HUMANITARIAN FUNDING ACCORDING TO NEED: DONORS

UNCLAS BRUSSELS 001144 SIPDIS SIPDIS FOR DCHA/OFDA AND COO/OPD/BMD E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PREF PHUM EAID BE SUBJECT: HUMANITARIAN FUNDING ACCORDING TO NEED: DONORS WORKSHOP ¶1. (U) State/PRM Policy Team Leader and USAID/OFDA Technical Assistance Team Leader attended a Good Humanitarian Donorship workshop in Brussels March 19-20 to explore donor approaches to allocating resources according to need. The workshop invited donor governments, humanitarian agencies, and academics to spend the first day of the workshop reviewing different methods and tools for analyzing and prioritizing humanitarian needs and sketching a common vision of the key aspects of impartial decision-making. On the second day, a donors-only group agreed on several actions to increase the impartiality of humanitarian resource allocations. ¶2. (U) Donors present included Belgium, Canadian CIDA, the Czech Republic (the newest member of the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative),Denmark, DFID, ECHO, Finland, France, Irish Aid, the Netherlands, Swedish SIDA, and the United States. International organizations represented were ICRC, UNHCR, UNICEF, WHO, FAO, and IFRC. World Vision and OXFAM represented NGOs. Academics from Tufts University, the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters at the University of Louvain, the Overseas Development Institute and Development Initiatives also participated. ¶3. (U) Organized by CIDA, DFID, ECHO and Irish Aid, workshop deliberations were based on a discussion paper commissioned by Irish Aid. The discussions focused on the need for reliable data sources (assessments) and a common analysis of the humanitarian situation in an area of crisis. Donors concurred that while each donor would continue to use its own decision-making processes, access to common assessment data and analyses would serve as useful reference tools to improve impartiality and minimize political influence in resource allocations. ¶4. (U) The workshop resulted in the following conclusions: -- Donors agreed to explore greater use of ECHO's Global Needs Assessment (GNA) tool, a methodology which calculates both a vulnerability index (ranking countries likely to suffer from a crisis) and a crisis index (ranking countries actually affected by a crisis). -- As upcoming chair of the OCHA Donor Support Group (ODSG), Canada will lead a review of the ODSG's terms of reference with an aim of including donor coordination of contributions toward Consolidated Appeals Process(CAPs). -- The next GHD meeting (on the margins of ECOSOC in July) will review the use of pooled funding mechanisms, including Canada's review of the first year of the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and a Denmark-sponsored study on the use of unearmarked funds. -- Donors agreed to increase joint evaluations and sharing of evaluation studies/reports. As GHD chair, DFID will create space on the GHD website where donors can post or link to evaluation documents. -- Sweden and Denmark agreed to create a training module specifically for humanitarian donors that focuses on skills and tools for impartial resource allocation (e.g., a primer in epidemiology, how to read a CAP, etc.). ¶5. (U) Following the workshop, an informal working group of donor governments focused n the evidence base for humanitarian decision-making (which included PRM, OFDA, DFID, CIDA) agreed to increase communication and coordination on our investments in efforts such as the Complex Emergencies Database (CE-DAT),the proposed Humanitarian Health and Nutrition Tracking Service, and the Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions (SMART) initiative. USAID/OFDA will lead the group's efforts to reach out to other donors. McKINLEY .