The humanitarian system is facing a crisis of legitimacy. Recent funding trends highlight how the system, built for short-term emergencies, is now expected to manage the consequences of long-term political failure. Not only are humanitarian needs driven by underlying factors that rely on power imbalances and a lack of accountability, but the system is failing to provide answers to these as its own accountability is to the current power-holders and not to affected people.

The Advisory Panel on the Future of Humanitarian Action proposes a move away from this faltering system towards an ecosystem approach, which would entail bolstering the local systems that already serve people in need, while addressing the power imbalances in terms of funding, decision-making, risk and accountability to help rebuild the political consensus around the collective importance of humanitarian action.

Five key shifts are identified to help donors, local and national actors (including states), international organisations, the United Nations, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, and other stakeholders in the humanitarian system, find pathways forward towards an ecosystem approach that confronts politics and power while seeking justice.

• Shift 1: Build a multipolar humanitarian system fit for a multipolar world
• Shift 2: Support context-specific humanitarian governance
• Shift 3: Refocus international actors on their distinctive role
• Shift 4: Build a pluralistic humanitarian data system
• Shift 5: Rewire financing around continuity

The Panel presents a menu of key steps that actors can take, according to their capacity and will, in order to contribute to a holistic move towards an ecosystem approach. The system must move from a lack of legitimacy towards solidarity with the people it aims to serve.

Report by the Overseas Development Institute