The stark contrast with funding to the 2010 Pakistan floods appeal continues.

Just seven government donors have so far reported funding contributions to the OCHA Financial Tracking service, and almost a third of the funds received so far within the appeal have been provided via the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund.

We were recently asked to calculate how much EU citizens give per capita, and you can see this information in a visualisation.

In doing these calculations however, we could see very clearly just how much some countries channel via the EU institutions. We calculated that the average humanitarian contribution for citizens of EU member states in 2009 was US$10.39 – but of that, US$3.22 was spent via the EU institutions.

Humanitarian giving per citizen, EU member states reporting to the OECD DAC in 2009

[Source: Development Initiatives based on OECD DAC and World Bank data]

If we didn’t impute that money and attribute the respective shares to member governments, their apparent levels of humanitarian funding would in many cases be significantly lower.  In some cases dramatically lower – the graph below shows the proportion of EU member states’ (the ones reporting to the OECD DAC) humanitarian budgets which are channelled via the EU Institutions.

Shares of total official humanitarian aid expenditure channelled via the EU Institutions in 2009

[Source: Development Initiatives based on OECD DAC data]

We hope this helps to illustrate why it is important to build a comprehensive picture of humanitarian aid – including the less visible parts.

The main aim of emergency response funds (ERFs) is to provide rapid and flexible funding to in-country actors to address unforeseen humanitarian needs. There are currently 14 stand-alone ERFs in operation.

This report provides information and data on these ERFs, including donors to the funds, implementing agencies and sector analysis. The document also provides brief case studies of the use of the funds in Kenya and Somalia.

Click here to read the profile.

The use of these funds following a large-scale disaster has been illustrated in this report by looking at the cases of Haiti and Pakistan in 2010.

To read the report click here

This document provides background information and data on the CERF since its inception. It looks at the different donors and their contributions over time, recipient countries and the sectors funded, support to the UN consolidated appeal process (CAP) and explores the pros and cons of the CERF

Click here to read the profile

Some of the data used in the report is publicly available, but much of it is not.  Accessing data for this report has been challenging and some of the figures included in the report are therefore partial and heavily qualified. If it is difficult enough for researchers to get hold of the full range of information about international resource flows to Afghanistan, tax payers in donor governments and perhaps most importantly, Afghan citizens and the GIRoA also face major challenges.

Encouragingly, in our conversations with the GIRoA, they were keen to point out that donor reporting and transparency have improved significantly throughout 2010. This follows a concerted campaign by the Ministry of Finance to advocate that donors at least report to the government what they are spending, to facilitate planning and rational allocation of funds, even if donors choose not to channel those funds through the government directly.

By far the most opaque area remains the aid-like resource flows that are not eligible as Official Development Assistance (ODA) under the OECD DAC criteria (more detail on this can be found in the report)– in this case mostly resources for building the security sector. We believe that aid ought to be understood in its full context, of which non-ODA resource flows are an important element. We estimate in the report that while aid has totalled US$26.7 billion between 2002 and 2009, non-ODA aid flows are at least US$16.1 billion, based on partial figures from a limited number of donor governments.

We hope that the report provides a broad contextual picture of resource flows, which also includes aid, private and domestic resource flows, and looks at the substantial costs of international military involvement which, for 2009, is estimated to be at least ten times greater than the aid investment.

As has been seen in previous years the CERF continues to enable those donors, both governments and non-governments, without sufficient humanitarian aid architecture to contribute assistance. This is made apparent by the addition of new five donors to the CERF in 2011. There are three new government donors, Kyrgyzstan, the Gambia and Costa Rica however at present the figures are only known for Costa Rica, US$9,600, the other two are not therefore included in the pledge total. Other new donors to the fund include the regional government of Flanders that pledged US$0.4 million and the Turkish non-governmental organisation (NGO) Kimse Yok Mu Association with a pledge of US$10,000.

Although the total amount pledged is less than at last year’s conference the number of donors will more than not likely rise over the course of the year. In 2010 there are already 96 donors that have contributed a total of US$371.6 million. Yet funding may also be affected by the absence of traditionally large DAC donors such as Spain and Ireland that are currently experiencing economic and financial difficulties.

Most surprising of all however, is that there is a new top donor to the fund. Since the CERF commenced in 2006 the United Kingdom has contributed the largest amount each year, an average of US$71.6 million over the five year period. Unless the UK contributes more money later on in 2011 they will have to cede the top spot to Sweden that has increased its pledge by US$8 million on last year. Will this pattern also be reflected in the funding of the country-level pooled funds in 2011 where the UK has held the top spot for a number of years? We will have to watch this space …

In Somalia the donor community has to rely heavily on local civil society organisations to deliver assistance, as the insecure environment prevents many international organisations from operating in-country. The HRF is an example of this reliance on local capacity. In 2009 they represented 44% of the number of funded projects and received 33% of allocated funding. In addition many international NGOs and UN agencies relied on Somali NGOs to implement their projects.[1]

The local NGO that I had the pleasure of meeting expressed concern that now the HRF had converted to a CHF, small Somali organisations would have problems accessing funding. This was mainly due to the fact that to receive funding a project must be included in the CAP and therefore writing a project proposal that is acceptable requires training for some organisations, something that would cost both time and money.

This comes at an inopportune time. Donor support to local capacity in Somalia has already been reduced following a report that implicated one of the Somali NGO implementing partners in violating the arms sanctions. It is now even harder for reputable local organisations to convince donors of their honest intentions.

Despite the negativity surrounding local Somali organisations the recent 2011 CAP appeal for Somalia details higher funding requirements for local organisations, US$27.3 million, which equates to 5.2% of the total. This compares to US$6.1 million or 0.9% of the total original requirements in the 2010 appeal. In addition the number of local organisations included has increased from 34 to 41 in the same period.

The real evidence of whether local Somali organisations are affected by this change to a new funding mechanism as well as the reduction in donor trust will only be seen as funding for the CAP projects trickles in.

[1] ocha&docId=1163382″>HRF annual report 2009

I can now report that by the end of October the ERF has received a total of US$33 million from 8 donors. These contributions have and will be used to respond to the severe humanitarian needs caused by the floods that have devastated the country in recent months.

Of that total funding a large proportion, 61% was contributed by India, a first time donor to the in-country pooled funds. India actually chose to contribute 80% of its total funding to Pakistan through this pooled fund, the other US$5 million went directly to the World Food Programme (WFP) to fund emergency food assistance.

Two other donors have contributed to the ERF that do not usually contribute to pooled funds, these are Malta and Botswana. However it must be noted that they did channel funding for the first time through the Haiti ERF at the start of this year. In the case of Pakistan they chose to channel all their funding to the floods through this in-country pooled mechanism.

The more traditional DAC donors such as the UK and Norway also channeled some of their funding to the emergency through the ERF, providing US$7.8 million and US$1.5 million respectively.

According to the financial tracking service (FTS), the ERF has to date funded 26 projects. The water and sanitation sector has received the most funding representing a 50% share of the total. Some of the money, US$0.5 million has been disbursed to a Pakistan organization providing relief assistance to just over 2000 families. This demonstrates that the ERF is not only funding international organisations but also national ones and supporting existing capacity in-country, something that some other pooled funds have not been able to do.