Abstract
The global architecture of international humanitarian assistance has been for years dominated by a specific group of donor countries, who started to build up their national aid systems back in the 1950s and 1960s. However, since the beginning of the 1990s, following the globalisation of international relations, new actors have emerged at the scene of humanitarian donor community and started to influence the established ways of the provision of humanitarian aid.
In this article we will look at major characteristics of this group of donors. Examples of institutional and policy frameworks, geographical priorities, humanitarian financing mechanisms in emerging donor countries will be analysed. We will also attempt to indicate their motives to engage in humanitarian action and determine the challenges that they encounter in this regard. Finally, we will touch upon the issue of appearance of new donors from a broader perspective with a view to identify some of the opportunities and threats that this may present for the contemporary humanitarian action.
Opinions expressed in this paper are individual opinions of the author.
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Notes
- 1.
Kristalina Georgieva: “The world is changing at a pace and a magnitude that we can hardly grasp and all this affects the scale and nature of the humanitarian challenges we face nowadays.” in: ICRC (2011): Discussion: what are the future challenges for humanitarian action.
- 2.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
- 3.
EU-12 recognition as ‘non-traditional’ donors is not universal (e.g. in GPPi (expand acronym and reference) they are not qualified as “non-traditional donors”). For the purpose of this article, the assumption is made that EU-12 member states are still considered as “emerging donors”.
- 4.
The Czech Republic became the 26th DAC member state in May 2013.
- 5.
Although referred to in some publications about “new donors”, in this article South Korea has not been qualified as one due to its more than 3-year DAC OECD membership and extended participation in the multilateral humanitarian system.
- 6.
Financial Tracking System—global, real time database on humanitarian funding, managed by UN OCHA, http://fts.unocha.org.
- 7.
FTS data: http://fts.unocha.org/reports/daily/ocha_R10c_C91_Y2013_asof___1306182204.pdf, accessed 6 October 2014.
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Kot-Majewska, K. (2015). Role of Non-traditional Donors in Humanitarian Action: How Much Can They Achieve?. In: Gibbons, P., Heintze, HJ. (eds) The Humanitarian Challenge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13470-3_7
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