The Humanitarian Futures programme

Area 2 - Planning from the Future - New Approached, New Ways of Working

To help organisations with humanitarian roles and responsibilities meet the challenges of the 21^st century by becoming more anticipatory and adaptive, providing an enabling environment for strategic leadership and knowing how to innovate and collaborate more effectively.

Outcomes:

Awareness raising: Organisations will have a greater appreciation or recognition of the ways in which they need to become more anticipatory and adaptive to the changing humanitarian context and will be aware of the strategic leadership required to enable these changes;
Policy influencing: Within organisations there will be evidence of policy changes that facilitate greater anticipation and adaptation;
Contributing to changes in organizational attitudes, behaviours and practice: Observable indications of changes in the behaviour and practice of organisations that demonstrate anticipation, adaptation and innovation to the way in which they plan and implement crisis prevention, preparedness, response and recovery.

Projects:

1. Strategic leadership in the humanitarian sector.
Objective: Promote a common understanding of the elements of strategic leadership, their relevance to the humanitarian sector and the challenges associated with creating an enabling environment for such leadership in uncertain operating environments. HFP will build on its own existing research to further understanding of the concepts and conditions for effective leadership, incorporating case studies from a range of identified leaders in various sectors, as well as continue to collaborate with a consortium including Tulane University, ALNAP, and People in Aid.

2. Engaging with the vulnerable: the professionalization paradox.
Objective:This project will explore the potential paradox that, the more professional humanitarian organisations become to address the complexities of the future, the more they may become detached from the very people they are intended to serve. This is an issue both complex and deeply practical. HFP will explore these themes in a series of well-documented workshops with the objective of helping those with humanitarian responsibilities to adapt the ways in which they work and to engage more effectively with vulnerable communities.

3. NOISE: Managing the New Order of Information Saturated Environments
Objective: The environment within which humanitarian actors operate has shifted rapidly from an information-scarce environment, to one where there are multiple and exponentially increasing sources of data. Within this context, many actors with humanitarian responsibilities have yet to adapt to this environment, let alone understand the social and political dynamics underlying multiple, large scale flows of data. HFP aims to explore this emerging challenge in greater depth with the objective of building a greater understanding of the challenges and opportunities associated with this rapid change and support organisations to better manage data for effective longer-term speculation and planning.

4. Tools development.
Objective:The ultimate objective of HFP is to assist organisations to develop capacities to deal with the challenges of the future. A key aspect of this is the development of tools designed to strengthen the wider sector’s capacity and provide practical measures to assist those with humanitarian roles and responsibilities. The objective will do this with a specific focus on the following:

a. Tools meta-study: While there are a plethora of organisational assessment tools and a significant number of futures forecasting tools available, little attention has been given to understanding the applicability of these tools to the humanitarian sector within the context of a rapidly changing environment. HFP will conduct a meta-study to assess the efficacy of these tools for the humanitarian sector and what gaps there might be to ensure that the sector has the right tools to develop the necessary capacities to deal with the challenges of humanitarian futures;
b. Organisational Self-Assessment Tool [OSAT]: This tool has been field-tested in various settings, in-country as well as at headquarters, and its usefulness in exposing institutional strengths and weaknesses for dealing with future challenges has improved. During 2011 HFP will explore how to transform this tool into a self-administered exercise.
c. Making Futures Real: Provides a one-day exploration into the importance of speculation and long-term strategy formulation for humanitarian organisations. Its first test was conducted in September 2010, and the design is intended to be finalised for distribution by September 2011.
d. Futures Ready AnalysisHFP will explore the development of a new tool, to identify ways to identify, rank and relate risks to contexts and, in turn, identify means for adapting to these risks.

5. New approaches, new ways of working – organisations in practice
Objective: HFP will continue to work with a range of organisations with humanitarian roles and responsibilities including multilateral and bilateral agencies, non-governmental organisations, regional organisations and governments to test the practical measures available to improve organisational capacity and meet the challenges of the future. This will includes:

a. FOREWARN initiative: Facilitating Enhanced Organisational Responsiveness for Effective West African Risk Reduction: HFP, in partnership with DARA and KCL’s African Leadership Centre will follow up its 2009 work with ECOWAS with a second phase of support during 2011-12. This will involve supporting the capacity of ECOWARN with a focus on expanding partnerships with a diverse range of actors; establishing a futures crisis group and; facilitating leadership development.
b. DFID’s humanitarian emergency response and recovery review. HFP has been contributing to DfID’s review of their work in emergencies to build understanding of thefutures element of humanitarian response and recovery. HFP will continue to contribute to this process in the first half of 2011.
c. Key findings from HFP’s work with the United Nations system. In light of various government and UN efforts to enhance the capacities of IASC members and the institution of the IASC, itself, HFP will explore opportunities to continue its work with the IASC, UNCTS/HCTs and relevant governments to support efforts to promote longer-term strategic planning for dealing with future humanitarian crises and opportunities.
d. A ‘futures ready’ World Health Organisation.HFP will continue its work with the World Health Organisation to support the development of a new business model for their work in emergency contexts. This will include an analysis of appropriate structures, approaches and behaviours across the organisation to ensure that WHO can effectively respond to the growing complexity and changing dynamics of crises.
e. UNDP Somalia: HFP will continue to work with UNDP Somalia in follow up to the recently completed Somali Futures project to analyse ways in which UNDP can engage differently, taking greater account of the aspirations of the Diaspora and those populations that continue to reside in Somalia. This will include looking at the opportunities and limitations of ‘constructive disengagement’.