When a crisis hits, people need help, and they need it quickly. Cash, food, shelter, protection, healthcare: the basics that stop a bad situation getting worse. Humanitarian response is built around the need to save lives quickly and operate effectively under pressure.
In many crises, local organisations, frontline service providers, and national institutions are the first to respond. They understand local dynamics, existing delivery systems, and how support reaches communities in practice. In recent years, there has rightly been growing emphasis across the humanitarian sector on locally led response and shifting decision-making closer to affected populations.
At the same time, protracted crises and increasingly complex operating environments have reinforced the continuing importance of international humanitarian support. In many contexts, large-scale response still depends on international financing, logistics, technical expertise, diplomatic engagement, and the ability to mobilise rapidly across multiple actors and systems. The priority therefore is to ensure that locally led and internationally supported responses reinforce one another over time.
Aligning global and domestic efforts has always been important, but the context is shifting in ways that make it increasingly so. Crises are becoming more protracted, shaped by overlapping stressors such as climate change, while the agencies charged with tackling them face increasing resource constraints.
Doing more with less means designing humanitarian responses in ways that make sensible use of what is already there, including national systems. Increasingly, this also places a premium on preparedness and partnership before crises escalate. Understanding how national systems function, where their constraints lie, and how international and domestic actors can work together in practice cannot begin in the middle of an emergency. In many contexts, the effectiveness of humanitarian response depends in part on relationships, delivery mechanisms, and institutional knowledge developed well before a crisis peaks.
Designing with Continuity in Mind
The relationship between external and national actors has practical implications from the earliest stages of a response. Humanitarian planning that does not take existing national systems into account can create parallel structures that are difficult to sustain or adapt over time.
In several protracted crises, parallel humanitarian delivery systems have operated alongside national systems for extended periods, creating duplication in targeting and delivery. When funding declines, this can lead to abrupt gaps in support, particularly where transitions to national systems are not planned early. In practice, this can leave affected populations navigating multiple systems with different eligibility criteria, delivery channels, and timelines, while governments struggle to maintain visibility over who is receiving support and where gaps remain.
Several practical considerations for response planning were set out by the High-Level Panel on Social Protection in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings, convened by the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and supported by the DAI-managed STAAR Facility:
- Start with system awareness. Ground humanitarian planning in a clear understanding of existing national systems, including coverage, delivery mechanisms, and institutional capacity.
- Design with transition in mind. Consider early on how support could evolve toward nationally led or hybrid approaches as conditions change.
- Use shared delivery mechanisms where possible. Where appropriate, humanitarian and national actors can use shared approaches to beneficiary registration, payment delivery, and vulnerability assessment to reduce duplication and simplify access to support.
- Apply “do no harm” to institutions as well as people. Avoid delivery choices that weaken the systems and frontline capacity needed for recovery and future crisis response.
In many contexts, the structures through which assistance reaches people (assistance such as cash and food benefits, emergency payments, and local service delivery) form part of national social protection systems.
Aligning Systems in Practice
One example is the PeReHID Initiative, a collaboration between Ukraine’s Ministry of Social Policy and a host of international governments and agencies.
In Ukraine, international humanitarian response has been essential to addressing the massive disruption and displacement caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion. At the same time, links to the existing social protection system have been part of the conversation from early on. DAI’s support to PeReHID contributed to a shared understanding between humanitarian actors and the Government of Ukraine regarding how humanitarian cash and services could link with national social assistance and social service programming, in line with the Government’s reform agenda.
This type of collaboration can help ensure that large-scale assistance does not operate entirely in parallel, and that changes in funding or delivery do not result in abrupt loss of support.
Sustaining Response Over Time
International humanitarian response remains indispensable, particularly in acute crises. But as crises become longer and resources more constrained, effective humanitarian response will increasingly rely on how quickly support can be delivered and how sustainably international and national systems can operate together over time.
This will not always be possible in contexts where state institutions are party to conflict or lack legitimacy, but in many crises there remains scope for selective and practical forms of alignment.
To quote the high-level panel: “Interventions must protect people today while, where feasible, safeguarding the systems that will sustain recovery and stability tomorrow.”
