Humanitarian funding review: our future response to global humanitarian crises

3. The context of Humanitarian Aid and the wider International Development sector

3.1 External context

Funding from traditional humanitarian donors is declining significantly. The United States, historically the largest provider of humanitarian aid, has cut its pledged commitments by between 30 and 60 percent^[6] in key ODA sectors including infrastructure, education, conflict mitigation, and family health support. Other major donors, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and France have also signalled significant cuts to humanitarian assistance.

These dramatic cuts risk compounding existing unmet needs. In 2024, the UN projected a $25 billion gap between humanitarian needs and funding. Projections are for this gap to more than double in 2025.^[7]

The humanitarian sector is feeling these cuts already. Actors from across the UN family, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, international, national, and local NGOs have reported severe liquidity and planning challenges that are forcing changes to existing programming, cuts to local staff, and reprioritization exercises. These impacts are being felt both at headquarters and in the field, in acute emergencies and in longer-term, protracted crises.^[8]. Longer term impacts are also becoming apparent. Cuts to early warning, monitoring, and data collection initiatives such as the Famine Early Warning System and other initiatives by REACH, IMPACT and the International Organisation for Migration, have been taken offline or lost most funding.^[9] Interviews with practitioners and literature review suggest that these initiatives, which helped humanitarian actors prepare for potential disasters and build the evidence base on how natural and other shocks can evolve into disasters with severe humanitarian consequences, are a less visible but perhaps longer-term, more damaging consequence of these cuts.^[10]

While these systemic shocks are new, they are not unanticipated. Researchers and practitioners have long warned of overreliance on traditional donors, and the risks of donor driven aid. During the 2009 global financial crisis, aid fell by 20 –25% from countries affected by financial instability. ^[11] The 2016 World Humanitarian Summit, which led to the Grand Bargain, identified the limited humanitarian funding base as a major risk.^[12] The spike in ODA directed to humanitarian assistance during COVID-19 pandemic, and the conflict in Ukraine, also distorted previous patterns of ODA and humanitarian assistance and led to budgets cuts in the mid-2020s.

These concerns have prompted a shift in focus towards diverse sources of aid, localized methods of delivery and “rethinking” the humanitarian system in more radical ways than bureaucratic or systems reform. These range from a re-energized focus on the nexus between humanitarian action, peace, development, resilience-building and climate adaptation to approaches that challenge traditional humanitarian principles of neutrality, independence, and impartiality. These include radical solidarity and even “resistance” humanitarianism support comes from politically, economically, or socially aligned actors.^[13]

3.2 Internal context

While the dramatic changes to the humanitarian space taking place around the world should influence the manner in which the Scottish Government engages in humanitarian assistance, internal factors also shape the menu of potential options and their relative weights. Most obviously, public consent for the Scottish Government to continue to dedicate significant funds to humanitarian assistance, on top of the existing contribution Scottish taxpayers make through broader UK commitments, is critical. This means that the extent to which additional contributions from the Scottish Government’s own budget demonstrate clear value to the public must be factored into how contributions are made – particularly at a time when many Scottish citizens face the realities of a cost-of-living crisis.

While this may appear to call for mechanisms that provide clear evidence of specific outcomes from each grant the Scottish Government allocates, there are second and third-order elements of humanitarian donorship that can also be used to make a public case. These range from taking on more prominent, constructive, leadership roles in the donor community, and using this standing to demonstrate to the Scottish public the value-added of humanitarian engagement – more relevant now, as other traditional donors step back, than at other points in the recent past – to the participation in broad mechanisms that allow each “dollar” to be allocated on the basis of need, and in concert with other resources. These options are developed in greater detail in later sections of the report.

Other internal factors also shape the potential form and method of Scottish humanitarian donorship going forward. Principles of good donorship, shifting power to local actors in the global south, and the desire to see the Scottish Governments’ relatively small amount of funding obtain high-impact, transformational or catalytic impacts must be considered in deciding future allocations: these principles rhyme with existing, broader efforts to improve humanitarian donorship, most notably the commitments of the Grand Bargain 2.0, and the principles of good humanitarian donorship.^[14]

As a non-sovereign donor, the Scottish Government also has options available to it that may be more contentious coming from UN member states. Over the last few years there has been significant literature dedicated to forms of humanitarian assistance that do not necessarily align with the traditional, Dunantist^[15] definition of neutral, impartial, independent humanitarian assistance (NIIHA): these include solidarity movements that empower mutual aid networks that may take explicitly political stances, to forms of “resistance humanitarianism” that provide aid and relief, but are firmly rooted in partiality when it comes to a specific conflict or political argument.^[16] The Scottish Governments’ jurisdictional status gives it options to engage in these forms of assistance that would be more difficult for UN member states.

The amount of funding Scottish Government makes available for humanitarian funding is relatively small in comparison to wider Scottish Government International Development funds.

It is clear that, in comparison to other funds managed by the International Development team, humanitarian funds are more human resource heavy – with multiple approval points across the year requiring Ministerial approvals.

Finally, the review team recognises that this review is taking place in the year preceding the next Scottish Parliament election (which will take place before 7 May 2026).

3.3 Learning from other ‘small’ donors

With major donors reducing aid budgets, there is increased interest in leveraging the collective strengths and resources of smaller providers from across the humanitarian system. These include private and philanthropic sources, small states and non-state jurisdictions. This review will focus on the latter two categories, given their relevance to the nature and approach of the Scottish Government.

Small states

Whilst Ireland spends a significantly higher sum of money (€310M in 2024^[17]) than the Scottish Government on humanitarian crises, and as a sovereign state has a status qualitatively different to that of Scotland as a devolved nation within the United Kingdom, it is still deemed a ‘small’ donor. In interviews, Irish Aid and former Irish Aid employees noted that Ireland positions itself as one of the ‘best’ donors – not necessarily the biggest – by supporting principled, needs-based humanitarian action. This approach aligns with the Scottish Government’s International Development principles, the FAIR principles and their aspirations towards the Grand Bargain.^[18] Ireland believes that smaller funders are likely to take a disproportionately larger role in the in the geopolitics-dominated donor space. Nearly 50% of Ireland’s budget goes into UN pooled funds providing a ‘counterbalance’ to political influences on aid distribution.

They also had strong views on the need to prioritize ‘saving lives now’ in ways which build resilience and reduce future humanitarian caseloads. Ireland supports the multilateral system and coordinated aid delivery; taking on leadership roles such as Chair of the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) Advisory Group which increase their influence beyond their spend. They also were a founding donor of the START network.^[19]

Quasi and non-sovereign states and jurisdictions

The best-placed comparators for the Scottish Government are other jurisdictions that are not UN member states or sovereign entities, yet choose to leverage their varying levels of independence and autonomy to provide humanitarian assistance. In 2024, OCHA’s Geneva office organized an information session for non-sovereign jurisdictions interested in contributing to OCHA-managed humanitarian funding mechanisms. Officials from the autonomous community of Catalonia, Flanders (the Flemish region of Belgium), the Canton and municipality of Geneva, and the Balliwick of Jersey attended to learn about the roles and opportunities open to them within OCHA’s portfolio of funds and mechanisms.

The crown dependency of Jersey stands out as an example of how non-UN member state jurisdictions can actively contribute to humanitarian efforts. The jurisdiction’s humanitarian spend ranges from 5-6 million GBP per year – 25% of its annual development budget – managed by the Jersey Overseas Aid Commission (JOA) and its board (3 elected officials, 3 citizen representatives). The humanitarian budget is apportioned to a variety of facilities: 20% to pooled funding mechanisms, 20% to emergency allocations to pre-approved humanitarian actors, 20% to multi-year strategic partners – including UNHCR and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the rest to discretionary spend.

This budget is significantly higher than that of the Scottish Government, but category allocations are on the same order of magnitude as current Scottish government HEF DEC Stream 1, Stream 2, and ad hoc allocations, offering an interesting parallel for the government to consider.

Jersey’s approach to humanitarian donorship is not exclusively defined by its preferred models and mechanisms for disbursement: it has also chosen to play a prominent role in donor communities, by attending OCHA-organized donor trips to the field to observe crises. For example, in 2018, it allocated £100,000 to the Central African Republic country-based pooled fund and attended the subsequent donor visit to the country. Jersey has leveraged this active participation into prominent positions within OCHA’s donor group, including co-chairing the Pooled Fund Working Group and hosting meetings of the group in Jersey.