World Humanitarian Summit: Connecting Business Initiative launched at the WHS

The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) took place on 23-24 May 2016 and saw the launch of a number of initiatives including the Connecting Business Initiative (CBi) during a Special Session chaired by the UNDP Administrator, Helen Clark; USG for Humanitarian Affairs, the Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O’Brien and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction and head of UNISDR, Dr. Robert Glasser.

In order to harness the full power of business, the private sector must be an equal partner at all stages. Effective collaboration must be founded upon common interests and the co-creation of projects and outcomes. On this premise, the CBi brings together 11 national private sector networks representing hundreds of companies worldwide – with wide multi-stakeholder support. It aims to assist local businesses and business associations to utilize existing networks to create platforms for disaster risk reduction, emergency preparedness, response and recovery; and create a global portal to, among others, connect sub-national, national, regional, and thematic and industry business networks. The East African Humanitarian Private Sector Partnership Platform (EA HPPP) and the Madagascar Humanitarian Private Sector Platform were among the 11 networks represented in the CBi global platform.

The Special Session at the Summit provided an opportunity for over 30 speakers representing businesses, networks and Member States to offer their support and commitments in terms of funding and in-kind contributions for the CBi. These included Belgium, Turkey, Australia and the Hilton Foundation. The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation announced commitments to support disaster, relief and recovery activities for a total of US$ 10 Million over five years. Others announced commitments to work with CBi – for example the Government of Fiji announced a change in their legislation to work with private sector networks and looking at private sector to offer technology in tackling climate change.

The strong attendance of the Special Session was a good reflection of the broad base of support for the initiative. The next steps with CBi include working out operational modalities between OCHA, ISDR and UNDP and following up with partners who expressed interest in joining or offering support for CBi.

Here is the full video clip on the launch of the CBi - http://bit.ly/1sIBgP6

Private sector engagement on digital payments in Humanitarian Action

In the lead up to the Summit, two private sector consultations had been organized on digital payments resulting in three initiatives that were announced at WHS. These include: i) MasterCard committing to leading on data security and data privacy initiative in collaboration with NetHope which is bringing together 44 participants including, among others, UNHCR, Western Union, Visa, Facebook, Google, Philips Foundation; ii) GSMA committed to working with mobile network operators on humanitarian payments through the Humanitarian Connectivity Charter; iii) and finally, the World Economic Forum committed to facilitate writing of principles for public-private engagement for humanitarian payments.