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.

Afghanistan has been a major humanitarian aid recipient for the last decade, but its relationship with humanitarian aid has been complex, controversial and often unpredictable.

Humanitarian aid to Afghanistan increased dramatically in the year following the US-led invasion before falling sharply again the next year. Development aid continued to grow steadily throughout the decade, while humanitarian aid remained at relatively low levels until a major escalation in humanitarian needs in 2008 put humanitarian needs in Afghanistan back on the international agenda.

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Afghanistan has participated very sporadically in the UN Consolidated Appeals process. Afghanistan has only participated in the UN consolidated appeal process (CAP) just three times between 2000 and 2010 and only began to prepare a humanitarian work-plan from 2009, with the establishment of a UN OCHA office in Kabul.

There have however been five ‘non-CAP appeals’ in this period. Non-CAP appeals are by definition lower priority and typically receive a poorer donor response. The use of non-CAP appeals is illustrative of the low priority given to humanitarian needs in the post invasion period when many of the major donors prioritised state-building and stabilisation agendas.

The donor financing response to these various UN funding appeals has been extremely variable.

While the analysis and articulation of the scale and severity of humanitarian needs and humanitarian financing in Afghanistan has improved latterly with reinforced humanitarian leadership in Kabul, this latest statement of increased financing requirements happens at a time of unpredictability in donor financing responses. We commented elsewhere on the disappointing donor response to the UN CAP appeal up to the mid-year point, and noted recently the very disappointing response to the Pakistan flash appeal to date. In this climate of uncertainty, it is apposite that the revised Afghanistan appeal calls for an increased emphasis in responses on ‘more sustainable, longer term, disaster risk reduction interventions, by government and development partners over the next years.’

We will monitor donor responses to the Afghanistan appeal through this blog. You can access the data referred to in this blog here and we plan to update our report on resource flows to Afghanistan early next year.

Pakistan was severely affected by flooding in 2010 and a UN Flash appeal was launched on 11^th August last year requesting an initial US$460 million to meet the needs of 14 million affected people. The scale of the flooding in 2010 was immense and unprecedented and an estimated 18 million people were ultimately affected.

While the scale of the disaster is smaller this year, it is still of a large scale disaster and the effects no less serious for the individuals affected. It may be that funding commitments are not yet captured within UN OCHA’s financial tracking service (FTS), but on the basis of the funding data we have so far, the donor response has been very limited, particularly in comparison with last year’s appeal.

Cumulative funding to UN Flash appeals for Pakistan in 2010 and 2011 (new commitments/contributions received in the weeks following the appeal launch date)

Source: UN OCHA FTS

For more information on the crisis, the ReliefWeb crisis page is regularly updated and the latest information on funding by cluster and by agency can be found on the UN OCHA FTS site. FAO has produced a map comparing affected areas in 2010 and 2011. We will continue to monitor funding to the crisis as more information becomes available.

For the Horn of Africa crisis I’ve used the number of affected people reported by UN OCHA and total funding reported by UN OCHA to the appeals in Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia as of 17th August 2011. This is a slightly different parameter for measuring funding than the other crises however, these were pre-existing funding appeals which included a wide range of funding requirements not related to the food crisis, so these figures already over-represent funding to the crisis, which I was reluctant to expand further by including funding outside the appeals.

The crisis is of course still unfolding and funds still arriving, but so far an affected person in the Horn of Africa has received slightly more than an affected person in Pakistan did last year, and US$833 less than people affected by the earthquake in Haiti last year. You can also see these figures in a many eyes visualisation.

If we were able to separate out funds specifically for the food crisis from other humanitarian funds being channelled to Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, the figures would likely be more polarised.

Funding per affected person to major humanitarian crises, 2003-2011

[Source: Development Initiatives based on UN OCHA FTS, UN OCHA and CRED EM DAT data]

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.

We have attempted to put some numbers together, which you can see in this visualisation:

The data which drives this and our calculations can be found in the data store section of the website. We know this is not perfect so please help us out if you can think of a better way!

Here’s what we did:

1. Downloaded data from OCHA FTS on 10^th August 2011 at 1500 GMT. The download includes funding from all donors to five ‘crises’ Djibouti 2011, Ethiopia 2011, Kenya 2011, Somalia 2011 and Horn of Africa – July 2011.
2. We then separated out funding within the three existing UN appeals for Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia (omitting funding which was outside of the UN appeals).
3. We added to this funding attributed to the ‘emergency type’ ‘Horn of Africa – July 2011’. This is not a UN appeal but a place for the FTS to report contributions which are not yet attributable to a specific recipient country, but which are identifiably for this crisis.
4. We then added ALL funding to Ethiopia. The appeal in Ethiopia is not part of the UN consolidated appeal process (CAP) and as such, it is not currently possible to differentiate funding to Ethiopia which is specifically for the drought response with the FTS data.

This means that our bilateral funding figures are an over estimate because we included all  funding to Ethiopia.

Next we attempted to impute back to government donors some of their contributions via multilateral funds and agencies like this:

1. We took from the CERF website the total funds allocated to those four countries in 2011.  We then took the contributions of each donor to the global CERF fund in 2011 and applied their percentage share to the volume of funds allocated to the crisis affected countries.
2. For ERFs and CHFs we took the donor contributions to the funds reported to the OCHA FTS and applied their proportions of the total to the total funds committed/contributed to the crisis by the ERFs in Kenya and Ethiopia and the CHF in Somalia.
3. We then took the amount committed/contributed by the EU Institutions to the crisis and applied to this, the share that each EU member state provided in multilateral ODA to the EU Institutions in 2010. This figure can be considered at best an estimate, but we think its worthwhile to illustrate a more comprehensive picture of what some EU member states are giving.

As you can see from this complex process, tracking funding to this crisis is not easy. If you can think of a better way of doing this, please comment or email me lydia.poole@devinit.org

Will the upward trend in humanitarian aid financing be sustained?

We estimate that in 2010, government and private donors provided a record US$16.7 billion to address humanitarian needs, but there are undercurrents that indicate uncertainty in future levels of giving.

Growth in humanitarian aid financing in 2010 was largely driven by contributions to the large scale natural disasters in Haiti and Pakistan and it is uncertain whether these levels – and in particular contributions from private donors and donors outside of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Development Assistance Committee (OECD DAC) group, which are typically more volatile and reactive to high profile crisis events –  will be sustained. The report also notes that counter to the overall trend, 12 OECD DAC donors had experienced a contraction in their bilateral humanitarian aid financing for two or three years between 2007 and 2010.

The CAP mid-year review reveals that funding levels at the mid-year point in 2011 are lower both in proportion and volume than in the previous year at just 45% funded against requirements, with US$3.6 billion of funding. This is perhaps not surprising given the major stimulus to funding levels that the Haiti crisis generated. However, the proportion of needs met is also lower than the mid-year point in 2009 (49%) and 2008 (46%).

Moreover, the amount of funds requested in the UN CAP appeal in 2011 is far lower than the two preceding years, at just US$7.9 billion.

Disappointingly, the collective donor response to the UN CAP appeal at the mid-year point in 2011 demonstrates that funding levels have dropped and funding gaps have widened in 2011.

Growing funding inequality?

The Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD) commitment to fund in accordance with assessed needs has particular resonance in light of indications from within humanitarian aid data, highlighted in the GHA report 2011, of a possible growing inequality in funding between crises.

Between 2000 and 2009, donors reporting to the OECD DAC have increasingly concentrated their financing in a relatively small number of countries. In 2000, recipient countries which were outside of the top twenty largest recipients by volume, received 31.7% of total official humanitarian assistance. By 2009, the share of those outside of the top twenty had halved, to just 16.4%.

And in 2010 in particular, the GHA report 2011, notes that the overall growth in volumes of funding to the UN consolidated appeal masked a reduction in the level of funding for complex emergencies for the first time since 2003 and a widening gap (around a 10% increase on the three preceding years) in the proportion of needs met within consolidated appeals. In addition, some crises were bigger losers than others. Chad and CAR notably saw an increase in the proportion of their un-met financing needs of around 30%.

It is too early in the year to determine the final outcome of donor funding for ongoing crises in 2011, but at the mid-year point, inequality was certainly evident. The five worst funded appeals have so far had just 9-30% of their funding needs met. All but one are in Africa. The five best funded appeals have had at least twice as much of their funding needs met, 52-63%. Just one of these is in Africa – top of the leader-board is Afghanistan.

Figure 1. Five best and five worst funded appeals in the UN consolidated appeal, July 2011

[Source: Development Initiatives based on UN OCHA Humanitarian Appeal, Mid-Year Review, 2011]

Are we investing in the right things?

Finally, in the last chapter of the GHA report 2011, we reflect on whether we have struck the right balance in our investments in crisis affected states – whether we are investing a great deal too late, when early action could have been less costly in both human suffering and financial terms.

In the top 20 recipients of official humanitarian aid between 2000 and 2009, less than 1% of humanitarian aid has been invested in prevention and preparedness. This preference for funding the latter stages of a crisis, rather than funding early preventive action is repeated in the most pressing humanitarian crisis in 2011 so far, the food security crisis in the Horn of Africa.

While donors have responded to meet immediate food needs fairly well, investments in addressing the structural causes of a predictable crisis have been far less generously funded. In Kenya for example, just 12% of agriculture and livestock funding needs in the UN consolidated appeal have been met compared with 105% of food aid needs.

Figure 2. Funding requirements met and un-met in key clusters in countries affected by the Horn of Africa food crisis at the 2011 UN CAP mid-year point

[Source: Development Initiatives based on UN OCHA Humanitarian Appeal, Mid-Year Review, 2011]

Issues highlighted in the UN CAP mid year review echoed some of our key interests and concerns. We will continue to monitor trends in humanitarian aid financing, including monitoring trends in funding equity, how donors are balancing their investments across different phases and sectors of crises and of course the international response to developing crises, including in the Horn of Africa, which you can follow via the GHA blog and reports and our help-desk function.

Tracking funding to the crisis is not straightforward however. The crisis spans parts of a number of countries, many of which have ongoing humanitarian crises that pre-date the food crisis. Separating out funding to  address the food crisis from other humanitarian funding in these countries is problematic, largely because there is no unifying funding appeal for the food crisis, rather there are three existing UN appeals within the UN’s consolidated appeal (Djibouti, Kenya and Somalia) and a variety of appeals issued by UN agencies, NGOs and other humanitarian organisations.

Contributors of > US$10 million to crisis-affected countries in 2011

Source: Development Initiatives based on UN OCHA FTS, downloaded 22 July 2011. Note that government donor contributions include amounts spent via the country-level common humanitarian funds (CHF) or emergency response funds (ERF). It is important to recognise that governments might also make contributions to the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), unearmarked core funding to UN agencies and the European Commission that those agencies may deploy in these crises.

The GHA team has marshalled some data and facts on the crisis, which can be found in the reports section of the website and we will continue to blog updated figures here. If you have more questions about the data, you can send them to us at gha@devinit.org

The GHA programme will be monitoring how aid donors and those who collect data on aid to South Sudan, plan to fill in historic gaps in the data and how they will gather make data available going forward. In a revised edition of our factsheet on aid to Sudan, now in the reports section on the website, we have attempted to gather what data there is on aid to South Sudan. In the next few weeks we will be researching and writing about how donors and aid data aggregators plan to deal with the new administrative opportunities and challenges of providing and tracking aid to the UN’s 193rd member state.

South Sudan is expected to become an independent state on 9^th July 2011 but plenty of work remains to be done before then.

Outstanding political negotiations include agreeing boundaries and determining the status of Abyei. The job of untangling the economic and administrative affairs of North and South Sudan is also no small matter. Primarily, they must agree management and division of oil revenues, which provide the vast majority of revenues for each state, as well as agreeing how to manage their liabilities, that is the large external debt Sudan has accrued (debts of US$35 billion and loan arrears of US$30 billion).

Aid is one further piece in the puzzle of resource flows to be reviewed, but one which is particularly important to millions of Sudanese citizens in both the North and South, for whom aid plays a key role in meeting their basic needs.

In our latest factsheet we examine Sudan’s history as an aid recipient from 1995-2009.