Relief Chief: A Manifesto for Saving Lives in Dire Times is Mark Lowcock's behind-the-scenes account of his experience as the world's most senior humanitarian official—the UN Relief Chief. In his four years on the job, Lowcock coordinated the work of UN agencies, the Red Cross, and countless nationa...

In this policy paper we review donor responses to a survey and interviews to probe the effects of the broader political and economic context in which donors operate, and identify internal constraints on humanitarian funding, planning, and making allocative decisions. We identify and highlight percei...

This paper argues that humanitarian system reform should extend to governance. Governing institutions—such as member state boards of multilateral organizations, and NGO boards of directors—have tremendous influence over the strategic direction of individual institutions and the sector writ large. Bu...

This brief summarizes three years of research under the project, “Rethinking Humanitarian Reform,” led by Jeremy Konyndyk, Patrick Saez, and Rose Worden, and funded by the aid departments of the United Kingdom and Australia. The project aimed to understand the incentives behind the humanitarian syst...

On July 7, CGD convened a private, online, high-level roundtable of 15 major humanitarian donors, multilateral agencies, and NGO leaders under the Chatham House Rule to discuss humanitarian financing challenges and four proposals to reform the humanitarian business model. This note explores what was...

Most differences in global aid allocation cannot be explained using our measures of need, humanitarian demand, capacity and donor relations in a simple linear regression model.

The international humanitarian system provides a global public service but is financed on a voluntary basis. The way official donor funding is mobilised and allocated is unpredictable and haphazard, reducing efficiency and effectiveness. Donors should overcome the collective action problem that is i...