An end to forgotten emergencies?

As Western countries have got richer in the past ten years, the proportion of their wealth spent on humanitarian aid has gone down by 30%. The number of forgotten emergencies looks set to increase. The required response is not aid alone. Oxfam continues to press for international efforts to prevent conflict, tackle poverty, and promote respect for human rights. Yet humanitarian aid remains vital. Western countries must increase such aid to meet the scale of the need; and, crucially, they must distribute that aid on the basis of need, not of political interest or media coverage. Oxfam seeks an end to forgotten emergencies and its proposals include:The international response to humanitarian crises should be determined by need, not strategic interest, or media coverage The UN Security Council and its members should promote humanitarian action through coordinated approaches: humanitarian assistance and protection backed up by political and economic action to uphold international humanitarian law, to secure access and ensure the protection of non-combatantsAll donors should make publicly stated commitments to collectively provide a global safety-net to ensure humanitarian assistance and protection for all those in need. This should include recognition of their responsibility to respond to suffering in malign environments, and to support preparedness measuresDonors should devise an effective burden-sharing mechanism for meeting global humanitarian need based on their respective wealth. Members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) should undertake to contribute at least their GNP-percentage share to every humanitarian appeal. This requires commitment to aid at the heart of government, and flexible mechanisms to allow aid ministries to draw on resources for exceptional needsAll donors to increase significantly their aid budgets to enable them to provide more humanitarian assistance without diverting resources from long-term development aidGovernments should collaborate with the UN to establish an internationally credible mechanism for the formulation of consolidated appeals for assistance, and the formulation and agreement on strategies for responseGovernments and donors should collaborate on strategies to develop appropriate preparedness capacities at global, regional and local levelsWithin the context of establishing a global safety-net, donors – such as OECD governments and ECHO - should plan potential humanitarian spend for regions/countries prone to crisis in an effort to improve the timeliness and effectiveness of humanitarian response. Figures should be based on burden-sharing responsibilities and decisively reversing the downward trend of humanitarian spend. NGOs should improve their commitment to consistent aid through making progress in disseminating the charter and standards of the Sphere Project, and striving to adhere to Sphere in practice. NGOs should increase their accountability to beneficiaries through the development of practical proposals for a humanitarian ombudsman.Also available as zipped file at: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/policy/papers/fgemg/fgemg.zip