Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Ursula Mueller Rmarks at ECOSOC Side Event on Anticipation and Forecast-based financing

New York, 20 June 2018

As delivered

I would like to acknowledge the sponsors of this event, Germany, and the IFRC.

Let me begin our discussion by linking forecast-based humanitarian financing with the wider humanitarian context.

Over the last decade, humanitarian needs have spiraled, driven in part by complex emergencies and fueled by protracted situations of conflict. The average conflict now lasts twice as long as it did in 1990. We have witnessed an upsurge in violent conflicts across Syria and Yemen, in the Lake Chad basin and in the Horn of Africa, among other regions, all with massive humanitarian implications.

It was mentioned that weather-related disasters now displaced, on average, 25.3 million people annually. To put this into perspective, this is larger than the total population of Australia or Chile or Zambia annually displaced by weather-related disasters.

Together, these diverse crises have created record levels of humanitarian suffering and displacement.

They have also been marked by a breakdown of basic services and livelihoods, and increased protection risks and vulnerability.

At the same time, humanitarian assistance is now doing much more than it used to do. Humanitarian action is considerably more complex than before, and our assistance is more diverse and adapted to the needs, priorities and vulnerabilities of affected communities.

This trend, coupled with the global growth of humanitarian needs, has cost implications: in 2005, UN-coordinated humanitarian appeals sought US$6 billion. Today they have grown to a record $24 billion.

In short, it is clear that we need to change our approach. We must continue to do things differently so that we not only respond to humanitarian needs, but also work to reduce and prevent them.

So, how can we do this?

First, humanitarian and development organizations and actors must collaborate to reduce vulnerability and risk, and build resilience.

This is in line with the New Way of Working launched at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May 2016. It also aligns with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’s commitment to ‘leave no one behind’. Work is ongoing on this front, with the highest levels of support in the United Nations to advance humanitarian and development collaboration.

Relieving suffering, while building on development solutions, requires advance planning. It also requires time and opportunity – and I would like to add willingness – to jointly analyse and prepare. Good practice of this joined-up approach is emerging in Somalia, Ethiopia, and many other contexts, which I am sure we will hear more about during the course of this week.

Second, the humanitarian system needs to adopt a more anticipatory approach to finance funding.

And as the colleague from the UAE said, we must move to an anticipatory approach where we plan for the next crises, putting the response plans and the resources for them in place before they happen, and releasing the money and mobilizing humanitarian partners as soon as they are needed.

This approach will cut response time and costs, and lead to better quality programming design and also higher impact. We want the Euro or Dollar to go further.

One way to help achieve this is to make greater use of disaster risk insurance.

This is already happening in many settings. When Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck the Caribbean last September, within days, the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility paid four countries that were hit by the storms.

In Africa, many countries are also contributing to the Africa Risk Capacity Initiative, which insures them against food insecurity caused by drought. Payments are automatically triggered, depending on the level of rain or other technical parameters.

This brings me to the next priority: greater use of pre-agreed, contingency financing windows by the multilateral system.

This approach applies to OCHA-managed Country-Based pooled funds and the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF). And I want to thank the donors who contribute to the 18 Country-Based Pooled Funds (CBPFs) and the Secretary General’s CERF which funds early action. In 2017, Humanitarian Country Teams used these funds to help stave off famine in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen.

However, there is still much room for improvement. A recent review of the added value of CERF's response to the 2016 El Niño phenomenon, found that CERF grants were some of the first international funding available, and that they catalyzed increased donor support. But the review also found that CERF would have had an even greater impact had it kick-started action even sooner, before humanitarian needs started to unfold. Because the signs were already visible.

There is wide recognition of what we can achieve when we act early, and partners are stepping up to make it a reality. In a recent Inter-Agency Standing Committee review of the Emergency Response Preparedness approach implemented in over 70 countries since 2015, partners unanimously supported integrating and reflecting “early action” within contingency planning.

So, this of course requires close partnerships with existing financing tools and mechanisms, including the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund Forecast-based Financing Window, the Start Network’s anticipation window, and the World Bank’s and WHO’s Pandemic Emergency Financing Facility, to just name a few.

For contingency financing to work, action triggers must be backed up by strong data and predictive analytics.

In this spirit, with support from the Government of the Netherlands, OCHA set up the Centre for Humanitarian Data last December in The Hague, which will help to increase the use of data for informed evidence-based humanitarian action. The Centre is now working with the World Bank Famine Early Action Mechanism to identify data and develop predictive models so that we can better predict famine and respond earlier.

We must also explore other forms of risk sharing with the private sector. These include market-based instruments such as social impact bonds, guarantees and other initiatives that tap into global capital markets.

For these initiatives, and others, to work, we need to continue to jointly analyze and share findings from pilots to identify the best models with the most promise and potential for – as you mentioned - scale up and replication. We also need more financial literacy within the humanitarian community.

As this work moves forward, I look forward to our discussion here today, and to hear your perspectives on how we can anticipate better, respond earlier, and ultimately better serve people in need.

Thank you.