Paper details
| Paper authors | Cecilia Corsini |
| In panel on | Redrawing the Map: Rethinking Humanitarian Financing in Times of Structural Instability |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
Recent literature has shown how member states strategically use earmarked funding as a substitute for weighted voting to exert control over IOs (Graham and Serdaru 2020). This is also the case of IOs with a humanitarian mandate: state-led executive boards have limited oversight on how these organizations spend their core budget. As a result, over the years, major (Western) donors belonging to the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) have resorted to earmarking an increasing share of total multilateral humanitarian aid. Meanwhile, the gap between humanitarian needs and available humanitarian aid has reached unprecedented levels. In response, ‘traditional’ DAC donors have urged humanitarian IOs to diversify their funding sources by engaging non-DAC state donors, such as Gulf countries. Yet, the very practice of earmarking, while addressing immediate budgetary pressures and domestic concerns of accountability of Western donors, may undermine efforts to increase the multilateral engagement of other donors, who often perceive multilateral institutions as dominated by Western interests and seek greater control over their contributions.
This article explores the circumstances under which emerging, non-DAC donors choose to fund the multilateral humanitarian system, focusing specifically on UN organizations, programmes, funds, and agencies with a humanitarian mandate, and whether Western earmarking influences this decision. Based on case studies of four Gulf donor countries and drawing for more than a dozen interviews and available funding data, the findings indicate that emerging donors are reluctant to increase their voluntary contributions to UN humanitarian organizations, as the high levels of earmarking by Western/DAC donors reinforce their perception of the UN humanitarian system as dominated by Western interests. Instead, they often opt for bilateral channels to deliver humanitarian aid. These findings underscore the challenges IOs face in broadening their donor base while balancing the competing demands for control and flexibility in the allocation of humanitarian aid.
