The Covid-19 pandemic has forced the international humanitarian sector to adapt to a different operational reality, with many international staff unable to travel and access affected communities. A renewed focus on the role of local actors offers an opportunity to turn this rhetoric into action, and provide more funding, support and recognition for national humanitarian responders.

Capturing evidence of changes is important. It not only helps inform future programming, funding decisions and details lessons learnt, but also makes a case for future support to national responders.

The Humanitarian Policy Group’s (HPG) new mapping tool is capturing some of these changes in real-time. Using an online survey and a review of publicly available sources, it documents how Covid-19 is triggering change in the humanitarian system towards more local humanitarian action, local leadership and partnerships between international and national responders.

What is the data telling us so far?

The tool currently showcases a collection of examples from 30 countries. There are five key trends emerging from the data so far.

 

Read the full post and have access to the tool here.

This publication first appeared on the ODI site. 

Author: Alexandra Spencer, ODI. 

The views are those of the author and not necessarily those of ETTG.