Recommendation 5

HM Government Acknowledged

NGOs have played a critical role in the humanitarian response to the pandemic. We have allocated significant funding directly to international and UK-based charities since the start of the pandemic, to fulfil their critical role in supporting vulnerable communities with the humanitarian impact of the covid-19 virus. This includes: • £18 million through the Rapid Response Facility to charities who have supported the basic needs of some of the world’s most vulnerable people, including in Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Mali, Somalia, Chad, Niger and CAR. • £10 million to match donations from the British public to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Coronavirus Appeal, funding the work of 14 UK aid agencies to tackle covid-19 among displaced people including Rohingya in Bangladesh. • An additional £1.6 million for the Humanitarian to Humanitarian (H2H) Network to support humanitarian organisations to manage covid-related information, build their capacity to respond to the crisis, and communicate facts to communities. • £4.2 million through UK Aid Direct round 5, which has been specifically earmarked to rapidly respond to covid-19. The rest of the money allocated through this funding round is planned to have a strong focus on the longer-term impacts of covid-19. 8 Eighth Special Report of Session 2019–21 • Through our hygiene partnership with Unilever, over £25 million has been allocated to UK and international charities, including WaterAid and Action Aid, to deliver important hygiene messages to vulnerable communities. In addition, the UK is the largest donor to the Start Fund, a UK-based and NGO-managed pooled fund for humanitarian response. The UK contributed £3.3 million to the dedicated Start Fund covid-19 in April 2020, which provides rapid funding to NGOs to address neglected or underfunded aspects of the broader covid-19 crisis at a local level. As mentioned earlier, we took the decision to commit much of our initial support for the covid-19 response through the multilaterals, but much of this work was delivered on the ground by expert NGOs. In addition, we have worked with them to ensure that funding is channelled to NGOs and their other recipients as quickly as possible. We are pleased that, following our lobbying, agencies such as UNICEF are simplifying their funding processes. We recognise the unique role of local NGOs and their partner organisations as they are attuned to community needs and able to respond quickly to these needs on the ground. A key aim of our funding for Civil Society is to support the capacity of local and national NGOs so that they can be strong, self-reliant and powerful development actors. Recent examples of our commitment to working with local NGOs include: a 10-year partnership with Comic Relief focused on building the capacity and sustainability of locally led NGOs in Ghana, Zambia and Malawi; our Humanitarian Assistance and Resilience Programme Facility in Myanmar; and community partnership, capacity development support and impact grants to local organisations through UK Aid Direct. The department monitored and assessed the Disasters and Emergencies Preparedness Programme (DEPP) throughout its lifetime, including through Annual Reviews that are publicly available, an external evaluation conducted by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and through an internal DFID review. As with all innovative programmes, the DEPP has demonstrated some strengths and weaknesses. The key strengths included tackling pertinent issues such as capacity building of local preparedness actors. However, there were some issues, including long delivery chains with high administrative costs due to the complexity of the programme. Non-covid related healthcare