The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is partnering up with Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO), the European Commission’s department responsible for overseas humanitarian aid and civil protection to launch Pilot Programmatic Partnership, that is “Accelerating Local Action in Humanitarian and Health Crises.” It is a partnership that provides local communities with more strategic, flexible, longer-term, and predictable funding, so they can, in turn, deliver more efficient and effective humanitarian support with EU multi-year funding.
This program aims to reach the global level, with 12 National Societies from the European Union taking part in the partnership, those are Austrian Red Cross, Belgian Red Cross, Danish Red Cross, French Red Cross, Finnish Red Cross, German Red Cross, Italian Red Cross, Luxembourg Red Cross, Netherlands Red Cross, Norwegian Red Cross, Spanish Red Cross, and Swedish Red Cross, supporting humanitarian action in 24 countries all around the world.
With a total of 10.8 million people reached as in the IFRC report of April 4, 2024, it is safe to say that this program has given positive impact and live up to its aim, that is to provide aid for those who are in humanitarian crises.
One of the program highlights is disaster risk management, with 5.4 million people reached, this highlighted program ensure response reaches communities in a timely and effective manner by developing Preparedness for Effective Response (PER), support communities to take climate smart and innovative measures to protect them from the impacts of predictable extreme events through a bottom-up strategy linking community and integrating risk or impact projections.
According to Public Tableau, it also has helped 422.3 thousand people on the move that are in need of humanitarian assistance and protection. This humanitarian assistance and protection are provided through Humanitarian Service Points (HSPs) to migrants, irrespective of status, and host communities in vulnerable situations.
There are almost 2 million people that are covered and protected from shock and stresses by the Early Action Protocols for the Forecast-based Action by the DREF and its allocations for imminent crises. A good number considering that this program was launched in 2022.
Everything comes with the good and the bad, and so does this partnership between IFRC and EU. Even with the good numbers it put up, there are still problems and challenges faced in implementing this program. One of those is limited resource and access. These could lead to the hindering of the ability and providing effective aid and improving coordination between actors.
With this program still running, there is absolutely a big chance to improve on how to fix and respond to these problems and challenges faced so that the goals of it could be reached and the positive impacts could be maximalized and felt for everyone, especially the people in humanitarian crises.
