introduction The international aid system at a crossroads The instinct to help is as old as humanity. Support to a friend in need, aid to a neighbour in crisis, and acts of altruism and solidarity are all essential to who we are. However, something new has emerged over recent decades. We have translated this instinct into an international enterprise, creating a global humanitarian system to assist people across the world. Over time, this system has become larger, more complex and more expensive. Today, it employs thousands of people, costs billions of dollars and has helped save millions of lives. But despite these efforts, the number of people in crisis is growing. Around the planet, we see the poorest and most vulnerable people struggling with a growing number of shocks and stresses, affecting their ability to survive and care for their families. As the scale of this challenge grows, we are increasingly questioning the humanitarian system’s capacity to deliver. Humanitarian organizations face a choice: Should they continue to respond to the growing number of people affected by crises, with the commensurate increase in resources and efficiency gains that this will require? Or is a more fundamental shift
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required, towards a model which—working with Governments and the development sector—not only fine tunes and improves the response to humanitarian crises, but learns to anticipate them, to act before they become catastrophes and to prevent their recurrence? An increasing number of experts and practitioners are concluding that the second option is not only preferable, but essential. This report aims to explain why, and how to make that shift a reality.
52 million Number of people to receive international humanitarian aid in 2014. If all these people lived in one country, it would be the 25th most populous in the world.1