDPs in conflict-affected areas outside of government control. For example, IRC served as an advisor to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to ensure that Syrian refugees’ needs and perspectives were included in a wastewater project in Irbid, Jordan.[iv]

Looking forward

As the number of displaced people globally exceeds 120 million, the humanitarian sector must use this moment as a catalyst for change. Even with boundary-setting and prioritisation of humanitarian responses, there will be a large gap between these heavily narrowed needs and the available financing. Additional assistance from donors is crucial for displaced communities to survive and recover.

Yet it is also incumbent upon us to make the current funding reality work for displaced populations. Ensuring the most cost-effective and efficient use of scarce aid and including the voices of affected populations and the most vulnerable are essential to boundary-setting and prioritisation. International actors must work within our own organisations, across agencies, with local actors and with donor governments to ensure that our programmes uphold these goals. The sector must also follow through on commitments to local ownership and build deliberate partnerships with the development sector to ensure that long-term recovery plans reflect refugee and IDP needs. NGO networks and joint donor-aid implementer forums such as the Grand Bargain and the Inter-Agency Standing Committee offer avenues to coordinate these efforts –though progress has been slow. What is clear is that the status quo is unsustainable for the populations we work with – now is the moment for change.

 

Ciaran Donnelly
Senior Vice President, Crisis Response, Recovery, and Development (CRRD), International Rescue Committee
Ciaran.donnelly@rescue.org
X: @donnciar

Reva Dhingra
Policy and Planning Advisor, CRRD, International Rescue Committee
reva.dhingra@rescue.org
linkedin.com/in/reva-dhingra-75513636/

 

[ii] Development Initiatives (2023) Global Humanitarian Assistance Report bit.ly/better-humanitarian-system

[iii] The New Humanitarian (2024) ‘How to fund refugee-led aid’ bit.ly/fund-refugee-led-aid

[iv] IRC (2024) Piloting New Partnerships between Humanitarian and Development Actors bit.ly/piloting-new-partnerships

 

READ THE FULL ISSUE