Flagship Initiative First Global Learning Forum Summary Report - March 2024

The Flagship Initiative, launched in 2023, aims to address long-standing challenges in the humanitarian system, including the growing number of protracted crises, the systematic disregard for the agency of crisis-affected people, the increasing bureaucratization of aid delivery, and the diminishing resources needed to respond effectively to expanding humanitarian needs.

Across four pilot countries – Colombia, Niger, the Philippines, and South Sudan – the initiative spent much of 2023 building upon the work of previous change initiatives and finding new and innovative ways to redesign humanitarian action from the perspective of communities. By decentralizing decision-making to where crisis-affected communities actually are, the pilot countries aim to create the basis for a more effective, agile, and sustainable humanitarian system, one that empowers crisis-affected communities and builds resilience against future humanitarian crises.

The first global learning forum of the Flagship Initiative, held in Luxembourg on March 20-21, 2024, brought together a diverse group of stakeholders from across the globe, both in-person and online, to explore learning from the first year of the initiative.

The message from forum participants was loud and clear: Constrained funding, growing humanitarian need, and the lack of decision-making agency among crisis-affected people is rendering the current international model of humanitarian assistance unviable. Changing the way we deliver humanitarian assistance is both inevitable and urgent.

In 2023, three areas emerged as foundational to shifting the humanitarian system so that it centers on people affected by crisis:

1. Engaging with communities to understand their priorities, risks, capacities, and aspirations.
2. Coordinating around those priorities at a decentralized level.
3. Financing the coalition of partners and package of humanitarian assistance that contributes to delivering those priorities.

This report, which summarizes discussions during the first global learning forum, explores how this mosaic of change is contributing to an evolution in humanitarian assistance.