På papiret skulle det være oplagt: Den kommercielle sektor tilbyder viden, kapacitet og (masser af) penge – men selv om private aktører nu stiller med 1/3 af midlerne til nødhjælp kloden over, er mange humanitære slemt nervøse over tendensen – for hvad nu hvis….
DUBAI, 26 August 2013 (IRIN): The private sector’s involvement in humanitarian action has risen steadily in the last decade and is likely to play an even larger role in the development agenda after 2015.
“In the face of diminishing resources and increasing disasters and crises… it is imperative to bring in innovative resources,” said Mamissa Mboob of the newly created Private Sector Section at the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), adding:
“It is almost as if we have no choice… The humanitarian system is stretched to its capacity… It is becoming more clear that no single entity can solve a lot of these world problems.”
But too often, researchers and practitioners say, aid agencies and corporations have entered into partnerships without a clear idea of goals, shared and diverging values, and each side’s comparative advantage, leading to one-off ventures (enkeltstående initiativer) that have little lasting impact.
If the hype around the private sector is to translate into a sustained and positive impact, experts say, both aid agencies and corporations must take a step back to assess the impact of such partnerships and establish best practices.
Growth
While public-private partnerships have been part of development work for decades, they are a much newer phenomenon in humanitarian aid.
Private sector involvement in the humanitarian sector began in the 1990s, but has grown in earnest in the last 15 years or so, picking up after the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004.
According to research published by Development Initiatives in 2012, private funding as a share of the total humanitarian response grew from 17 percent in 2006 to 32 percent in 2010 and totalled 5,8 billion US dollar (32,5 milliarder DKR ) that year.
Large UN agencies like the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) have in recent years created well-staffed units dedicated to engaging the private sector.
The Central Emergency Response Fund (FNs hurtige udrykningsfond), managed by OCHA, has seen the number of private donors rise from two to 22 between 2006 and 2010.
Since a strategy was put in place at WFP in 2008, the private sector has become its seventh largest donor.
It remains a “drop in the bucket” compared to funding from governments, but WFP aims to garner one billion dollar in commitments per year from the private sector within 5-10 years, according to Ashraf Hamouda.
He heads WFP’s partnerships and business development work in the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
IRIN has put together a list of public-private partnerships in humanitarianism. Click here for examples:
http://www.irinnews.org/report/98642/where-aid-work-and-the-private-sector-meet
Ad-hoc and opportunistic
But overall, humanitarians have largely failed to leverage (leve op til mulighederne i) the private sector.
In a 2011 report, the Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP) at King’s College, London described commercial contributions as a “niche phenomenon” that is still largely ad-hoc and opportunistic.
While Development Initiatives found that in 2010, 56 percent of NGO income came from private donors, just 8 percent of UN humanitarian agencies’ budgets were funded through private money.
In addition, more than three quarters of private funding came from individuals, meaning private companies and foundations remained largely untapped.
“The idea in basic economics is that every group has a comparative advantage and the private sector’s has not been maximized,” said Lucy Pearson, programme officer at Humanitarian Futures Programme.
Blockages
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http://www.irinnews.org/report/98641/analysis-what-future-for-private-sector-involvement-in-humanitarianism
