Fostering Private Sector Engagement in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response

Cole DeLeon

Contents

1. Executive Summary
2. Acknowledgements
3. Methodology 
4. Research

Background

The Humanitarian Funding Gap

Why Funding Falls Short

Humanitarian History & An Opening to the Private Sector

Humanitarianism in Question

Private Sector Engagement (PSE)

Available Data: Evidence of an Emerging Trend

PSE in HADR: The Value Proposition

The Morality Question: Humanitarian Principles and the Private Sector

Case Studies: PSE in Practice

Frameworks for Fostering Private Sector Engagement

Humanitarian Sector Frameworks for Fostering PSE

ESG, CSR & a Permissions Structure for PSE

The Challenges of Private Sector Engagement

Security and Sustainability Concerns

Equity and Inclusion Concerns

A Path Forward

Partnership Best Practices, General Considerations and Areas for Future Study

I. Executive Summary

On September 14^th, 2023, the 9418^TH meeting of the United Nations (UN) Security Council convened on the subject of advancing public-private humanitarian partnerships. Cindy McCain, the Executive Director of the World Food Programme, spoke of the need to “rethink how we engage” with the private sector as we navigate a “new reality of sustained humanitarian needs and shrinking budgets.”^[1] At the time, the UN 2023 mid-year update of the Global Humanitarian Overview reflected $41 billion dollar gap between donor contributions and the $55 billion in funding appeals needed to reach an estimated 249 million people in need. These numbers are both a crescendo of a recent trends of growing appeals and emblematic of the necessity that the humanitarian community innovate and find new ways to sustainably address annual funding gaps as climate change, more frequent and intense natural disasters, and the looming threat of “a return to big war” look to exacerbate what is already an outstanding level of need.^[2] This particular moment in history is especially striking given that while new and compounding challenges perpetuate the frequency and complexity of crises, new systems and technology provide an unprecedented opportunity to build the capacity required to respond to them. As the annual funding shortfalls represent a need for both innovation and an expanded donor base, this paper looks to identify and analyze an emerging trend of increasing private sector engagement (by way of funding, in-kind donations, expertise, technology, and employee activation) in humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR). This is not the first time the humanitarian sector has had to evolve to accommodate new actors (ex: the public sector emerging as a primary funding source) and new technologies (ex: mass adoption of mobile phones); orienting this review of an emerging trend of private sector engagement (PSE) in that historical context will allow for a sober dialogue of the associated opportunities and risks.

This paper ultimately aims to provide a better understanding of the following: 1) the current landscape of challenges faced by the ecosystem of organizations involved in HADR 2) what quantitative and qualitative evidence there is of PSE as an emerging trend 3) private sector motivations and the implications of their congruence and disconnect with humanitarian principles 4) the existing frameworks developed by humanitarian organizations to foster PSE (Ex: USAID: PSE Policy, OCHA: Connecting Business Initiative) 5) PSE case studies that highlight the challenges and opportunities in the space 6) best practices for private-public partnerships in HADR and 7) areas for further study in analyzing the viability of the private sector as a reliable and sustainable partner in confronting the scale of the humanitarian challenges ahead.

If conducted thoughtfully, private sector engagement can be a catalyst for increased funding, technological innovation, localization of humanitarian programing, market driven solutions and more sustainable outcomes. However, the risks of an increasingly active and visible private sector are equally as profound on both a technical level (ex: data security) and in a more existential realm as aid workers have long operated in fragile “humanitarian space” that is often only afforded them due to expectations of adherence to the humanitarian principles, a grace is much harder to justify for a for-profit business than for an organization like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). While local and multinational business engagement in HADR is a far cry from Dunantist humanitarianism, humanitarianism more broadly has in many ways strayed from the founding principles and, given the scale of the need, it’s a worthwhile exercise to consolidate a review of PSE, what frameworks are being developed to harness it, and what opportunities and risks it presents to the humanitarian sector and the mandate to alleviate suffering and save lives.

II. Acknowledgements

​​The proceeding document is the result of research conducted as an independent study within the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington as a part of the Master of Arts in Applied International Studies program and will function as a capstone project for the University of Washington’s Graduate Certificate in International Humanitarian Response. This project was undertaken under the gracious guidance of Faculty Advisor Professor Warren Acuncius in conjunction with the advisory board of the University of Washington’s Graduate Certificate in International Humanitarian Response: Dr. David Townes and Arti Shah. Additionally, this research was supported by the kind contributions of subject matter experts in highly relevant fields whose insight during interviews was invaluable in enhancing what was in large part an exercise in secondary research. I would like to acknowledge the contributions of, and extend my gratitude to Rakesh Bharania (BHA), Abe Diaz (Disaster Relief by Amazon), Jonathan George (Foundation Lead, PepsiCo), Erin Connor (Cisco Humanitarian Response), Mo Ramsey (AWS Disaster & Humanitarian Relief), Alicia Vermaele (Starbucks Foundation), Pablo Torres (BHA), Kathy Younker (BHA), Anita Ramasastry (UW Law & UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights), Will Powell (U.S Chamber of Commerce Foundation) and Desmian Alexander (U.S Chamber of Commerce Foundation).

III. Methodology

​While there are many relevant areas that fall out of scope for this body of research, I would like to quickly highlight three: 1) In A History of Humanitarianism, Michael Barnett notes that his book is a not a comprehensive history of all forms of humanitarianism as it “ignores the long tradition of Islamic charitable activates as well as forms of organized compassion in other cultures.”^[3] As this paper is largely an exercise in secondary research, including two of Michael Barnett’s book, it feels appropriate to echo this disclaimer. 2) In the Philanthropic Response to Disasters, authors Moran, Dwyer and Seibert note that the research in this area so far has been too restricted to a focus on public companies or large privately held firms at the expense of small-medium sized enterprises, family businesses, and individual entrepreneurs^[4]. This paper will reflect this same bias and underrepresent the perspective of local and small businesses. 3) This paper is the result of secondary research and a small collection of qualitative interviews and will inevitably lack the perspective of aid workers on the ground and, most importantly, the insight of aid recipients.

IV. Research

​Background

“There was never a war in any century where such goodwill was shown, and such a fine charitable spirit displayed. Yet the sacrifices made, generous and remarkable as they were, were altogether inadequate and bore no proportion to the extent of the needs.”

• Henry Dunant, 1862

The Humanitarian Funding Gap: Climate, Conflict & Humanitarian Mission Creep

The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) anticipates that $46 billion dollars will be needed in 2024 to reach an estimated 300 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. These numbers are both a crescendo of recent trends of growing need and emblematic of the necessity that the humanitarian sector innovate and find new ways to sustainably address annual funding gaps. In their 2023-2026 Strategic Plan, OCHA concludes that “without more financing and a new approach to deliver and finance aid, including through private sector participation…the international humanitarian system will be able to meet only a fraction of needs in 2026 and beyond.” They go on to notes six trends that will continue to drive exponential growth in vulnerability: 1) the climate crisis, 2) slow and uneven economic growth, 3) widening inequality, 4) increased instability, fragility and conflict, 5) pandemics and disease outbreaks and 6) a fragmented and competitive geopolitical landscape.^[5] Perhaps what is most alarming about the current funding shortfall is that a quick analysis of just a few of the driving factors (climate change, natural disasters, and conflict) can lead to few conclusions other than a forecast of increasing need year over year into the foreseeable future. While need outpacing funding has become the standard (314% growth in funding appeals compared to 146% growth in funding from 2013-2023), the irreversible nature of climate change, and its impacts on a wide range of already complex conditions and conflicts, is anticipated to amplify this uneven growth and push more and more people out of reach of life savings aid.^[6] Understanding the nature of the funding gap and why the traditional donors fall short is the baseline for understanding the context in which the humanitarian sector begins to open to the private sector.

Climate and Natural Disasters: A collection of recent articles have discussed the need to sunset the term “fire season” as the threat of large-scale fire now extends year-round in California. ^[7] In February 2024, leading hurricane researchers published a paper arguing it is necessary to introduce a “Category 6” into the Saffir-Simpson wind scale as the current open ended highest “category 5” (wind speeds of 157 MPH or higher) is rendered inadequate in the face of the more frequent and intense storms catalyzed by climate change.^[8] In 2022, “Zoe” became the first named heat wave as Europe has begun to implement a naming and ranking system to raise awareness and combat the “silent killer” of extreme heat.^[9] As more frequent and intense weather and natural disasters render even our vocabulary for describing them as inadequate, climate change will also transform both the scale and causes of humanitarian needs across the world.

The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) tracked 387 natural hazards and disasters in 2022. The CRED 2022 Disasters by the Numbers report cites heat waves in Europe, drought in Africa (and corresponding food insecurity), hurricanes in the Americas and floods in Pakistan as the primary drivers of an estimated 30,000 deaths caused by climate and natural disasters.^[10] OCHA estimates the number of natural disasters will increase to 560 a year by 2030, a 40% increase over the same measure in 2015 (400/yr).^[11] Increasing impacts of the climate crises on humanitarian funding requirements are already apparent as extreme weather related appeals have increased by a factor of 8 in the last 20 years.^[12] Even from an administrative perspective, climate change is poised to increase budgets as pressure mounts for humanitarians to invest in turning their supply chains “green” and pushing their own organizations towards net-zero.^[13] Kareem Elbayar, a Private Sector Engagement Advisor at the UN recently noted that the UN system is “not equipped” to handle this trajectory of growing climate related crises and that “no one actor is going to be able to handle this.”^[14]

The long-term effects of slow-onset climate impacts are more abstract but equally as alarming as the direct results of more frequent and intense natural disasters. In Solferino 21: Warfare, Civilians and Humanitarians in the Twenty-First Century, author Hugo Slim warns of climate change creating “a new global geography of disease” as one of many predicted concerning outcomes of a warming planet including food shortages, price increases, destabilization, and political tensions. ^[15] It is already clear that climate change will continue to disproportionately impact the most vulnerable as the UN notes that 70 percent of refugees and 80 percent of internally displaced persons (IDPs) originate from countries that are noted as being highly susceptible to climate change.^[16] Currently UNHCR estimates over 20 million people are displaced annually due to climate factors and weather related events and recently estimated that there could be over one billion climate refugees by the year 2050.^[17] While these direct impacts are staggering on their own, Slim also discusses how evolving climate crises will also complicate and catalyze other drivers of need as people will be competing in different places and over different resources moving forward. Slim surmises that “climate and disease may be changing from conditions of warfare, to causes of war.”^[18]

Trends in Conflict: While less scientific than the forecasted impacts of climate change, a brief review of both the current landscape of conflict and indicators of future trends, proves to be equally as indicative of increasing humanitarian needs moving forward. The UN Economic and Social Council noted that 2023 saw the highest number of violent conflicts since 1945 with OCHA adding the observation that the number has almost doubled since 2010.^[19] Conflict in recent history has been erupting and disrupting civilian life in a manner that has forcibly displaced an estimated 114 million people as of September 2023.^[20] In their January 2024 update, Crises Watch tracked twenty-one distinct global conflicts and noted twenty of them to be “deteriorating situations.” Crises Watch went on to cite the war in Gaza and junta leaders in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso withdrawing from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as signs of a larger trend of regional destabilization and protracted complex crises.^[21] OCHA highlights a climate of compounding risk factors such as increasing water scarcity, food insecurity and economic fragility along with “a competitive and fragmented geopolitical environment” as creating both volatility and power vacuums for non-state armed groups as the primary drivers of a trend of increased conflict.^[22] While the ICRC warns of the impact these trends are having on humanitarian access (they tracked 524 “armed groups of humanitarian concern” in 2022) as the complexity of modern conflict has created a fundamentally different environment than the one in which the Dunantist humanitarian principles the organization is built on were first established.^[23]

In the opening chapter of Solferino 21, Hugo Slim argues that, while there has of course been terrible suffering, war in the opening part of the twenty-first century has actually been relatively “militarily small” as far as casualty rates and scale.^[24] He opens with this note to level set that the unipolar context of the early twentieth century that kept conflicts “militarily small” was both anomalous and fleeting as “Great Power competition is reassorting itself as imperial sized powers… explicitly confront each other once again.”^[25] He warns of a threat of a “return to big war” as increased competition causes governments to prepare for large scale zero-sum “wars of survival” in which conflict would become both larger and less concerned with international humanitarian law. Slim concludes that the once popular sentiment that the “best way to prepare for peace, was to prepare for war” has now been defunct as this approach seems to have only ever led to more conflict.

Both the continuing proliferation of conflicts involving small non-state actors and the looming threat of a return to big war are playing out on the landscape of a new technological frontier. The military has always been at the forefront of emerging technology, and it is safe to imagine the recent revolution of generative artificial intelligence and machine learning will be no different. Just as drones have changed the way warfare is conducted, a new trajectory of technology on the battlefield will impact where and what humanitarian needs are. Additionally, as global reliance on connectivity increases so does the likelihood that Wi-Fi, data, and information will be increasingly weaponized in conflict. Recent reports of populations being cut off from cellular service and the internet during war (ex: Gaza, Tigray, and Myanmar) demonstrate both new areas of vulnerability and that, despite the mass adoption of social media and cameras, both the “fog of war” and “fog of humanitarianism” will continue.

Many of the modern humanitarian organizations (ex: CARE, Government Agencies & UNHCR) and much of the modern humanitarian system emerged and were codified during and in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Michael Barnett describes this as when “the world got serious about humanitarianism”; however, he also notes that “it would be a gross mistake to see the resulting surge in institution building as a triumph of humanitarianism. After all, demand for new institutions, laws and inspirational slogans was a response to the utter desecration of the very idea of humanity.”^[26] Evolutions in humanitarianism have often followed distinct inflection points in the evolution of conflict (ex: “getting serious” after WWII, professionalizing after Rwanda, militarizing in the Former Yugoslavia), and as war now enters a new “technological trajectory,” the humanitarian sector will again need to reflect and adapt.

Poly-Crises: In providing a brief review of just two of the factors that OCHA cites as the primary drivers of increasing vulnerability (climate and conflict), we can begin to understand the landscape of challenges the humanitarian sector is up against in the next decade. To further complicate the state of complex humanitarian emergencies (international emergencies with multiple causes and multiple local actors) the near ubiquitous impacts of climate change are making almost every humanitarian emergency a “complex” one.^[27] In 2022, 40% of people in need of humanitarian support were impacted by at least three overlapping factors—conflict, vulnerability to climate change and “economic fragility”—and nearly three-quarters faced at least two of these challenges.^[28] These overlapping factors or “poly-crises” are more likely to be long term as the Development Initiative highlights in noting that 83% of the people in need in 2022 lived in country that had made a humanitarian appeal to the UN for 5 consecutive years or more^[29]. The challenge of overlapping crises has provoked Slim to argue that aid should be focused on the goal of “allowing people throughout the world to have access to a humanitarian system that can reach them on time with simple forms of relevant aid delivered through national humanitarian institutions close to them.”^[30] The notion of “simple forms” of aid runs contrary to the last 30 years of evolution in the humanitarian sector that has seen a convergence between emergency and development aid and brings us to a final note on why budgets are likely to continue to increase and funding will continue to fall short.

Ethics Creep & “New” Humanitarianism: Post-cold war low points in humanitarianism, and perhaps also humanity, brought about a period of self-reflection in the sector that opened the door to new approaches. Authors Stuart Gordon and Antonio Donini detail how crises like the genocide in Rwanda and war in the former Yugoslavia provoked debate on the “international community’s willingness to act, the coherence of its response, and the overall levels of competence and professionalism” which created conditions “in which alternatives to the dominate modes of and organizations of humanitarianism could be considered.”^[31] A segment of the sector began to prescribe to what Slim notes as “ethics creep” as new and existing humanitarians drifted from the “minimalism” of classic humanitarianism (an effort to treat suffering as a symptom) to something more transformational (an effort to treat the root causes of suffering). This shift from classical Dunantist, “a Bed for the Night,” humanitarianism to a new more holistic approach has blurred the lines between humanitarian and development programs and, while this transition comes with both benefits and tremendous political implications, expanding mandates will continue to equate to expanding budgets.^[32] A concrete example of the evolving breadth of humanitarian coverage is the 1998 Tampere Convention on the Provision of Telecommunication Resources for Disaster Mitigation and Relief Operations. Rakesh Bharania, a subject matter expert in humanitarian technology, referred to this a “foundational document” for solidifying the importance of telecommunications as a new area of focus in humanitarian response (providing cell service and connectivity to enable impacted populations to share news and contact loved ones). So far, twenty-first century humanitarianism has seen areas like telecoms and education emerge as cornerstones of response; however, these evolutions continue to ripple as pogroming in areas like mental health and climate adaptation continue the momentum of the sector moving towards a more comprehensive approach.

More frequent and intense natural disasters and more complex and protracted conflicts will exacerbate what is already an outstanding level of need and amplify what are already remarkably large gaps in annual appeals for humanitarian funding.

Why Funding Falls Short

The above analysis of current trends in humanitarian funding appeals demonstrate the necessity for the sector to maximize efficiency and develop both a deeper and wider donor base. In a Development Initiatives study entitled Still Too Important to Fail: Addressing the Humanitarian Financing Gap in an Era of Escalating Climate Impacts the authors pose “a static donor base” and “unchanging channels of delivery” as the primary reasons that funding falls well short of requirements.^[33] The study notes that approximately four-fifths of all international humanitarian assistance (IHA) comes from public donors, with a small subset of countries providing the lion’s share of funding: from 2019 to 2023, ⅔ of all IHA has come from just 4 donors (the US, EU, Germany & the UK).^[34] While funding from the traditional donor base has recently increased (almost all of the top 20 public donors increased their contributions in 2022), there is still a large overreliance on a small number of donor. 64% of IHA from public donors came from just three countries (the US, Germany, and EU).^[35] From 2018-2022, even at 36% of all public funding, the IHA provided by the United States made up only ~25% of the overall US Foreign Aid budget which is historically less than 1% of the US budget.^[36] The Development Initiatives study also notes that more than half of this public funding traditionally goes to UN agencies as a highlight of a need for new “channels of delivery.” This theme is echoed in The Grand Bargain, a 2016 agreement between the largest donors and humanitarian organizations, to “improve the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian action” which situates localization of aid as a primary priority for the sector.^[37]

Ultimately, there is a general understanding of a need to deepen and widen the funding base in a manner that seeks new participants and creates “more equitable burden sharing among public and private donors.”^[38] The scale of the humanitarian challenge creates a new opening for increased engagement from local and international businesses both as a source of funding and as a catalyst for ushering in “new channels of delivery.” The role of for-profit companies in HADR seems to be increasingly acknowledged by the traditional stakeholders as reflected in USAID 2018 Private Sector Engagement Policy:

The increasing scale, length, and frequency of disasters and conflicts around the world means that humanitarian actors alone can no longer address the complex needs of crisis- affected people. The confluence of these trends provides a watershed opportunity for USAID, our partner governments, and civil society to increase collaboration with the private sector to support countries on their Journey to Self-Reliance.^[39]

While local and multinational business engagement in HADR is a far cry from Dunantist humanitarianism, humanitarianism more broadly has, in many ways, strayed from the founding principles and, given the scale of the need and the requirements to expand the donor base and improve channels of delivery, it is necessary to review the state of private sector engagement (PSE), what frameworks are being developed to harness it, and what opportunities and risks it presents to the humanitarian sector and the mandate to alleviate suffering and save lives.

Humanitarian History & An Opening to the Private Sector

A brief review of the history of humanitarianism is necessary to understand the context that created an opening for the private sector, the conditions that are increasingly allowing the private sector to lean in, and the general boundaries of humanitarianism that the private sector now looks to operate within. Evolutions in the perception of what make “good business” principles, expansion in the interpretation of the foundational “humanitarian principles,” and a landscape of extraordinary need have created the conditions that allow for increasing PSE and technological advancement. However, this is not the first time the humanitarian sector has had to evolve to accommodate new actors (ex: the public sector emerging as a primary funding source) and new technologies (ex: mass adoption of mobile phones). Orienting a review of an emerging private sector in that historical context will allow for a sober dialogue about the implications for humanitarian principles and evolving power dynamics in the humanitarian space. In Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism, Michael Barnett notes three distinct periods of analysis; imperial humanitarianism (late eighteenth century to WWII), neo-humanitarianism (end of WWII to end of Cold War), and & Liberal Humanitarianism (end of the Cold War to present). A brief review of the transformations that characterize these eras will provide the baseline for evaluating current private sector engagement as well as lessons to be internalized in discussion of the potential for a system that is more reliant on private companies and resources.

Imperial Humanitarianism (late eighteenth century - WWII): Michael Barnett opens the chapter on what he terms as “imperial humanitarianism” by noting that “until the 1860s all was fair in love and war, but after the 1860s only love operated without rules.”^[40] A rather clever quip that goes to highlight that, while humanitarianism and humanitarian law can be traced to much earlier origins, and a much more diverse catalog of founders and motives, there is a key inflection point that starts with Henry Dunant in 1859 and the Battle of Solferino. Dunant was a Swiss businessman (perhaps an early case study in private sector engagement) who, due to happenstance of history, found himself bearing witness to a battle between French and Austro-Hungarian troops in a northern Italian town of Solferino.^[41] This chance encounter with war left him compelled to act; banding together with local volunteers, he worked to relieve what suffering he could. He would later poetically detail the traumatic events of the day in A Memory of Solferino, a memoir that ultimately posed the question of “would it not be possible, in time of peace and quiet, to form relief societies for the purpose of having care given to the wounded in wartime by zealous, devoted and thoroughly qualified volunteers?”^[42] In Solferino 21, Slim notes that “Dunant’s great contribution was to foresee how humanitarian help could be formalized in a new organization, with humanitarian rules internationally agreed in law.”^[43]

That process of formalizing humanitarianism did not take long to manifest. Within three years of the publication of a Memory of Solferino, the earliest incarnations of both the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Geneva Conventions had taken shape.^[44] There was now both a body to organize humanitarian response and an “international convention to grant special protection to the wounded and those caring for them.”^[45] These are the foundational elements of humanitarian law and modern humanitarianism. Barnett notes that from its inception the ICRC’s “very existence and effectiveness depended on states, which meant an acute sensitivity to their views. Largely because of its close connections, the ICRC strove to create principles and symbols of independence.”^[46] This original Dunantist concept of an apolitical independent humanitarian system in large part monopolized the field for the next century and still serve as the foundation for the “classical humanitarianism” of the ICRC which has since formalized the guiding humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence. Principles that would be “enshrined in the declaratory positions of many of the major humanitarian agencies and…legalistic instruments of the system itself” in the generations to come.^[47] As a Memory of Solferino galvanized a movement to build a humanitarian system, the scale of suffering in WWI would soon solidify the necessity of the field and the moral imperative to expand it.

Neo-humanitarianism (end of WWII to end of Cold War): If a virtuous international system designed to relieve suffering can be understood as a sort of triumph of humanity, its key moments of construction have been the result of the exact opposite. WWII and the Holocaust provoked the formation of hundreds of private relief agencies and the establishment of a series of UN organizations in quick succession as the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Health Organization, and the organization that would become UNHCR were all established within a few years.^[48] This flurry of activity was inspired by the impossible task of addressing the catastrophic conditions, and containing a refugee crises, across Europe. Barnett notes that WWII is “when the world got serious about humanitarianism.”

As the inhumanity of WWII inspired the construction of more robust humanitarian architecture, a period of rapid decolonization and destabilization was creating new horizons on which it could be deployed. New states, plagued by extortionary legacies and nascent political foundations confronted independence in a manner that brought it to the attention of an “international community” that was increasingly alert to global suffering. Spirited by the success of the Marshall Plan and armed “with discourses of humanity and impartiality,” the western humanitarian system went global.^[49] However, as sure as colonialism gave way to neo-colonialism, humanitarianism was not immune to the global impacts of the politics of the Cold War. Barnett’s argument for terming this as an era of “neo-humanitarianism” centers on the introduction of governments (rather than parishioners and philanthropists) after WWII as a primary funding source because they could now identify a connection between security and foreign aid. Barnett invokes a 1976 quote from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to demonstrate the acknowledgement of this strategic linkage: “disaster relief is becoming increasingly a major instrument of our foreign policy.”^[50] The idea of relief, and by extension the humanitarian principles, as an instrument of politics and access rather than the end goal would bring the question of motives into focus. Public funding would fortify the sector and allow it to scale, but it would come at the expense of increased vulnerability to the “humanitarian space” aid workers are often only afforded due to expectations that they are neutral, impartial, and independent actors. This is a tradeoff that will require renewed examination with an increasingly active and visible private sector.

Liberal Humanitarianism (end of the Cold War to present): The end of the Cold War meant the end of the Truman Doctrine that had been actively extending the American “Doomsday Clock” psyche and American resources to nearly every conflict on the planet. After the fall of the Soviet Union, this policy of containment had nothing left to contain and quickly diminished the geopolitical significance and the presence of the United States in the Global South.^[51] Yet again, a rapid reduction of imperial influence left behind soil that would soon produce new types of conflicts and a new landscape of humanitarian needs that would bring terms like “complex humanitarian crises,” “genocide,” and “ethnic cleansing” into focus.^[52] The1990s saw the “international community” appear ineffective in the face of genocide in Rwanda and even inept at protecting Bosnian civilians from massacre in a UN designated “safe zone” during the Bosnian war. Authors Stuart Gordon and Antonio Donnini note that “the genocide and civil wars in Rwanda and the Great Lakes region in 1994 raised important questions about the international community’s willingness to act, the coherence of its response and the overall levels of competence and professionalism within the humanitarian sector.”^[53] At another inflection point when humanitarianism was expanding in both scope and scale, the long cherished humanitarian principles of impartiality and neutrality felt less relevant in the face of genocide and the horrific crises of the 1990s.

Gordon and Donnini highlight that, in the complex humanitarian emergencies of the post-Cold War era, humanitarian catastrophes were increasingly tied to “both conflict and to the existence of state and broader political failures.”^[54] This perceived correlation had the simultaneous impacts of driving the humanitarian sector to think more about treating causes (human rights development, democracy promotion, and peacebuilding) than just the symptom of suffering just as “military strategists increasingly considered development to be a fundamental component of stability and security.^[55]” The combination of these two impacts would be a first step towards a convergence of western humanitarian interests and western political agendas. Barnett cites a comment from President Clinton during the 1999 NATO airstrikes during the “humanitarian war” in Kosovo that “military action would preserve European stability by ensuring that violence did not destabilize the region” as evidence of the increasing use of humanitarianism in national security agendas.^[56] This trend would only be amplified after September 11^th as the threat of “failed states” became a staple in the national security lexicon. In the context of Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, humanitarian actors would increasingly rely on armed forces to create the humanitarian space they required to deliver relief which rendered the humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence less of a necessity when access could be created by armed forces.

Public humanitarian funding increased from $2 billion in 1990 to $6 billion in the year 2000.^[57] After the Cold War, an influx of state funding and a plethora of new organizations allowed humanitarianism to scale and reach more people with more services than ever before. Barnett notes that “if this surge in humanitarian action seems to be almost too good to be true, it is because it was. States were helping to bulk up the humanitarian sector for a mixture of motives, but mainly because they believed humanitarian action would advance their foreign policy interests.”^[58] In the examples above, we see how the humanitarian sector has adapted and evolved each time it has been confronted with previously unimaginable challenges. While each iteration and adaptation are not without cost in purity and clarity of principle, these evolutions are what have allowed the system to scale and save countless more lives. Climate change, new emerging trends in conflict, and billions of dollars in annual funding gaps now place the sector at a familiar crossroads.

Humanitarianism in Question

The international humanitarian system today would be unrecognizable to Henry Dunant. While his vision of a principled and formalized system is alive and well with the ICRC, many organizations that have formed and evolved in the last half century have extended the field to a scale and scope that was once hard to imagine. This construction of a humanitarian sector can be an undeniable measure of good will and lives saved; however, this expansion did not come without costs. There are sector-wide challenges that would be beneficial to keep in focus in discussions of accommodating new actors from the private sector. The complex crises of the 1990s brought critique of humanitarian action to the forefront. While perceived failures of the founding principles of neutrality and impartiality in the face of genocide would quickly politicize the sector, critique of technical execution would just as quickly professionalize it.

Paternalism & Professionalization: Questions of competence and professionalism in the humanitarian response to the crises in Rwanda led to a growing sense that “victims deserved better.”^[59] A perceived need to standardize and organize response came just as states were becoming major donors and new aid agencies were popping up and competing for state funds. Government influence quickly brought the bureaucratic nature of the state to NGOs and implementation partners. Slim notes that the reporting requirements of government funds alone required the system to employ “legions of humanitarians at their desks staring at Excel sheets.”^[60] Increasing competition for state money also inevitably led to increased competition for funds that led to NGOs building out marketing departments and public relations wings that began to resemble corporate structures of large businesses. Barnett notes that as the system professionalized, it was simultaneously “built in the name of victims” while increasingly removing decision making power from them.^[61]

Perhaps the most concrete example of standardization came with the 1997 creation of the Sphere Handbook which detailed minimum humanitarian standards of care in four key areas: WASH (water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion), food security and nutrition, shelter and settlement, and health. The handbook is also another example of the HADR sector converging with systems that resemble large scale firms as the Sphere guidelines evoked parallels to a business-to-consumer relationship with all the associated rights and protections.^[62] However, the Sphere handbook was developed by NGOs and the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement with little direct input from aid recipients. The handbook is a good example of how while professionalizing and formalizing an international humanitarian sector not enough was done to diffuse the paternalistic power dynamics of a western system that is largely removed from the people it intends to reach.^[63]

Politicization: Humanitarian aid workers have long been able to cross borders into conflict zones only due to a fragile “humanitarian space” afforded them by host governments with expectations of adherence to the humanitarian principles. This “space” became harder to justify as public funding became more ubiquitous and humanitarian goals more transformational. While organizations such MSF and ICRC have mostly remained on the “Dunantist”/classical side of the spectrum, with strict adherence to a principled approach, many organizations that preach the same principles have drifted into “new humanitarianism” and more holistic ambitions. Barnet notes that “activities such as human rights development, democracy promotion, and peacebuilding are political because they propose to treat causes and not symptoms and thus are implicated in the politics of transformation.”^[64] Gordon and Antonio argue that, when “operationalized consistently,” the principles still provide the best means of humanitarian access, but that access is conditional on operating within the confines of a limited brand of classical humanitarianism. ^[65] This paradigm is visible in the field as it is the perceived neutrality of a humanitarian organization like the ICRC that allows them to enter the most fragile and fraught environments to do work, such as facilitating the release of hostages during the war in Gaza.^[66] As the private sector becomes a more active and visible partner, it will be important for actors to be aware of how their politics can impact access and of where their programs stand on the “classical” to “new” humanitarianism spectrum.

Localization and the Grand Bargain: Slim notes that while “the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement and the UN-led humanitarian system have made extraordinary progress in the last 160 years” in expanding both scope and scale, it still remains a “largely elite western international system and not a broad based global one.”^[67] The paternal power dynamics of a western based system are both a moral issue and, in the context of the funding gap, an efficacy and efficiency issue. The signing of The Grand Bargain during the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul looked to begin to address these challenges as the agreement between large donors and humanitarian organizations acknowledged the need to shift the balance of power and resources towards local actors. Local actors are the true first responders in all crises and often the only responders when the humanitarian community cannot gain access (ex: the current humanitarian crises in Sudan).^[68] The access and context provided by the local community, including local businesses, allow them to create more efficient and sustainable approaches, yet the majority of funding still flows through international organizations. The Grand Bargain signatories committed to a goal of channeling 25% of international humanitarian funding to local and national actors, and while so far it has been an objective failure (in 2021, 1.2% of public IHA went directly to local actors), it is still an acknowledgment of a new approach and that IHA should be “as local as possible and as international as necessary.”^[69] This ambition of localization should be front and center in engagement frameworks as the private sector (with both funding and technology) emerges as a strategic partner in HADR.

Emerging Private Sector Engagement (PSE)

“As we confront the new reality of sustained humanitarian needs and shrinking budgets it’s time to rethink how we engage and find new models for cross sectoral partnerships. We need business leaders to help develop the smart innovations and solutions required to build resilience.”

• • • • • Executive Director, WFP Cindy McCain 2023

Available Data: Evidence of an Emerging Trend

OCHA’s Ukraine Private Sector Donations tracker has currently logged 825 unique donations, from 509 private sector donors, totaling an estimated $1.8 billion dollars in contributions from the global business community in response to the ongoing humanitarian crises in Ukraine.^[70] The dashboard combines data from institutional reporting and what it can scrape from public sources (corporate press releases, and news reports) in an attempt to track a comprehensive view of private sector contributions. This donation level breakdown of key attributes, such as business sector, funding type (cash or in-kind), donor country and recipient, provides details of what OCHA representative Kareem Elbayar referred to as “unprecedented engagement of the business community.”^[71] However, while the donation tracker stands out for highlighting an unprecedented scale of private sector contributions, it also stands out as an anomaly as other attempts to comprehensively track business investment in HADR have to-date been insufficient. In conducting a review of private sector engagement and labeling it an “emerging trend” is to make an argument based on data that is fragmented, unvalidated, and neither consistent nor comprehensive.

As a follow-up to UN General Assembly Resolution 46/182 (a new framework for humanitarian coordination), OCHA created the Financial Tracking Service (FTS) in 1992.^[72] FTS is OCHA’s attempt to consolidate a comprehensive and transparent view of humanitarian funding flows from governments, NGOs, UN agencies, and other key stakeholders in the matrix of humanitarian actors. While FTS manually curates, validates, and tracks billions of dollars in funding each year, the relatively immaterial contributions of the private sector have traditionally been out of its scope. However, the high visibility of private sector response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 compelled OCHA, through the Connecting Business Initiative (CBi), to begin tracking corporate contributions in effort to “shine a light on the generosity of local and global businesses while also bringing more transparency and accountability to the sources and uses of funds.”^[73] The $1.8 billion logged in the Ukraine Private Sector Donations Tracker shows a range of cash and in-kind investments from a $1,500 contribution from a small Spanish IT provider to a $117 million dollar donation from Epic Games, an American video game and software developer. OCHA repeated this model after the devastating earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria in February 2023 and the Türkiye-Syria Earthquake Private Sector Donations Tracker now reflects 121 unique donations, from 96 private sector donors and an estimated $3 billion in funding from the global business community.^[74]

While $5 billion between Ukraine, Türkiye and Syria demonstrates material private sector contributions in some of the most recent and most daunting crises, it remains challenging to definitively label PSE an emerging trend without consistent and comprehensive metrics to show growth over time. However, efforts from organizations like the U.S Chamber of Commerce Foundation and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy (CDP) are looking to improve the state of corporate giving data. Beginning with Hurricane Dorian in 2019, the U.S Chamber of Commerce Foundation began gathering the inputs required to develop their Corporate Aid Tracker which is intended to be the “keeper of records for the business community’s response to disasters.”^[75] Since then, they have deployed similar methods as OCHA (private sector donation submission forms and scraping public documentation) to track and publish financial contributions from (mostly U.S corporations) for 3-4 international responses a year (ex: $16 million for the Hawaii Wildfires and $18 million for the earthquake in Morocco).^[76] In conversation with Will Powell and Desmain Alexandar of the Chamber of Commerce Foundation, they noted that while the data is not yet comprehensive, it is a “a good start” and provided the estimate that in the last ten years the foundation has tracked over $10 billion in private sector donations.

The Chamber of Commerce Foundation data has also become a valuable input into CDP’s annual State of Disaster Philanthropy report with Candid.org. While the CDP report gives us our most comprehensive estimates of an aggregate view of private sector funding its historic data is conflated with funds for the COVID-19 response which render it less useful when looking for an apples-to-apples comparison of private sector engagement in traditional areas of HADR. However, the 2022 CDP report does note that they estimate “$3.6 billion in disaster-related funding from corporate giving programs. Based on data from Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose (CECP), 161 of the world’s largest companies committed about $650 million to disasters and humanitarian crises” the $650 million would be a 350% increase over the same number in 2016.^[77]

While data is fragmented and private sector funding is nowhere near the levels that come from DAC government donors, there is both quantitative evidence to support the notion that for-profit businesses are becoming more invested and qualitative evidence that shows they are becoming more engaged. In an interview that discussed the significance of the Ukraine Private Sector Donation Tracker, Private Sector Engagement Advisor to OCHA Kareem Elbayar, concluded, “Again, we're seeing an acceleration of a number of trends we've seen with regard to businesses being involved in humanitarian response, in disaster preparation. And of course, in recovery. We see that all in spades in Ukraine. So, I wouldn't say it's new so much as just a trend that's accelerated really dramatically here in Ukraine.”^[78]

PSE in HADR: The Value Proposition

Kathy Younker, PSE Team Lead at the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA), noted that the traditional tendency in the humanitarian community has been to “look to the private sector as an ATM”.^[79] The arrangement between the business world and the humanitarian sector has been slow to evolve beyond this theme of cash in exchange for brand as represented in this 1993 statement on the Oxfam website noting, “Your company will benefit in many ways from being associated with a leading international organization, whose ethics and professionalism are recognized worldwide.”^[80] However, as the funding gap continues to expand, there has been increased emphasis on not only a need to widen the donor base in the private sector, but also to leverage the core competencies and resources of businesses to increase efficiency and efficacy in aid delivery. Market incentives and globalization have placed the infrastructure of the world's most advanced systems in areas such as logistics and telecoms in the hands of the private sector and creating more resilient communities, more effective disaster response and more sustainable recovery will require increasing partnership and collaboration across the two sectors.^[81]

How HADR Benefits from PSE: The 2018 USAID Private Sector Engagement Policy describes PSE as “a means to an end” in citing that strategic partnerships have the potential to allow USAID to “mobilize market-based solutions for more sustainable outcomes, mount a more-effective humanitarian response, and leverage private-sector expertise, innovation and resources that build country level capacities for self-reliance.”^[82] Given that disaster relief is “about 80% logistics,” perhaps this is the best and most straightforward example of understanding how the private sector can be a multiplier in stretching each dollar to reach more of the need. In Humanitarian Aid Logistics: Supply Chain Management in High Gear, author Van Wassenhove notes that procurement and delivery is both “the most expensive part of any relief operation and the part that can mean the difference between a successful or failed operation.”^[83]

Abe Diaz, Principal Technical Product Manager at Disaster Relief by Amazon, while detailing a history of Amazon’s engagement in HADR noted that the focus was originally on cash donations to NGOs until partner organizations started asking if they could use that cash to procure goods on Amazon.com. ^[84] While logistics companies like UPS can leverage their freight capabilities to move goods and resources in and out of impacted areas and consumer product companies can procure goods, Amazon does both at a scale that puts their resources within arms-length of most crises. Diaz notes that Amazon can deliver 40-50% more product per dollar in service than an NGO could deliver with that same dollar. While globalization has pushed corporations to every corner of the world, the race to meet customers with exactly what they want, and exactly when they want it, has driven continuous innovation in every part of the supply chain. PSE in this field of logistics can allow the humanitarian sector to utilize this same machinery in the race to deliver exactly what people need, and exactly when they need it.

Similar benefits of PSE exist in the telecoms space but perhaps with even higher stakes and dependence on partnerships given an exceptionally wide gap between capabilities in the humanitarian sector compared to those of major tech companies. As Rakesh Bharania highlights, “tech companies basically own most of the digital infrastructure; they have something that resembles state power. We need a much more mature lens about acting in concert with these very powerful entities.”^[85] As innovative technology continues to amplify opportunities for more efficient and informed responses, it will also pose new threats and challenges; all of which will require the humanitarian community to engage with the private sector as the “owners” of the digital infrastructure. A 2024 report from Access Now concludes that “international humanitarian organizations and private tech companies enjoy solid and dynamic relationships, in some cases extending over decades of collaboration and often resulting in experimental use of emerging technologies and innovative approaches.”^[86] These relationships are the foundation of both the data the humanitarian sector collects to inform response and the connectivity they rely on to deliver for impacted communities. As pivotal as telecoms are in crises response today, we are currently at a new technological threshold as emerging technologies such as machine learning, generative A.I., and satellite connectivity offer unprecedented opportunity to innovate the responses of tomorrow. As far as having the foundational capacities to responsibly take advantage of those opportunities, Mo Ramsey, Sr. Manager - Disaster & Humanitarian Relief at Amazon Web Services, warns that there is not just “a gap” in tech capacities between NGOs and the private sector; rather, “a ceiling and a floor” would be a more appropriate characterization. While other clusters and fields of HADR have great opportunities to increase engagement with the private sector for emergency telecommunications, cross-sector-collaboration will continue to be a requirement.^[87]

Logistics and telecoms are just two examples of how the innovation provoked by market forces in the private sector can be leveraged in the humanitarian space as PSE evolves from its status as an “ATM” for HADR to a strategic partner in the effort to save lives and alleviate suffering. Overall, the expertise, networks, and resources of global businesses present opportunities for response to be more flexible, more innovative, and given their multinational scale, perhaps even more local. PSE offers the opportunity to both increase efficiency in the standard modes of delivery and create new ones that alleviate some of the burden that falls on governments, NGOs, and the matrix of traditional responders. In 2023, the 9418^th meeting of the UN Security Council convened on the subject of Advancing Public-Private Humanitarian Partnerships, where the Chief Executive Officer, Mastercard, Michael Miebach concluded his testimony by noting that “money is still important, but companies can offer so much more. Private sector stands ready to tackle the challenges at hand, in partnership with the public sector.”^[88]

How the Private Sector Benefits from PSE: Literature on the subject from agencies such as USAID and OCHA tend to detail similar lists of incentives for business participation in humanitarian response. The primary categories are generally 1) cross sectoral learning opportunities, 2) business continuity across the value chains, 3) good faith introductions to new markets and 4) intangible assets of a strengthened brand and an inspired workforce.^[89] While these are all tangible benefits, conversations with private sector leaders leave an unclear picture of how important they are. Erin Connor, Director of Cisco Crisis Response, stated, “I don’t think CISCO is engaged for the value add for our business.” Cisco has a long history in the space, including as one of two standby organizations for the Emergency Telecoms Cluster. Erin notes that when they enter into this work, they “don’t need to be sold, it aligns with our interests. We want to do good, but we aren’t going to be the boots on the ground. It’s recognizing your respective roles; we can support them in doing (good) and that’s the value to us.”^[90] Jonathan George, Foundation Lead at Pepsi Co., stuck a similar chord, noting, “Our ROI is on the impact side - how many people (can we reach) and how deep are we going?”^[91] With the exception of “intangible assets” (ex: positive impacts for brand), both Connors and George did not cite any of the tangible benefits detailed by USAID and OCHA as motivation for their work to support humanitarian response efforts. The primary theme seemed to be that employees are at the center of their engagement, both in pushing for and responding positively to their companies getting involved. George concluded his response to the question of ROI by citing his belief that “being a good corporate citizen will help us in the long term.”

The Morality Question: Humanitarian Principles and the Private Sector

To question the morality of private sector engagement in humanitarian response is to question motives rather than capacity to deliver. In Humanitarianism in Question, Michael Barnett includes a chapter entitled Saying “No” to Wal-Mart? Money and Morality in Professional Humanitarianism in which he explores the moral nuance of both indirect and direct private sector participation, positing that “if humanitarianism is about motives, and not simply about outcomes, Wal-Mart could never be humanitarian.”^[92] The motives question is analogous to the complexities of an oil company purchasing carbon offsets to strengthen its image with improved environmental outlook little more than a means to a self-interested end. A highly reduced summary of the chapter would be to say that it explores the question of if it’s okay for companies to do the right things for the wrong reasons. In the context of PSE in HADR, this may be the wrong question.

The case against private sector humanitarians’ hinges on the notion that “humanitarian space” is often only afforded to aid workers due to expectations of adherence to the humanitarian principles, a grace that is much harder to justify for a for-profit business than for an organization like the ICRC. The argument is essentially that motives matter and that humanitarian aid in exchange for brand (and in-tern profit) runs counter to “the very logic of humanitarianism” which centers on “helping those with whom no exchange is possible.”^[93] While this is true, multinational business engagement in HADR is a long way from Dunantist humanitarianism. However, taking a hard stand on the motives question in the context of PSE would require ignoring that public sector engagement has long influenced humanitarian action with all the corresponding ulterior motives that accompany government funding. The question of if we are collectively okay with doing the right thing for the wrong reason seems to have been answered long ago.

Rakesh Bharania notes that Microsoft began investing in disaster response in the 1990s as part of a “charm offensive” as the company was being sued by the Department of Justice for illegal monopolistic behavior.^[94] In a speech during the delirium of days between the start of the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell remarked, “I am serious about making sure we have the best relationship with the NGOs who are such a force multiplier for us, such an important part of our combat team.”^[95] The question of the sanctity of principle becomes less significant in the context of private sector engagement once we acknowledge that hidden agendas have long been covered by the fog of humanitarianism. This allows us to focus more keenly on the specific risks and opportunities within PSE. Rakesh notes that companies “just want to be seen as being responsive to the crises of the moment without being exploitative or inauthentic… and now that we understand (the) motives for being in the room, what can we do together?”

Perhaps a more pertinent question is how private sector motives will shape their engagement. Will investments contract when business slows? Will their shareholders and other stakeholders allow them to be impartial, neutral, and universal in their approach? Slim paraphrases Henry Shue in noting that “ethical choices in public policy are always constrained by the scale of needs and the limits of our capacity to meet them.”^[96] With hundreds of millions in need and counting while non-idealist humanitarians are less than ideal “choice” at this point is highly constrained. In that same article Slim argues for an increasingly flexible definition of “impartiality” in order to accommodate sharing responsibility with new actors. While a sober understanding of where each private sector partner falls on the spectrum of humanitarian principles will be necessary given the current state of need, Elbayar notes we “won’t have a solution to these problems unless we have the stakeholders at the table.”^[97]

Case Studies: PSE in Practice

Cisco Crises Response: Cisco Systems, Inc. is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies specializing in networking, security, and cloud management to connect industries and communities. As one of two standby organizations for the UN Emergency Telecommunications cluster, led by WFP, they also have a uniquely integrated and long history with crises and humanitarian response.^[98] Origins of the Cisco Crises Response team, currently made up of 600 staff and employee volunteers, can be traced back to September 11^th where, the then “Cisco Tactical Operations team” provided connectivity for first responders at Ground Zero.^[99] The team has since rebranded and evolved to encompass providing funding, equipment, personnel and network support to a matrix of humanitarian partners in response to global crises.

Cisco’s FY23 Purpose Report states that they are “uniquely positioned to securely connect and empower vulnerable communities through digital access, enabling them to rebuild their lives and create a brighter future.”^[100] The report also notes a familiar refrain in the telecoms space in citing a trend, recently highlighted in a report from Microsoft, that identified NGOs, and the sensitive data they hold, as the second most targeted industry for cyber-attacks.^[101] This cyber-vulnerability frames the importance of PSE to ensure that vulnerable communities are not made more so by insecure systems in the humanitarian space. The FY23 Purpose Report ultimately lists a number of projects such as providing WIFI to refugees in Ukraine and the development of a flood warning system in Colombia on their way to summarize Cisco’s involvement for the year as including 20 unique responses to humanitarian crises in 2023 by way of $9 million in product donations, $3 million in cash grants, $2.5 million in matched employee donations and 50+ consulting engagements. All facilitated in partnership with organizations such as WFP, UNHCR, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), and the International Rescue Committee (IRC).^[102]

The multifaceted ways in which Cisco is participating in crises response show the extent to which it is integrated within the telecoms cluster as a key strategic partner. However, looking at a specific example such as their involvement in the development and expansion of programs like IRC’s “Signpost” is probably the best way to understand the depth of partnership and engagement within the humanitarian ecosystem. In 2015, in response to the refugee crises across Europe, the IRC and Mercy Corps collaborated to develop what is now called “Signpost” with the intention of establishing a digital hub for accurate and current information as a resource for the hundreds of thousands of refugees that were arriving in Greece. The concept was simple enough: deliver important information, in the appropriate language, to people arriving with little more than their cellphones.^[103] This IRC-led program was brought to Cisco’s attention through their relationship with Mercy Corps. Cisco ended up providing funding for its development at the same time they were providing connectivity to refugees in Greece. They then redirected the landing page, through the connectivity they were providing to refugees, to route directly to Signpost. This first stage of collaboration created a path for every refugee able to connect to WIFI to have the latest information as they were in the process of making life changing decisions on where to go next.^[104] Since 2015, Signpost has scaled to over 20 countries, 25 languages and 12.8 million users. Cisco and other private sector partners have been engaged every step of the way in developing new features, such as offline access and a full-service call center, and ensuring that refugee data remains secure.

In conversation with Erin Conner, Director Cisco Crisis Response, on the concern that private sector may contract during downtimes, she highlights how 20 years of engagement in HADR has made integration with the humanitarian sector an intuitive part of their business: “Our product offering adds value, we provide connectivity - what we do, and the problem are very well matched.” Connor also highlighted the value of shifting dynamics from the private sector as primarily a funding source to something more strategic by noting that while private sector funding will never eclipse what comes from governments, “the opportunity is in technology and partnership.”^[105]

Amazon: Innovation in both e-commerce and cloud computing are the two key drivers that have made Amazon one of the world’s largest companies (currently number 5 by market cap), and it is these same core competencies that they now look to leverage in the HADR space. Since 2017, Amazon notes that they have been involved in the response to over 108 disasters, delivering over 23 million relief items and that employees on the Amazon Web Services Disaster Response Team have volunteered over 17,000 hours in support of telecoms efforts in response. Amazon’s disaster relief efforts are bifurcated much like the business itself: a Disaster Relief by Amazon team that focuses on speed (logistics and delivery of relief items) and an Amazon Web Services Disaster & Humanitarian Relief team that focuses on information (restoring connectivity, enabling customers and partners to use edge technology for disaster assessments and response).^[106]

How Amazon is able to leverage its scale and supply chain ecosystem in the HADR space is perhaps most clearly demonstrated in the two aid distribution hubs, full of medical supplies and relief items, that they were able to build in Slovakia and Poland within 10 days of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine or the planes full of relief supplies they landed in Puerto Rico within days of Hurricane Fiona. Amazon’s 2022 Sustainability Report also looks to highlights the breadth of the corporation’s engagement by citing a series of numbers such as the 1.2 million pre-positioned items in disaster relief hub in Atlanta, 900,000 bottles of water delivered during Hurricane Ian, 2,800 relief kits delivered after an earthquake in China, 27,100 relief kits in India, $75 million in goods and services delivered in Ukraine, etc.^[107] However, while the scale and breadth of engagement is impressive, what’s perhaps most interesting is the depth of coordination with partners like the Red Cross, UNICEF, UNHCR, WFP, Red Cross, Save the Children (STC), and more.

In a recent Global Washington Goal Makers Conference, Abe Diaz joined a panel with Amanda Morgan, Director of Emergency Fundraising at Save the Children in which they discussed how the Save the Children partnership with Amazon has been evolving throughout the conflict in Ukraine. They narrate a timeline in which donations from Amazon to STC started right away, and then, as Amazon established disaster relief hubs in Poland and Slovakia in the following days, Amazon began to both donate product to and receive and distribute donations on behalf of STC. As the conflict progressed and the focus of STC evolved beyond just providing basic needs to supporting child wellness, Amazon and STC engaged in co-creating items for “Bunker Kits.” Morgan notes, “We couldn’t take in all that product all at once” in reference to the supply chain support led by Amazon but also that “it wasn’t just product and logistics but (things like) translation services, Amazon helped create books in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish.” The ability to provide children’s books in the early days of a conflict are a striking example of how private sector expertise can be leveraged by humanitarian partners. Morgan highlights that books usually take months to come in during a response, with Amazon’s ability to translate, publish, and ship it was a matter of days.^[108] President and CEO of STC Janti Soeripto has noted that “combining Save the Children’s expertise with Amazon’s world-leading supply chain means getting the right supplies to the right place at the right time. In this partnership, Amazon serves as a force multiplier in scaling lasting and meaningful impact for children.”

Much like the business itself, Amazon’s HADR efforts are driven by the dual imperatives of speed and scale. In a conversation with Abe Diaz, he noted that, while they look to their partners to identify what the needs are, the data shows that roughly 80% of the items that are requested in each response are predictable and thus DRBA has started prepositioning those good across their 12 disaster relief hubs in effort to reduce the timeline from disaster to delivery.^[109] Mo Ramsey of the AWS response team strikes a similar note on attempting to scale to cover more disasters as the team transitions from a model based in deploying the Amazon Disaster Response Team to a strategy of “enabling a network of partners to embrace and adopt” skills in edge-based technologies.^[110] Funding, logistics capacities, technology, and a dedication to improve speed and scale of response will continue to make Amazon an increasingly valuable and available strategic partner and “force multiplier” for humanitarian organizations. Amazon’s HADR investments will be particularly interesting as the company looks to embrace a new technological frontier with investments in artificial intelligence and programs such as Project Kuiper which looks to utilize a network of over 3,000 low orbit satellites to increase global broadband access.^[111]

Australian Bushfires: In an article that stresses the need to evolve the private sector focus on the response phase of a crisis to a more holistic “disaster resilience” approach, authors Moran, Dwyer, and Seibert invoke the private sector response to the 2019-2020 Australian Bushfires as a case study. The response from Australian businesses was both robust with $144 million in estimated funding and nuanced and unique in balancing response with an emphasis on preparation and mitigation. The authors note the National Austrian Bank Foundation specifically designated funds for projects focused on resilience and preparation. Beyond cash, the report highlights the non-traditional ways that businesses contributed to recovery through offering paid leave to employees who volunteered for firefighting efforts, offered pro-bono services, and waived bills for their customers that were impacted by the bushfires.^[112] Moran, Dwyer and Seibert also highlight examples of large national businesses supporting local community businesses in their recovery. The argument is ultimately that businesses will be a key part of transitioning HADR approaches to align with the UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk

Reduction which looks to refocus efforts on reducing vulnerability and increasing capacities to respond.

Frameworks for Fostering Private Sector Engagement

“There is great potential for the goals of the United Nations -- promoting peace and development -- and the goals of business -- creating wealth and prosperity -- to be mutually supportive.”

• UN Secretary General Annan 1998

Humanitarian Sector Frameworks for Harnessing PSE

In the same breath that he details a long history of tech companies engaging in humanitarian space, Rakesh Bharania also notes the need for a “much more mature conversation” around what it means to partner with the private sector.^[113] While there is a rich history, it is also one of a politics that often kept the business world at arm’s length. As Elizabeth Pollman notes, “The UN was prompted to keep its distance from the corporate sector by the Cold War environment and a need to display a relative impartiality toward market economy and planned economy advocates alike.”^[114] However, in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the barrier between the UN and the private sector would quickly crumble as well. Following a 1998 speech where he described the goals of the UN and those of business to be “mutually supportive,” UN Secretary General Kofi Annan enacted the Global Compact two years later. The Global Compact called on business leaders to sign on to ten principles related to human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption that would both set the foundation for a flurry of development in private-public partnerships and formalize the notion that the private sector has a role to play in the world. Today, there are over 20,000 companies signed up as members of the Global Compact.^[115] While businesses have long acted as first responders when disasters place them on the front lines, and there is even a long history of international businesses lending support, formalized frameworks within the humanitarian sector for fostering private sector partnerships are a much newer phenomenon. Emerging policies and frameworks from government donors, UN agencies, and NGOs are all ultimately looking to make themselves more amenable to private sector partnerships while managing the risk of any potential downsides.

USAID & BHA Private Sector Engagement Policy: In 2018, USAID approved a new Private Sector Engagement Policy which offered a fundamentally new approach to the design and delivery of U.S aid.^[116] The policy outlined four principles meant to amplify both the breadth and depth of PSE in the US AID approach: 1) Engage early and often, 2) incentivize and value PSE throughout planning and programming, 3) expand the use of USAID’s approaches and tools that unlock the potential of the private sector and 4) build and act on the evidence of what works, and what does not, in PSE.^[117] This document also details the perceived value in engaging private sector as a lever for driving parallel USAID goals and of incentivizing localization and market based solutions, with USAID Administrator Mark Green adding, “I believe the future of international development is enterprise-driven… private enterprises as co-creators of market-oriented solutions, with shared risk and shared reward.”^[118] While the policy is unambiguous in making PSE a “as a core tenet of USAID’s operating model,” including humanitarian assistance and disaster response, what isn’t clear is how ambitiously it has cascaded through at BHA. Kathy Yonker, Private Sector Engagement Team Lead at BHA, noted that part of the problem is that “humanitarian architecture isn’t set up to integrate and incorporate private sector engagement,” citing a general skepticism in the humanitarian community of private sector motives as a primary cause.^[119] Yonker went on to describe BHA as being late to the game on PSE and highlighting that a Bureau specific policy was not internally approved until 2022. Ultimately the PSE policy notes that more effective humanitarian response will require private-sector partnerships to “incorporate innovative practices and systems to complement existing capacities during all phases of responding to disasters and crises.”^[120]

OCHA & UNDP: Connecting Business Initiative: In 2016, OCHA and the United Nations Development program launched the Connecting Business initiative (CBi) with the goal to “transform the way the private sector engages before, during and after emergencies.”^[121] The CBi brochure notes that they look to achieve this mandate of helping business prepare for, and respond to, disasters through four primary programs 1) engaging private sector networks to build their capacity and connect them with the humanitarian community, 2) help coordinate private sector contributions during an emergency, 3) advocating for coordinated PSE during responses and 4) providing guidance and training to businesses on HADR.^[122] Also, given the CBi-led creation of the Private Sector Donations tracker for both Ukraine and Turkey, it seems that a 5^th element of the CBi mandate is to consolidate and track response funding from businesses in humanitarian response. At time of writing (February 2024), CBi reports that its work with business federations around the world has connected OCHA to 275,000 local businesses which have collectively reached 23 million people in need of assistance in response to 132 crises, enabled by $91 million in funding mobilized from private sector networks.^[123] These metrics represent material figures, but just the fact that CBi is able to track and report such numbers is reflective of a more formalized and productive system for fostering PSE. In addition to galvanizing impact in the response phase, CBi networks are also actively taking a business centered approach to making communities more resilient by way of investing in critical disaster management infrastructure, such as emergency warehouses and even a business-led Emergency Operations Center (Philippines Disaster Resilience Foundation).^[124]

Similar initiatives designed to foster PSE are emerging across UN agencies such as UNICEF’s Business and Community Resilience (BCR) program and UNDRR’s Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies (ARISE).

Direct NGO Partnerships and a Sector-by-Sector Approach: Kathy Yonker notes that outside of the formalized PSE policies of large organizations like the UN and BHA, humanitarian and business collaboration has long developed under more informal circumstances. There are both direct NGO to business relationships (ex: Home Depot and Team Rubicon, Amazon and the Red Cross, Johnson & Johnson and UNICEF) and organized networks that have emerged on a sector-by-sector basis (ex: Nethope for Emergency Telecommunications, Airlink for Logistics, Partnership for Quality Medical Donations for Health) that foster and facilitate private sector engagement. To review the history of just one of these organizations is to understand that, while there is a relatively new focus on developing formal frameworks for PSE, there have long been humanitarian organizations that recognize the value of leveraging the core competencies of the private sector. For example, formed in 2009 after the earthquake in Haiti, Airlink provides free airlift and logistical support during humanitarian crises and now serves as a network of over 50 airlines and logistics partners and over 130 NGOs.^[125]

ESG, CSR & a Permissions Structure for PSE

Just as the UN Global Compact would come to represent an opening of the international system to the private sector, momentum was building on a parallel track around the concept of “social investing” or Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) that would serve as a permissions structure for for-profit companies to increasingly lean into investing in social impact. ESG has undergone the same transformative trajectory as Dunantist humanitarianism as it started with a relatively simple idea and has evolved to something much broader in scope and much less easy to define. The initial concept was that environmental, social, and governance factors should be integrated into investment analysis, not as a means for driving social good but as a mechanism to protect investors from the Enron type of corporate scandals that plagued markets in the early 2000s.^[126] However, as the business world has confronted the challenge of appealing to increasingly environmentally and socially conscious consumers in the last quarter century, ESG has proven a convenient foundation upon which to build new strategies. Much like the humanitarian principles, ESG has gained near unanimous acknowledgement (96% of the world top 250 companies now report on “sustainability” including ESG factors), but it has come at the cost of a watered down understanding of what ESG actually means.^[127] Elizabeth Pollman notes that the spectrum of ESG interpretations now stretches from its original intention as a tool of investment analysis, to an internal framework for companies to evaluate their own risks, to “ESG as preference” where “stakeholders choose to align their activities with an expression of their values, weather political, ethical or social and ESG is a label vaguely signifying some level of attention to issues beyond the purely financial.” This spectrum continues to be expanded as companies look to data showing that 75% of millennials say they are influenced by a brand’s sustainability practices when making purchasing decisions.^[128] Just as humanitarianism evolved from a “ethics of giving” to a more substantial human rights centered approach, the private sector, under the guise of ESG, is evolving from a model of having separate foundations organized around charity to integrating ESG into their core business with an emphasis on impact.

In a 2020 volume of the Vanderbilt Law Review, authors Gadinis, Stavros, and Miazad note that “it is tempting to dismiss all this as puffery. In practice, however, boards are adopting reforms that go to the heart of corporate governance. To reorient management incentives towards ESG, companies are introducing ESG improvements as a metric for executive compensation across a range of industries, from consumer giants Pepsi and Walmart, to tech behemoths Microsoft and Verizon, and oil companies Chevron and Shell.”^[129] This quote is fascinating in this context given that each of the companies they mentioned have active investments in the HADR space. Rakesh Bharania notes a similar observation that “a lot of the private sector is using the ESG framework” which helps clarify what everyone is “coming to the table with from a motives standpoint.”^[130] The connection between the ESG framework and investments in disaster response are probably mostly concretely observed in companies’ annual sustainability reports where organizations like Starbucks, Amazon, Cisco, and Microsoft routinely cite their contributions in the space. For example, Cisco’s FY23 Purpose Report cites “critical human needs and disaster relief” in the “social” section of their in-between other “s” factors such as human rights and working conditions in the supply chain and employee wellbeing.

The only problem with this framing is, as UW law professor Anita Ramasastry points out, private sector investment in HADR technically has absolutely nothing to do with ESG. Legally, ESG is simply about a company’s requirements to report on environmental, social and governance factors that may be material risks for shareholder value. What companies are actually doing when investing in the space falls under the umbrella of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) which Investopedia defines as “a business model by which companies make a concerted effort to operate in ways that enhance rather than degrade society and the environment.”^[131] The conflating of ESG and CSR in the context of private sector investments in HADR would be to ignore the distinction of ESG as a legal concept and CSR as a “business model.” While ESG is accompanied by reporting guidelines and required disclosures, CSR remains a voluntary endeavor that companies will pursue as long as the risks don’t overshadow the value to the business.

Momentum behind both ESG and CSR frameworks is amplified by the fact that the “socially conscious consumer” has also become the socially conscious employee and is demanding more from their employers. Erin Connor notes that the majority of the PR Cisco does is internal communication of their investment in HADR as “employees get excited in knowing they work for a good corporate actor.”^[132] Employees of multinational companies also increasingly find themselves on the front lines as Mo Ramsey notes, “Employees are going to war as much as companies are going to war. The way Amazon wants to help is by helping its employees in those areas.” ^[133] With CSR (labeled as ESG) as a permissions structure and employees as a catalyst, the private sector has continued to increase investment in social impact by making the argument that it makes good business sense to be a “good corporate citizen.”^[134]

The Challenges of Private Sector Engagement

“Globalization didn’t just connect the world, it put the private sector at the geopolitical table, but that seat didn’t come with a clear playbook.”

• Jared Cohen, President of Global Affairs, Goldman Sachs 2023

Any optimism about how PSE can bring more innovation and sustainability to the delivery of humanitarian aid must be carried simultaneously with concern over the potential risks. The primary concerns over an increasingly active and visible private sector in HADR fall into two categories: 1) security and sustainability and 2) equity and inclusion.

Security and Sustainability Concerns in PSE

Cyber Security: Given the preeminence of the private sector in the technology space, this is arguably both the most intuitive and most concerning area for PSE in HADR. In my conversation with Bharania, he puts the concerns around cyber security of humanitarian data bluntly: “Someone will die if we (mess) this up.”^[135] He used the example of disaster mapping to illustrate his point, noting that an NGOs resource map (hospitals, water distribution points, etc.) can quickly become “a target list” in a complex humanitarian emergency. Slim notes that “digitalization of humanitarian data is the fastest moving development in humanitarian work today,” and as every response becomes increasingly data driven, it will require a thoughtful analysis of the consequences.^[136] While the value proposition of more informed systems and tools for monitoring disasters and delivering aid are clear, the risks associated with increasingly digitized humanitarian data seem to be less scrutinized.

In a February 2024 Access Now study, Giulio Coppi reviewed the unique points of vulnerability in key technological areas of humanitarian response (“data management and communications, connectivity and cyber security, digital ID and biometrics, advanced analytics, AI and cloud processing”) on the way to concluding that “humanitarian tech partnerships seem to dodge normative and regulatory data protection frameworks... Humanitarianism benefits from the constant improvement of the tools offered to improve life and dignity of people experiencing vulnerability. But this cannot and should not come at the cost of treating the most vulnerable as test subjects for often-exploitive new tools, creating long tails of data with uncertain impacts.”^[137] For example, Coppi highlights that in the data collection and management sphere many of the platforms, similar in concept to Open Data Kit (developed at the University of Washington), lack basic privacy and security features such as an ability to set an expiration date on collected data and limiting access to personal identifiable information.^[138]

A lack of emphasis on data security protocols is alarming when considering both the sensitivity of the data held by NGOs and private sector partners and the often-complex context in which the data is gathered in the first place. These factors make humanitarian data both uniquely targeted and uniquely vulnerable to cyber-attacks, and while private sector partnerships are a part of the solution for securing humanitarian data (ex: IRC working with Cisco patch platform and program vulnerabilities), it also creates new questions about where the firewalls are and how the data of impacted communities is being utilized thousands of miles away. While, as Coppi notes, humanitarian organizations tend to have cautious policies around the use of new digital systems, that caution can erode quickly when presented with a technological solution while facing a crisis. The new digital frontier of humanitarianism will require that any tendency to play fast and loose with data security be reconciled with the imperative to “do no harm.”

Economic Downturns and the Hollowing Out Effect: In “Achieving Resilience in Disaster Management,” a study that focuses on FEMA and domestic response, the authors note the relevance of “the hollowing out” effect to the subject of public-private sector partnerships. ^[139] The concern is that when a public function, or in this case a function previously provided by humanitarian organizations, becomes privatized, the traditional actors will become “hollow” in that function. While Erin Connor provided a very clearheaded analysis of the benefit of PSE, she also in the same breath exposes the concerns when she noted that “financial investment (from the private sector) is never going to be at the level that governments provided, the opportunity is in technology and partnerships. Private sector can help fill gaps but it’s never going to be their “core business.”^[140] So what happens if the private sector plugs that are filling those gaps go away? For example, while there is a clear delta between the technical capabilities in the private sector and those of NGOs, if humanitarian organizations become too comfortable with relying on partnerships, there is a risk that any technical muscles will atrophy and cause an overreliance on the private sector.

Hollowing out is a particular concern given just how quickly large companies tend to react to market forces. While record profits and momentum around CSR have recently driven a wave of increased engagement, the humanitarian sector will need to remain cautious that they don’t leave core functions exposed when business cycles, donor fatigue and office politics inevitably cause the tide to recede. If we look outside of the humanitarian context, perhaps the most extreme illustration of this challenge is the Ukrainian military relying on Starlink, a satellite internet service that can be turned on and off at the whim of Elon Musk, the rather erratic CEO of SpaceX.

Humanitarian Principles and Aid Worker Security: The for-profit nature of the private sector renders any appearance of Dunantist moral clarity null and void which is a concern, as Gordon and Donini argue, given that the humanitarian principles still remain the best mode of access.^[141] An increasingly visible private sector would likely concentrate more resources on the right side of the ICRC to “New Humanitarianism” spectrum at the risk of further diluting the appearance of a humanitarian system worthy of unique protections when operating in conflict affected high risk areas (CAHRAs). This problem will solve itself in a way in the sense that the same for-profit motives that would prevent private sector response teams from gaining access would also be accompanied by a high level of risk aversion that would likely prevent them from seeking it. While local businesses will continue to find themselves on the front lines of complex emergencies, we will likely see that multinationals limit engagement to where they see the least risk for their employees and their business. However, as the Aid Worker Security Database shows that violence against aid workers has increased in this decade over last (average of 267 recorded attacks per year since 2020), it is worth highlighting the risks of any change that may impact the perception of a principled humanitarian sector which ensures both aid worker safety and humanitarian access.

Equity and Inclusion Concerns in PSE

Selective Response: While the estimated $2 billion in funding from businesses for the humanitarian response in Ukraine represents a crescendo of this trend of increasing engagement, it also represents a challenge of equity and selective response. On a June 2022 episode of the Rethinking Humanitarian Response podcast host, Heba Aly highlighted this point: “In this case, you had not only victims that were much more relatable to the West from which most of these companies originate… the conflict was considered by many to be much clearer cut… less political. It’s obvious that there's one aggressor and a victim. And so, standing on the right side of history is very clear. And for many other conflicts, that isn’t the case.”^[142] Forays into less “clear cut” crises have so far have proven problematic endeavors as companies like Google and Amazon have faced pushback on both claims of a “double standard” in their response to the war in Gaza and their perceived business complicity in the conflict by way of “Project Nimbus” a $1.2 billion-dollar cloud computing contract with the Israeli military and government. ^[143] In conversation with a disaster response team leader from a major corporation, it was noted that “a lot of companies are backing away from conflict” and that we will continue to see a shift towards an approach that concentrates investment from the private sector in areas that are perceived to be less political, such as natural disasters. If multinational companies are going to play a material role in disaster response, it will also be a highly selective one that leaves much of the world’s suffering out of scope.

Transparency and Accountability: While transparency and financial tracking are familiar challenges to the humanitarian sector, PSE in large part falls outside the scope of the formal mechanisms that have been implemented to address the concerns of transparency and accountability. For example, while financing from public donors (UN member states) and multilateral organizations falls under the mandate of OCHA’s Financial Tracking Services, there is not a comparable system for tracking contributions from the private sector. What systems do exist rely in large part on unverified and self-reported data from companies and lack good mechanisms for quantifying non-cash contributions, such as in-kind items and tech consulting hours. While an earlier review of recent attempts by OCHA and the U.S Chamber of Commerce Foundation highlights an effort to improve transparency in these areas, they are by no means comprehensive, Chamber of Commerce representative Will Powell qualified the effort around the Corporate Aid Tracker as “a good start.”^[144] A 2016 report from the Rand Corporation categorizes the challenge of poor data around private sector contributions as falling into three primary buckets: 1) incomplete information on what each sector is spending 2) an inability to identify where private sector funding should go and 3) an inability to evaluate where funding is supporting effective recovery.^[145] Companies are themselves unsure of how to calculate and track these contributions, and there is an extra layer of disconnect when it comes to making this data public in a manner that promotes transparency and accountability for PSE.

Techno-colonialism & the PSE Impact on Power Dynamics: An inability to effectively track financial contributions should function as an even bigger red flag for transparency and accountability when considering non-cash engagement. Bharania highlights the unique risks of engaging tech companies in response by acknowledging that data is a form of power and one that is increasingly shifting further away from impacted communities to behind the closed doors of private companies.^[146] The value of more efficient and thorough means of data collection in humanitarian response runs the risk of being undermined and appear extractive when the benefits of that collection to impacted communities is unclear. Coppi notes the example of backlash over the 2019 announcement of a $45 million dollar partnership between the WFP and an algorithmic intelligence firm, Palantir, which is known for providing software for immigration enforcement.^[147] A Devex article on the subject noted that as humanitarians become both increasingly reliant on digital data, and the third-party partnerships that facilitate its collection, storage and processing, “the ecosystem for doing this responsibly is missing: the policies, procedures and capacities that ensure core principles, human rights standards, and data regulations that govern these partnerships.”^[148] While digitizing humanitarian response reveals concerns about what happens after data is collected (data security and extractive uses), it’s also worth considering how the practices of determining what data is collected will impact response. Barnett notes that “humanitarian agencies have the ability to help determine who receives attention and who does not,” and as these agencies increasingly depend on third party data to inform their efforts, it will drastically impact whose suffering is acknowledged.^[149]

As the funding gap continues to highlight the need to scale, it will continue to drive adoption of new technologies at a time when they are increasingly powerful, complex, and opaque. Any use of systems powered by artificial intelligence will create two distinct challenges in the humanitarian context as 1) as Coppi observes the “test and learn” methodology used to “train” large language models runs counter to the “do no harm” imperative of humanitarian response and 2) relying on a system to produce decisions that notoriously can’t explain them is at odds with any ambition of creating a system that enforces accountability to impacted communities. The same questions that have accompanied the introduction of platforms such as Chat GPT (ex: what data was used to train the model? What logic did it use to provide its response?) will be relevant in the humanitarian setting but with much higher stakes. Additionally, Coppi notes, “he concentration of AI skills in the hands of a few Western organizations would revive power dynamics based on blind trust, dependency and authority, typical of what has been defined as techno colonialism.”^[150] As the barriers to entry around new technologies are uniquely high, there is a concern that power will continue to consolidate around western organizations and their private sector tech partners.

A Path Forward

“There is a focus on humanitarianism from an ICRC framework but there is an increasing ad-hoc partisan humanitarianism. Humanitarian resistance is not neutral. We need to have a much more nuanced lens on what humanitarian action means, and it can’t be rooted solely in documents that are 75–150 years old.”

Rakesh Bharania, Tech Advisor BHA 2022

The presence of for-profit organization in the field feels antithetical to the humanitarian foundations often attributed to Henry Dunant in his poetic account of the 1859 Battle of Solferino: “In this age, which is often called selfish and cold, what an attraction it would be for noble and compassionate hearts and for chivalrous spirits, to confront the same dangers as the warrior, of their own free will in a spirit of peace, for a purpose of comfort, from a motive of self-sacrifice.” ^[151] While few would argue that PSE fits the mold of Dunantist humanitarianism, as the sector has professionalized, incorporated public donors, and expanded in mission, one could argue that few humanitarian organizations still do. A mandate to alleviate suffering and save lives has often driven the sector to accommodate new actors, with new motives, that ultimately pose new risks. Slim invokes American philosopher Henry Shue’s notion that “ethical choices in public policy are always constrained by the scale of needs and the limits of our capacity to meet them.”^[152] This tradeoff is perhaps most clearly articulated in USAID’s Risk Appetite statement which highlights a greater tolerance for risks when engaging the private sector as a result of “a belief that the potential benefits of PSE outweigh the potential costs and possibility of failure.”^[153]

The primary goal of this study is to contribute to the dialogue around the risks and opportunities of an increasingly engaged and visible private sector in the humanitarian space. Applying a historical lens allows for a sober understanding of the impact of new actors and a more mature conversation on how to mitigate risks and maximize opportunities in PSE.

Partnership Best Practices

Start With Principles: While PSE may require a relaxed interpretation of the humanitarian principles to accommodate for-profit businesses, this shouldn’t reflect an abandoning of the framework altogether. Humanitarian organizations should incorporate training on key elements of HADR, such as the humanitarian principles and the Sphere standards into the foundations of their partnerships as more informed partners become more engaged, more invested, and are ultimately in a better position to drive greater impact.^[154]

Strategic Partnerships: While funding from the private sector is often a first step, the most valuable partnerships are ones that tick multiple boxes (ex: funding, technology, employee volunteering opportunities). Transparency around expectations and an understanding of what each side is prepared to bring to the table will allow partnerships to foster the trust that is required for true “co-creation.” From the private sector perspective, details such as where the disaster response team sits within an organization (ex: under the social impact team, or within the organization’s foundation) can signal key details about what they are prepared to offer and how they will look to measure success.

Focused Engagement on Unique Capacities: The value of private sector engagement is in leveraging the most efficient components of a company’s core capacitates. Erin Connor notes that at Cisco “what we do, and the problem are very well matched.”^[155] Partnerships should be built around activities where a dollar in service can go further than a dollar in funding. An effort should be made to focus on areas where a company can add unique value for impacted populations. Furthermore, whenever possible the approach should consider the “wholesale not retail” framework and follow a model that more closely resembles B2B (business-to-business) than B2C (business-to-consumer). Efforts should focus on where private sector partners can add unique value that enables NGOs and humanitarian organizations to drive more effective response.

Blue Sky Days: Partnerships need to be developed during “blue sky days.” Engaging only in the aftermath of a crisis is too late. During a response is not the time to be establishing processes and testing new solutions. Expectations and partner relationship mechanisms should be set well ahead of time. Partnerships should be built well before disaster strikes and maintained by employees dedicated to managing relationships and ensuring trust is established well before it is needed in the field.

Be Specific: Private sector partners rely on humanitarian organizations to understand the context and requirements of a response. Abe Diaz (Disaster Relief by Amazon) notes the necessity of specificity in an example of a request for 10,000 diapers by asking, “Is that 10,000 diapers or 10,000 boxes of diapers?” Private sector partners should rely on clear communication of needs from partner organizations to avoid a dynamic where businesses are just “pushing products on them” and complicating a response with unneeded goods or services.

Flexible & Predictable Funding: Wherever possible increasing private sector contributions should be leveraged to course correct from the challenges that exist in the dynamics within the traditional donor base. For example, the majority of humanitarian funding is earmarked for specific responses which limits the flexibility of an organization to allocate resources to where they are most needed. Additionally, earmarked funds prevent organizations from investing in staff, training, and improving their own operations and preparedness.^[156] Inflexible and unpredictable funding can both politicize response and limit its efficiency. At a September 2023 meeting of the UN Security Council, the representative from Malta noted that "this is an area where the private sector can greatly support humanitarian needs. Flexible, multi-year, core financial contributions from the private sector can bridge the gap.”^[157] Part of the appeal of PSE is engaging donors that can move quicker and be more flexible than their public sector counterparts.^[158]

Localization: The Grand Bargain and its commitment to providing 25% of total humanitarian assistance to local and national actors represents an acknowledgment within the sector of a need to rebalance power and reorient response to be “as local as possible” and as “international as necessary.”^[159] Considering the impact to power dynamics and the goal of localization should be a part of the framework for every private sector partnership and for humanitarian programming more broadly. Large companies have employee networks all over the world that should be leveraged as both a volunteer network and a reminder of the need to approach HADR with a local lens.

Virtuous Cycles: In an interview with Will Powell of the U.S Chamber of Commerce Foundation, he noted that private companies are one of the primary users of their Disaster Response Corporate Aid Tracker as they utilized the tool to learn more about what their competition is doing in the space. For example, a credit card company would look through the data to see how other credit card companies are engaging to inform their own decisions about where and how to invest in HADR.^[160] As companies increasingly value being perceived as driving social impact, humanitarian funding can become another area where companies will compete to be perceived as a leader. PR campaigns that trumpet the wins and highlight the generosity of a company’s investment in the space, will inspire increased engagement from both within that particular company and across its entire industry.

General Considerations and Areas for Further Study

Guidelines for Better Data: There is a need to invest in formalizing requirements that enforce transparency and accountability in PSE. The most basic of these would be to develop reporting standards that ensure the ability to track financial and in-kind contributions from the private sector. While there may be a reluctance to disrupt the momentum of PSE to introduce bureaucracy, it’s pivotal that we develop the means to better understand what companies are claiming to give, what they actually give, and where the resources are delivered to ensure a basic level of accountability to impacted communities. Clarity around financial tracking is by no means a new challenge in HADR, but it is a particularly daunting one when it comes to private sector contributions. For example, the efforts of organizations like OCHA and the U.S Chamber of Commerce to start tracking contributions rely in-large part on data from companies press releases and other forms of “self-reporting” which results in data that is unstandardized, unvalidated, and incomplete. Developing standard reporting guidelines for cash and in-kind aid will be a necessary next step to build on efforts to improve transparency and accountability in PSE.

Standardized Due Diligence Requirements: Kareem Elbayar, a Private Sector Engagement Advisor at the OCHA’s Connecting Business initiative, highlights the need for the humanitarian sector to reorganize in a manner that is more conducive to private sector partnerships. Citing UN as an example, he notes that “every agency, fund and program has a different set of due diligence requirements. A different set of partnership rules, a different partnership office, a different focal point. And those focal points tend to change.”^[161] Standardization where possible will encourage more frequent and sustained engagement with private sector partners.

Comprehensive Disaster Life Cycle Engagement: Joe Ruiz, former Director of UPS Humanitarian Relief Program, notes “every dollar you spend upfront in some type of resilience initiative can be helpful to prevent the same recurring events that happen if all you do is respond after disasters.”^[162] Ruiz’s comments echo the UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction which looks to refocus efforts on reducing vulnerability and increasing capacities to respond as part of a more holistic approach to HADR than just the immediate response to crises. Further, authors Moran, Dwyer and Seibert have highlighted that corporate philanthropy has in large part been concentrated in the response phase at the expense of long-term recovery and preparedness.^[163] Both the private sector and the HADR community more broadly should consider where resilience initiatives can help prepare communities for crises, especially in locations that are particularly vulnerable to climate change and vicious cycles of recurring natural disasters.

Comprehensive Business Strategies: This study has unfortunately fallen across a familiar bias towards focusing on large corporations. Individual entrepreneurs and small – medium sized businesses play an equally critical role in disaster response and should be a focus of the humanitarian sector frameworks for fostering PSE.^[164]

Updating Impartiality: In illustrating his point that we need to have a “more mature” conversation around PSE, Bharania highlights that “you can go through all the Geneva Conventions, you can go through the Sphere Handbook, there's no mention of the private sector.” The humanitarian system was constructed at a time when the articulation of rigid principles enabled the delivery of life saving aid. Now, a few generations later, those same principles will need to become more flexible in pursuit of the same outcome. While the capacity for response has made tremendous strides, its limitations are quantified by annual billion-dollar funding gaps and hundreds of millions of people that can’t be reached.

In a recent essay for the Global Public Policy Institute, Carlos Slim confronts the challenge of reimagining prioritization in humanitarian response given the need to scale capacity and that “responsibility for meeting humanitarian needs is never absolute and must always be shared.”^[165] However, with the scale of conflicts and crises around the world, there is an inherent friction with the idea of sharing the burden and the core humanitarian principle of “impartiality.” If impartiality requires that all responders treat all suffering as equal, how can we possibly prioritize when we lack the capacity to respond to all suffering? He ultimately proposes a framework for prioritization that includes criteria that he notes “breach and extend current understandings of impartiality.” This would not be the first time the humanitarian sector has relaxed the principle of impartiality in order to accommodate new actors, and it again needs to be updated for the sake of the primary principle of humanity and a mandate to save lives and reduce suffering.

Institutional Memory: In A History of Humanitarianism, Michael Barnett points to WWII as when “the world got serious about humanitarianism” noting that prior to then, first responders “left the impression that this was their first time they had ever responded to an emergency.” In the September 2023 Advancing Public-Private Humanitarian Partnership forum at the UN Security Council, President of Global Affairs and co-head of the Office of Applied Innovation at Goldman Sachs, Jared Cohen struck a similar tone, emphasizing that we need to get serious about PSE to the point that we “don’t reinvent the wheel every single time. We need institutional memory and more sustained partnerships with the public sector.”^[166] Fostering long term partnerships that incorporate private sector stakeholders as co-creators will help sustain PSE and enable a shift from reactive to proactive engagement and response.

If conducted thoughtfully, private sector engagement can be a catalyst for increased funding, technological innovation, localization of humanitarian programing, market driven solutions, and more sustainable outcomes.

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