The frustrations of CERF. Toby Porter on how predictable financing has turned into less predictable funds for agencies on the ground.

A new round of pledges to the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) this December is an encouraging sign of donor commitment to providing greater and more predictable financing for humanitarian assistance. However, all changes are best judged on the evidence of how they play out in practice, and not just on the theory.

From my perspective as operational Emergencies Director of one of the largest international NGOs, the increasingly predictable thing about each new emergency in 2006 was that each time it became harder for us to obtain the swift and concrete donor support that we have counted on routinely in the past to mount effective first-phase responses.

In rapid-onset disasters such as Lebanon and the recent flooding in northern Kenya, the most important donors have made little or no immediate funding available to international NGOs, even though we have been there and ready to respond. Only the policy of funds being channelled through the UN has slowed us down.

In chronic emergencies, something similar is happening. UN agencies’ share of total financial resources has more than doubled in the DRC and Sudan because of the use of common or pooled funding instruments, which the UN administer on behalf of donors. In the two countries, 83% and 85% of common fund money* has been granted to UN agencies, with 17% and 15% going to NGOs.

A recent independent evaluation of the use of common funds in Sudan and the DRC notes in the Executive Summary**:

Problems identified in the allocation process include apparent conflict of interests issues, and difficulties faced by NGOs in access and participation. Moreover, some UN agencies that are not traditionally major players in humanitarian action seem to have benefited disproportionately from the mechanism in financial and visibility terms, showing huge jumps in funding from past years. This has raised questions as to whether the increased flows are being directed to the most capable actors, even if they do target priority areas.

As per any policy shift in an aid environment with so many different donors, the impact will be felt unevenly by NGOs, particularly at first. The importance of ECHO and its Primary Emergency funding mechanism to European NGOs will increase. North American NGOs will be more insulated, given the scepticism towards the UN in many parts of Washington. UK NGOs, conversely, are likely to be particularly vulnerable, given DfID’s leading role in driving forward these changes. By way of illustration, Save the Children UK this year has received direct funding from the Canadian Government both for our work in Lebanon and our current flood response in Kenya, but none from the UK, who pointed us instead in the direction of the UN agency they are supporting.

What is frustrating about this trend it seems to fly in the face of all available evidence as to the agencies best placed to provide fast, quality and cost-effective response. No donor or UN official has ever made or even attempted to make an intellectually satisfying argument as to why, all of a sudden, NGOs cannot access the rapid response mechanism in which donors are increasingly investing.

Instead, there are two reasons trotted out why NGOs do not have access to CERF. First, because of administrative rules and restrictions within the UN secretariat, which restrict recipients to UN entities, and secondly because of the suspicion of some General Assembly members have about NGOs in general, usually related to the internal political dynamics of the states in question.

Neither argument is convincing. The first runs counter to the very notion of reform, by sticking with rather than fixing or even replacing a system with such obvious flaws as the formal exclusion of the NGO pillar. As for the second, its probably best to leave it with the observation that the states most worried about the NGO sector in their own countries may not necessarily be those most seized with the plight of victims of conflict and natural disasters in someone else’s.

There are, I think, three main points that donor’s questions need to consider before they accelerate further down this track.

Firstly, what is the evidence base for making the UN the de facto administrative channel for NGOs? One could make a list of a hundred different things to admire about almost any UN agency, but surely nobody would include efficient and quick internal administration among them. To make immediate humanitarian response in so many contexts increasingly dependent on fast turnaround of proposals and sub-grant agreements by UN agencies with near dysfunctional administrative systems is an extravagant gamble, in humanitarian terms.

Second, donors need to be very careful that they do not undermine concrete recent progress towards a more even and mutually respectful partnership between NGOs and the UN, by inserting an increasing funding dependency into the relationship. Is it realistic, for example, to expect senior in-country NGO officials from agencies participating in cluster co-ordination arrangements to be holding a UN agency head to account for their performance and co-ordination one day, and return the next to enquire about the progress of a funding application? Donors should be the first to realise that funding relationships alter power dynamics, and this will be no different.

Finally, and most importantly, does the new system pass a simple humanitarian test? If it was your children, or the children of friends of yours, struck out there in a remote village flattened by an earthquake or newly displaced on the outskirts of a small town in Sudan, who would you want to receive the first money, to give you and your family the best chance of seeing those funds quickly translated into concrete humanitarian services? Chances are that it would still be an NGO. And how would you feel if the only thing that prevented the NGO from helping them was the inefficiencies and delays surrounding a sub-granting process that is completely unnecessary, in programmatic terms? For a rapid response mechanism, this is both illogical, and wrong.

*Data correct as of October 2006

**Common Funds for Humanitarian Action in Sudan and the DRC: Monitoring and Evaluation Study, December 2006(www.cic.nyu.edu/internationalsecurity/humanitarian)