Insights into the ever more complex aid system - Humanitarian aid rises incrementally (gradvist), with occasional bigger spikes caused by high-profile disasters such as the Indian Ocean tsunami

DAKAR, 27 July 2010 (IRIN): As the humanitarian “system” becomes more complex, with new actors and overlapping mandates, different definitions of humanitarian aid, and ever-more ambitious goals, humanitarian aid watchdog "Development Initiatives" outlines some of the needs, responses and funding trends over the past decade in its 2010 Global Humanitarian Assistance (GHA) report.

Here are some of the findings:

Private funding the rising star

NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF = Læger uden Grænser) received 845 million US dollar of private funding in 2009, making it equivalent to the fourth largest donor country.

The total support received outside the UN-NGO Haiti earthquake flash appeal was three times the funding within the appeal, and exceeded total appeal requirements.

- Since 2005 there have been a lot of initiatives to bring the humanitarian system together - but what about the actors that remain outside? asks Jan Kellett, programme leader of the GHA.

- There are some very significant non-DAC (OECD member countries’ Development Assistance Committee) donors; and private funding allows NGOs to choose where to spend the money in a more flexible way, which can be problematic for the system as you wouldn’t know what is met and what is not, noted he.

Humanitarian assistance was up 3,1 billion dollar in 2009 compared with 2006, despite an 11 percent drop in reported government aid in 2009; private contributions increased by 50 percent since 2006, reaching 4,1 billion.

Since 2000, year on year, humanitarian aid has accounted for on average 8,35 percent of DAC governments’ official development aid (ODA).

Several high-profile disasters have caused humanitarian aid spikes, following which aid then dipped but not to pre-spike levels. These include: Kosovo (1999), Iraq and Afghanistan (2003), the Indian Ocean tsunami and the Kashmir earthquake (2005); and smaller spikes for Afghanistan and Ethiopia in 2008.

Response to conflict the priority

Some 71 percent of aid in 1999-2008 was spent in conflict-affected states. The top five recipients of government and private humanitarian aid in 2009 were Sudan, DR Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe.

Non-humanitarian donor spending on conflict-resolution and peace and security-related activities increased 20-fold between 1998 and 2008, particularly in the areas of peacebuilding and security sector reform, compared with the doubling of humanitarian assistance over the same period.

Læs videre på http://www.IRINnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=89982