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Canada's Commitment
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Disasters can strike at any time and in any country; however, more than 90 percent of those affected by natural disasters—earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, landslides and volcanoes—live in developing countries. The poverty, high-density populations, and environmental degradation affecting most of the people in these countries make them the most vulnerable to disaster and least able to help themselves when it happens.
The complex emergencies that arise from civil war and conflict, including widespread violence and destruction, massive refugee movements and landmine casualties, also affect the world's poorest countries disproportionately.
The primary responsibility for responding to disasters lies with the government of the affected country. Usually, the affected communities themselves and their governments provide a significant first response to emergencies.
| CIDA, through its International Humanitarian Assistance and Food Aid Division, helps to ease human suffering resulting from human conflicts and natural disasters in developing countries by providing appropriate, timely, and effective responses. |
When the needs of the affected communities exceed the capacity of their government to respond, Canada and governments around the world provide assistance through an established international humanitarian response system. This system includes donor countries like Canada; United Nations organizations such as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and UNICEF; the Red Cross movement, and experienced non-governmental humanitarian organizations.
Canada's Commitment
Canada is committed to providing appropriate, timely, and effective humanitarian assistance in line with the Principles and Good Practice of Humanitarian Donorship.
CIDA's primary response to crises is financial support to organizations that make up the international humanitarian system. These organizations ensure that the basic human needs of disaster- and conflict-affected people, such as physical security, food, water, health care, and shelter, are met. Four general principles guide these efforts:
- Humanity: Central is saving human lives and alleviating suffering wherever it is found.
- Impartiality: Actions must be implemented solely on the basis of need, without discrimination between populations or within an affected population.
- Neutrality: Humanitarian action must not favour any side in an armed conflict or other dispute where such action is carried out.
- Independence: All actors’ humanitarian objectives must be autonomous from their political, economic, military, or other objectives in the affected areas.
Not only must humanitarian action be principled, it must also be timely, effective, and appropriate. Over the past several years, Canada has made significant efforts to strengthen its own humanitarian responses, while working with other donor governments and key humanitarian partners to strengthen and broaden the international humanitarian system.
Canada has played a leadership role in the Good Humanitarian Donorship Initiative that aims to improve donor responses to humanitarian crises. In line with its commitment to Good Humanitarian Donorship Principles and Good Practice, Canada, through CIDA, has taken a number of actions to improve the timeliness, flexibility, and equity of its humanitarian funding. These include:
- Establishing a ‘crisis pool’ for rapid funding to allow for more timely response to major unforeseen crises, while not inhibiting its ability to respond to equally serious, but less visible, ongoing crises, as well as on-going development efforts. This crisis pool is expected to double next year and expand in the coming years.
- Increasing the flexibility of its funding to key humanitarian partners, allowing them to respond where the needs are greatest.
- Increasing to 50 percent the percentage of food aid that can be purchased in developing countries. This will allow Canada to respond to food crises faster and more efficiently, with more appropriate food commodities and at a lower cost.
CIDA has also invested considerable efforts in strengthening the broader international humanitarian system. These include:
- Working with other donors and the United Nations in shaping the development of the UN Central Emergency Response Fund. The Fund will provide a predictable source of money for rapid response and address the needs of so-called ‘forgotten crises’.
- Launching, with the United States Agency for International Development, the Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions project that aims to standardize methodologies for assessing needs, in order to improve the ability to compare crises and establish which should receive resources on a priority basis. This is part of Canada’s larger involvement to help develop more objective measures to guide humanitarian responses to crises.
- Through the Sphere Project, supporting the development and dissemination of standards in the key sectors of humanitarian response.
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