Humanitarian financing- Keeping up with a world in crisis

Friends of Europe’s ‘Conversation with’ European Commission Vice President Kristalina Georgieva highlighted the findings of the report of the United Nations High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing.

“In this wealthy world of ours, no one should die or lose their dignity because of a lack of money,” she said, adding that “we Europeans need to get ahead of the curve of the current refugee crisis. Resolving this crisis at home is necessary to sustaining and increasing our generosity abroad. Not only is this the morally correct thing to do but it is increasingly in our own best interests as well.”

Some of these findings include an increasing need to share responsibility for humanitarian responses and financing across the globe, to shrink the gap between humanitarian and development actions, and to improve on the delivery and efficiency of humanitarian aid.

Having determined that there is currently a $15bn discrepancy in financing humanitarian actions, the High-Level Panel (HLP) has released a set of recommendations on how to make up the shortfall, ranging from voluntary micro-levies on high-volume activities such as entertainment or travel spending, to increasing the role of the private sector, to exploring the possibilities of Islamic social finance.

With global GDP at more than $78 trillion, the HLP recommends creating a global Generosity Index in order to compare every nation’s increase in wealth with their increase in responsibility for global stability and humanitarian aid.

“In the face of the global economic downturn, we must determine a way to acknowledge the good being done,” Vice President Georgieva said. “We have a chance here to tackle humanitarian action differently and we should grab it.”

View tweets from the event using #ConversationWith.