Disappointing end to a positive World Humanitarian Summit

26 May, 2016
24 May 2016, ISTANBUL: As the first ever World Humanitarian Summit comes to an end, CARE fears that the progress and positive steps that have been made in the areas of localisation, funding and gender, will be lost by the lack of any kind of roadmap for implementation going forward, and that States will not be held to the good commitments made.
Wolfgang Jamann, Secretary General of CARE International said on:
SUCCESSES & FAILURES OF THE SUMMIT
“This Summit is one piece in a puzzle. A lot of smaller initiatives have been launched - like the establishment of NEAR; a new local NGO Consortium - and we are positive about the funding commitments made in the ‘Grand Bargain’ with increased and more flexible funding. It now falls to us to hold States accountable to these commitments.”
“One positive outcome of this Summit has been the energy that has been generated around localisation and gender. However, the political dimensions of the demand for humanitarian assistance haven’t been tackled sufficiently and in particular the prevention and mitigation of conflict. Failure to address this at the summit – which was likely given the failure of key leaders to attend - was exacerbated by the failure to lay out a pathway to make progress in the future. The UN in its current form isn’t able to address these political challenges – action needs to be taken by the powerful states that make up the UN, and the new Secretary General will need to find a way to move them forwards if we are to address the huge need.”
“We appreciate that the global humanitarian crisis is moving into the centre of the UN debate, but are disappointed about the lack of G7 or Security Council members’ commitments particularly on political action.”
“This summit has encouraged us to make changes and enforce our own commitments as an organisation.”
Gareth Price Jones, CARE International Senior Humanitarian Policy and Advocacy Coordinator said on: MEETING THE SUMMIT AIMS
“Coming up to the World Humanitarian Summit there were three big debates where there were genuine differences; around localisation, around funding modalities and around the need for political action. On localisation and funding we have seen good progress, especially for women’s groups. On the political action, however, it was beyond the power of the UN and NGOs to solve – and the powerful States who needed to step up have completely failed to do so.”
“We were pleased to see that the Secretary General called for an intergovernmental process, and berated leaders who did not attend. The lack of a clear roadmap on the big, political issues had undermined the real progress made around how aid is funded and delivered’
Barbara Jackson CARE International Humanitarian Director said on:
GENDER
“Two years ago we were told gender would never make it onto the agenda of the World Humanitarian Summit, so the fact that it was one of the most dynamic roundtables, and featured in several side events and numerous commitments has hopefully brought in a new norm around gender.”
“Our goals from the gender roundtable were policy commitments by states on gender, accountability by them for gender across all aspects of humanitarian response and a prioritisation of gender-based violence. Some states like Denmark have endorsed commitments on gender based violence and the roadmap which follows it, and Australia has agreed to use gender markers in assessing humanitarian programme proposals, but many more have not and there is still have a long way to go to ensuring mechanisms are in place and used to demonstrate compliance with the commitments made.”
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