Between Summits and Vision: Effective Disaster Management by 2025

By Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS)
Singapore

The World Humanitarian Summit was held in Istanbul on 23 and 24 May 2016 bringing together 9000 participants from 173 governments, the private sector, civil society and non-governmental organizations. The Summit’s three main goals were (1) to recommit to humanity and humanitarian principles; (2) to enable countries and communities to better prepare for and respond to crises, and be more resilient to shocks; and (3) to share people-centred humanitarian best practices to save lives and alleviate suffering. In the Summit aftermath, it is clear that ASEAN has a significant role in realising these commitments by 2025.

“Grand Bargain” for more efficient aid financing
The most concrete outcome of the summit was a “Grand Bargain” signed by the top 30 donors and aid agencies to commit 25 per cent of humanitarian funding to local and national agencies by 2020. The humanitarian system has been criticized for keeping resources and power vested with large UN agencies and NGOs, rather than local players who currently receive 2% of global funding. Twenty-seven international NGOs further committed to the “Charter4Change” to pass 20 per cent of their funding to national NGOs by 2018. This is an important development for humanitarian financing with significant implications for Southeast Asia particularly benefitting national NGOs and local communities to further develop their disaster response and mitigation strategies. It also moves away from a top-down towards a locally-driven humanitarian and development system.