The 2016 World Humanitarian Summit Report Card: Both Failing Marks and Substantive Gains for an Increasingly Globalized Humanitarian Landscape

The 2016 World Humanitarian Summit Report Card The World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in Istanbul took place on May 23-24, 2016 with 9000 attendees from humanitarian aid and disaster relief organizations, crisis-affected countries and governments. It was in part prompted by the terrific flow of refugees from the Middle East to Europe, the growing gap in being able to meet the needs of displaced peoples affected by conflict and disasters and the realization that broad reform is essential to move forward. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) conducted pre-WHS consultations with non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academia, youth, and the private sector on 13 October 2015. This was followed by a global meeting on 14-16 Oct to capture the opinions, ideas and voices of the multitude of stakeholders. 1,2 OCHA attempted to attract a large number of global leaders to the summit with all indication of conducting a formal intergovernmental process. However, when only 50 non-G7 leaders indicated attendance,3 representing a paltry 5.2% of the global population, it may have determined that an ‘unofficial’ exploratory approach would be more useful in advancing the reform agenda at this stage in the process. Unfortunately, nation states prefer to participate when the outcomes are clear and may have felt disinclined to attend due to a lack of extensive political involvement and dialogue.4 However, the tightly orchestrated program left little room for expl...
Source: PLOS Currents Disasters - Category: Global & Universal Authors: Source Type: research