FINANCIAL FLOWS MAPPING INTRODUCTION

The Start Network is embarking on an ambitious design process for the Start Financing Facility (SFF); envisaged as the future financial infrastructure for the network. The long-term goal is for the SFF to incorporate existing Start Network funding mechanisms as well as new national and global instruments to provide a continuum of funding that will enable frontline humanitarian actors to better support communities at risk.

The long-term goal is for the SFF to incorporate existing Start Network funding mechanisms as well as new national and global instruments to provide a continuum of funding that will enable frontline humanitarian actors to better support communities at risk.

This paper provides some initial quantification of the challenges with the humanitarian financing system that the SFF seeks to address. It highlights important gaps in the financing landscape, indicating that funding is reactive and not pre-planned, dominated by post-event response, and not sufficiently meeting the needs of people affected by under the radar crises. These gaps could be addressed by the Start Network, through the SFF and this analysis could eventually serve as a baseline against which to measure progress against the SFF once we enter the implementation phase.

The first paper attempted to answer this by conducting a summary mapping of financial flows to humanitarian crises, by types of context, recipient, sector and other parameters. This also included a survey of key disaster risk financing and wider funding flows that may be relevant.

2. ANALYSING GAPS IN THE HUMANITARIAN AND DISASTER RISK FINANCING LANDSCAPE

What are the gaps in the humanitarian financing landscape? This second question was addressed by doing a gap analysis of the global humanitarian caseload versus humanitarian financing flows to surface and quantify the gaps between needs and allocation of resources. The analysis is structured along three main dimensions typical to the development of Disaster Risk Finance strategies; predictability (in what form is funding required), severity (for what scale of events) and timing (at what point in a crisis).

3. ANALYSING THE START FUND CASELOAD

How does the Start Fund case-load compare to the wider humanitarian financing landscape? This question was addressed by analysing the database of over 300 alerts to the Start Fund, along the three dimensions outlined above. The intention was to identify the extent to which the Start Fund caseload mirrors, or differs from the global humanitarian gap analysis.