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
.