GPPi releases report on how donors address the transition from humanitarian to development assistance

In October 2011, GPPi made public a report titled Donor Strategies for Addressing the Transition Gap and Linking Humanitarian and Development Assistance. Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the report was written by GPPi Associate Director Julia Steets with contributions from Domenica Preysing and Gilla Shapiro.

Humanitarian assistance and development cooperation pursue different aims and follow different principles. Humanitarian assistance aims to save lives and alleviate human suffering and is guided by the principles of humanity, independence, neutrality and impartiality. Development cooperation, by comparison, seeks to achieve sustainable improvements in living conditions and is often aligned with the strategic and political interests of donor governments. Steets writes that because of the diverging aims of humanitarian and development assistance, donors typically have different processes and institutions for administering the two. This split has negative side effects.

On the one hand, there are gaps in funding for the transition between humanitarian assistance and development cooperation. On the other hand, there is a disconnect between the two forms of assistance that results in an excessive short-term orientation of humanitarian assistance, a discontinuity of project implementation across the two forms of assistance and an insufficient focus on disaster risk reduction and preparedness among development actors. Recognizing these challenges, donors have taken a range of different steps for strengthening links between humanitarian assistance and development cooperation.

One has been to address an effect of the disconnect – the funding gap for transition – through specialized funding instruments. This promises quick and visible results, but exacerbates the underlying problem. Alternatively, donors have opted for the more arduous route of reducing the disconnect through either decentralization, intra-governmental coordination, incentives for partner organizations or a combination of these measures.