Country-Based Pooled Funds and Regional Humanitarian Pooled Funds 2024 in Review
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Letter from the Emergency Relief Coordinator
“As local as possible, as international as necessary.”
The Pooled Funds are the most effective tool for locally led humanitarian action. They empower those closest to the crisis, ensuring aid reaches communities in a fast, cost-efficient, participatory, and sustainable way.
The facts speak for themselves.
In 2024, nearly half of all funding went to local and national organizations, almost double the systemwide target set in 2016. This year, as we reprioritize, we should aim at funding local and national actors as much as possible, people facing crises first.
The Ukraine Humanitarian Fund, for example, whose work I was privileged to see in January 2025, directed almost 60 per cent of its funding to local and national partners.
The Sudan Humanitarian Fund disbursed $146 million – nearly double the amount in 2023 – including for community-led initiatives to maintain critical services.
The Ethiopia Humanitarian Fund allocated $7 million based on climate forecasts predicting below-average rainfall during the October to December rainy season, ensuring timely support for communities before drought conditions worsened.
The regional and country-based humanitarian funds are not just another funding mechanism. They are localized tools on a global stage – with the agility, impact and ability to bring governments, local responders, and international agencies together, preventing duplication and maximizing impact.
This has been such a winning formula that, last year, three new Regional Humanitarian Pooled Funds were established: In Latin America and the Caribbean, in Eastern and Southern Africa, and in Asia and the Pacific.
At a time when the humanitarian financing sector faces a funding and credibility crisis, the pooled funds matter and deserve your continued support.
Thank you for your partnership, commitment and trust.
Tom Fletcher Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator