Humanitarian Aid Programme - Performance

Programme in a nutshell

Concrete examples of achievements

Budget for 2021-2027

Rationale and design of the programme

Humanitarian aid is a key pillar of the EU's external action and an important element of the EU's ability to project its values globally. The EU humanitarian aid programme provides emergency, life-saving assistance to people, particularly the most vulnerable, hit by human-induced or natural disasters.

Budget

Budget programming (million EUR):

^{(*) Only Article 15(3) of the financial regulation.}

  Financial programming:
  + EUR 1 661.8 million (+ 14%)
  compared to the legal basis*

^{* Top-ups pursuant to Article 5 of the multiannual financial framework regulation are excluded from financial programming in this comparison.}

• Given its centrality in dealing with current crisis, the programme has been reinforced substantially at different times.
• In 2021, budget has been reinforced by EUR 665.1 million during the year through the Solidarity and Emergency Aid Reserve, amending budget, redeployments from Heading VI instruments and the Virement d'Aide Humanitaire cater for increasing humanitarian needs, such as the crises in Afghanistan and in the Nagorno-Karabakh or the Kenya and Somalia droughts.
• In 2022, the humanitarian aid budget was reinforced by EUR 635.7 million. In part, the transfers originated from the Solidarity and Emergency Aid Reserve and redeployments from Heading VI instruments to cater for the needs arising in response to the Russian war against Ukraine and the worldwide deterioration of food security. Further funds became available through the Virement d'Aide Humanitaire to tackle the security and displacement crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In addition to the reinforcements, ECHO also received frontloading of EUR 211 million from the Solidarity and Emergency Aid Reserve at the beginning of the year.
• For 2023, an initial budget increase was secured in the form of multiannual financial framework funding amending letter (AL/01) for EUR 150 million.

Budget performance – implementation

Annual voted budget implementation (million EUR)⁽¹⁾:

^{(1) Voted appropriations (C1) only.}

Contribution to horizontal priorities

Green budgeting

Contribution to green budgeting priorities (million EUR):

• The figure for 2022 (EUR 1 016.46 million) is the result of the application of the methodology to track spending contributing to climate mainstreaming. The Commission is implementing central tracking at the commitment level, to improve the accuracy and reliability of data on climate action. The tracking is based on the EU’s climate-marker methodology, made up of three scores (0/40/100). Generally, humanitarian aid projects have climate adaptation as a “significant objective” (40%) with some exceptions, while preparedness actions within humanitarian aid contribute to a 100% to climate mainstreaming as its objective has climate adaptation and/or mitigation objectives “as fundamental in the design, or the motivation for, the activity”.
• In order to reduce the carbon footprint of and the environmental damage caused by humanitarian aid, minimum environmental requirements and associated guidance were published in 2022. Technical assistance and support was provided to partners and ECHO’s staff in order to integrate environmental considerations into the directorate-general’s humanitarian aid operations and those of its partners.
• ECHO continued to encourage partners to include preparedness measures and climate, environmental and conflict risk considerations into all the humanitarian actions it funds, to help ensure that impacts, including those related to the climate, are accounted for in all sectorial interventions (e.g. displacement). The resilience marker is a tool that supports partners in doing so throughout the design of their interventions by ensuring that they consider and address these risks. The following examples illustrate the Commission’s response to the consequences of climate change and the relief of affected populations in 2022.
  • Response to floods in Pakistan. Over EUR 30 million of funding was allocated following the heavy floods in Pakistan over the summer of 2022, focusing on urgent needs such as shelter, nutrition, health, and water and sanitation. As an example, an initiative involving Mercy Corps entitled ‘Emergency support to meet the immediate needs of flood affected communities in Balochistan and Sindh provinces’ began its 6-month operation in September 2022. This initiative includes cash-based assistance, water sanitation and hygiene, health, shelter and support for livelihoods (livestock). In August 2022, the EU Civil Protection Mechanism was activated at the request of the Pakistani authorities. As of the last update, nine EU Member States and one other participating state had offered assistance to Pakistan in the form of family tents, water purification teams, medical staff and equipment, etc.
  • Response to drought in the Horn of Africa. In response to the devastating climate-induced drought affecting the Horn of Africa and the resulting overwhelming emergency needs in the region, an additional EUR 32 million of humanitarian assistance was announced in April 2022, bringing the total contribution to over EUR 108 million for the drought-affected countries. One example of this intervention is a project entitled ‘Multi-sectoral emergency response in drought affected areas of Somali region, Ethiopia’, which is being run in partnership with Save the Children. The project began in May 2022 and will run for a period of 1 year.

Gender

Contribution to gender equality (million EUR) (*):

<sup>(*) Based on the applied gender contribution methodology, the following scores are attributed at the most granular level of intervention possible:
- 2: interventions the principal objective of which is to improve gender equality;
- 1: interventions that have gender equality as an important and deliberate objective but not as the main reason for the intervention;
- 0: non-targeted interventions (interventions that are expected to have no significant bearing on gender equality);
- 0*: score to be assigned to interventions with a likely but not yet clear positive impact on gender equality.
(**) Update from last year figures.</sup>

• The Commission is committed to ensuring that EU humanitarian aid takes into account the different needs and capacities of women and men of all ages. The Commission is working on a methodology for gender expenditure tracking, and has provisionally assigned score 1 to the total humanitarian aid budget for 2022 (EUR 1.806 billion). This is a Commission-wide methodology, and differs from other assessment methods used to track humanitarian funding, such as the Commission’s humanitarian gender-age marker and the gender equality marker used by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It is clear that humanitarian aid has some impact on gender equality (therefore, scores 0 and 0* could not be assigned), but gender equality is also not the principal objective of the programme (therefore score 2 could not be assigned).

• The EU continued mainstreaming gender and age across all sectors of intervention, outlining the approach to gender and gender-based violence in humanitarian crises in the staff working document ‘Gender: Different needs, adapted assistance’. The EU remained an active member of the ‘Call to action on protection from gender-based violence in emergencies’ initiative and reported concerning the commitments made on the road map for 2021-2025. The EU furthermore increased its focus on conflict-related sexual violence in response to observations in several recent and ongoing crises.

Digital

Contribution to digital transition (million EUR):

Budget performance – outcomes

• Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has deeply impacted the global humanitarian landscape, both directly and indirectly, by raising food insecurity worldwide, thus significantly exacerbating the humanitarian situation in many parts of the world, which had already drastically deteriorated.
• Furthermore, a contested multilateral order and the challenges deriving from climate change are exacerbating tensions and fuelling existing regional conflicts and protracted crises. Other factors, such as failed governance and the long-lasting consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, have contributed to the current outlook. The deterioration in the humanitarian situation – for example in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, the Sahel and Sudan – is a visible illustration of a global and sustained increase in humanitarian needs, which are currently at an all-time high. In addition, continued widespread violations of international humanitarian law and impediments to humanitarian access are making the delivery of humanitarian aid even more difficult and dangerous.
• EU humanitarian aid performed well in 2022 in providing emergency assistance to people worldwide, particularly the most vulnerable, hit by human-induced or natural disasters. Even though the Commission's share of the global humanitarian aid system increased slightly compared to the previous year, the EU and its Member States are no longer jointly the world's largest humanitarian aid donors, providing around 30.9% of the global share of humanitarian aid contributions. This is partially due to the higher share provided by other donors such as the United States.
• Owing to the strong operational knowledge and technical expertise of the its unique network of humanitarian field offices, present in 41 non-EU countries, in 2022 the EU set a strong platform for reaching most of the areas in the world where humanitarian aid is needed. The EU was able to fund more than 299 million interventions⁽¹⁾ and provide assistance in 95% of the countries for which the United Nations launched an appeal⁽²⁾. The EU was able to take advantage of its comprehensive range of humanitarian partners (around 220 organisations, including United Nations agencies, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and non-governmental organisations), through which people in need can receive assistance, even in the areas of the world that are most difficult to reach.
• In 2022, 51% of the budget was allocated to countries ranked as having a 'very high risk of disaster', and more than 15.3% of the initial budget was spent on forgotten crises, thus contributing to the objective of needs-based delivery of EU assistance to people faced with natural and human-made disasters and protracted crises.
• The programme also contributed to the objective of building the capacity and resilience of vulnerable and disaster-affected communities. In 2022, approximately 50.5 million people worldwide benefited from disaster preparedness actions in disaster-prone regions, and 32%⁽³⁾ of EU-funded humanitarian operations included elements of disaster preparedness.
• The following examples illustrate the wide variety and extensive reach of the EU's support in relation to humanitarian crises in 2022.
  • The response to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine by allocating EUR 485 million to provide life-saving assistance, mainly through cash transfers and humanitarian protection, to populations directly exposed to war and displacement. More than 17.7 million people in the country needed humanitarian support in 2022. Since the start of Russia's war of aggression, almost 750 000 Ukrainian refugees have fled to Moldova. In response, the EU made EUR 38 million in emergency assistance available to Moldova, including cash assistance and protection services, to address the needs of refugees and their host communities.
  • In Afghanistan, the humanitarian situation has worsened since the Taliban took over in August 2021. In 2022, the number of people in need increased from 24.4 million to 28.3 million, mainly requiring support in relation to food, water sanitation and hygiene, protection and education. The main drivers of the crisis remain drought, insecurity and violence, restrictions on women's participation in society, food insecurity, global and local economic shocks and the deterioration of basic services. During the year, ECHO funded humanitarian air bridge flights delivering 497 tonnes of life-saving medical relief items for humanitarian organisations.
  • Multisectoral life-saving assistance and support was provided for 15.3 million people affected by the crisis in Syria, comprising emergency response and preparedness, protection, health interventions and the promotion of international humanitarian law.
  • The EU responded to the complex crisis in the Sahel and Lake Chad regions (where humanitarian needs are growing at an alarming pace for 38.3 million people), providing aid to meet the most urgent needs of conflict-affected populations that had been forcibly displaced across the region or affected by food and nutrition crises induced by climate conditions, poverty and insecurity, and compounded by the socioeconomic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• In response to the crisis in Venezuela, the EU provided aid relating to health and nutrition, water and sanitation, protection, education in emergencies and support for host communities. The crisis had humanitarian consequences for 19.7 million people, aggravated by COVID-19 and the impact of the war in Ukraine, while more than 7.1 million people have left the country. In order to improve access and operating conditions for humanitarian organisations in Venezuela, among other activities the Commission fostered donor coordination and facilitated the humanitarian aid working group known as the International Contact Group for Venezuela.
• Delivering principled humanitarian assistance is at times extremely difficult in certain protracted crises, where warring parties occasionally disregard humanitarian principles, violate international humanitarian law and interfere with the delivery of assistance in the field. In addition to this, EU humanitarian partners may have to face difficult logistical challenges when delivering assistance in hard-to-reach areas, and other types of unexpected developments in the field that may hinder aid delivery.
• While able to meet acute humanitarian needs on a short-term basis in a highly effective manner, EU humanitarian aid is less well placed to address structural issues, in particular in the context of protracted crises. Here development actors would be best positioned to act, but they are not always in a position to take over. Such situations underline the need to further develop the humanitarian–development–peace nexus so that humanitarian aid actors can exit a situation with the confidence that longer-term structural assistance will be available. For example, an initiative focusing on food insecurity was implemented in 2016.
• An increase in prices and the depreciation of the euro have had a significant impact on the EU's humanitarian aid operations, and more particularly on transport costs and the price of food items. Inflation has also had a huge impact on the purchasing power of the most fragile populations, resulting in a major increase in hardship across the globe. This has resulted in various interlinked issues, such as more people in need, more expensive response everywhere for humanitarian partners and, with the unfavourable exchange rate, less purchasing power for the euro. Accordingly, the resources available are insufficient to cover the ever increasing humanitarian needs.
• The practical effects of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine have restricted the availability of food, and the inflation and increased transport prices it has caused have increased the cost of the operations necessary to respond to the current food crisis. Global food insecurity reached a historical high in 2022, with 220 million people in need of food assistance. To address this situation, the EU significantly increased its budget for humanitarian food and nutrition assistance to an estimated EUR 950 million. A Team Europe Response strategy was also adopted by the EU and its Member States in June 2022. Reporting under the nutrition for growth accountability framework confirms that the EU is on track to fulfil the Team Europe pledge of supporting nutrition objectives with a budget of at least EUR 4.2 billion up to 2024. Despite these initiatives, global circumstances mean that reaching the objectives set out to deal with food crises remains a challenge.

^{(1) The figure of 299.4 million interventions was extracted from Eva Actions (a data management tool compiling data from humanitarian operations) on 13 March 2022, however the number of direct beneficiaries will be available during the second quarter of 2022. The information on the number of interventions presents the following shortcomings.
  - This figure double-counts beneficiaries targeted by more than one intervention, as evidenced in 2021 where over 590 million interventions were recorded, reaching a total of 85 million direct beneficiaries. This difference is partly explained in 2021 due to the vaccination roll-out campaigns, where a single beneficiary received various vaccines.
  - The number of interventions changes though time, increasing continually based on the progressive encoding of data by partners (i.e. for 2021 data around 590 million interventions were noted in the first quarter of 2022, while 672 million interventions were registered for the same period in March 2023).
(2) Of the 69 countries targeted by United Nations appeals in 2022, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia were included in the United Nations' 'Ukraine situation regional refugee response plan'. Due to its specific mandate, ECHO does not provide humanitarian aid in Member States, however assistance was provided to them through civil protection actions. The abovementioned Member States were then left out of the calculation of this indicator. ECHO provided humanitarian aid to 62 of the 65 remaining countries targeted by United Nations appeals. The three countries not reached by the EU's humanitarian operations were included in United Nations regional appeals for which the EU a provided response to other countries.
(3) This figure derives from a revised methodology that relies solely on reporting by the EU's humanitarian partners, and may therefore not include preparedness mainstreaming efforts in other sectors of operations.}

Contribution to the sustainable development goals