Development Initiatives

The new Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2023 is out now. www.devinit.org/resources/global-humanitarian-assistance-report-2023

It provides a world-leading, independent assessment of global humanitarian financing and lays bare the urgent need for joint action across humanitarian, development, peace building and climate actors to tackle the root causes of crisis as well as the consequences.

It finds that international humanitarian assistance increased by an unprecedented amount to US$46.9 billion - but this was not enough to meet spiralling humanitarian need. We estimate that the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in 2022 grew by a third, to 406.6 million people. Half of people in need are children under the age of 18, with women and children combined making up 76% of people in humanitarian need according to available data.

More countries are experiencing humanitarian crises for longer – in 2022 83% of people in need were living in countries experiencing crisis for 5 years or more - and overlapping vulnerabilities caused by socioeconomic, conflict and climate shocks are eroding the resilience of their populations.

Commitments to improve the impact of funding are not being met. Local actors received just 1.2% of humanitarian funding directly from public donors – despite a target of 25%, for direct and indirect funding, set by signatories of the Grand Bargain agreement.

And since 2003, people in the most climate-vulnerable countries experiencing protracted crisis have received a total of just over US$1 per person of country-allocable funding from multilateral climate funds. This compares to almost US$5 per person in countries highly vulnerable to climate change but not experiencing protracted crisis.

Explore our findings, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on how we can address the challenges in front of us.