World Humanitarian Day: Who is the humanitarian system really for?

We mark World Humanitarian Day every year on 19 August. This year I find myself conflicted, holding two thoughts together. On one hand I am encouraged and on the other I am discouraged.

We should welcome good news.

The recent announcement of US$2 billion in US health and humanitarian assistance through faith-based organisations is significant. In a sector facing extraordinary contraction, the recognition of the reach, trust and community presence of faith-based organisations is worth acknowledging. Around US$1.4 billion is expected to strengthen more than 2,500 faith-based hospitals, clinics and community health hubs across 17 countries.

For those of us who have worked for decades alongside churches and faith communities in the Global South, this recognition is so welcome. Faith communities are often there before the humanitarian system arrives, when it leaves, and long after the project has closed.

But on this Humanitarian Day, I also want to ask a harder question: What about the crises that nobody is talking about?

The 2026 humanitarian system estimates that around 239 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, while the collective response aims to reach 135 million[1].

Behind those numbers are people whose suffering has become almost invisible.

Sudan. Myanmar. The Sahel. The Democratic Republic of Congo. Afghanistan. Yemen. Lebanon. Ukraine. Haiti. So many communities currently experiencing protracted displacement, climate shocks, food insecurity and violence without ever becoming a headline.

It is recorded that in the Sahel alone, 15.4 million people are expected to face acute food insecurity between June and August 2026, including more than 1.5 million people at emergency levels. It is likely that more than the 2.6 million children recorded in the report are acutely malnourished[2].

The uncomfortable truth is that human suffering does not become less urgent because the cameras have moved elsewhere.

Humanitarianism is not about the size of the grant.

It is about the person at the centre of the grant.

•    The child who has not eaten.
•    The mother who has fled her home.
•   The family whose livelihood has disappeared after a flood.
•   The older person left behind when everyone else was displaced.
•   The community living with conflict that has become so prolonged that the world has stopped calling it an emergency.

Humanitarian action exists for the benefit of the most vulnerable.

That sounds obvious. But sometimes I wonder whether we have allowed the humanitarian system to become so consumed by funding mechanisms, compliance architecture, reporting requirements and organisational survival that we risk forgetting the reason it exists in the first place.

We also need to have an honest conversation about "overheads".

I have watched the public conversation increasingly reduce humanitarian efficiency to a deceptively simple equation: More money to programmes = better humanitarianism. It isn't that simple.

A humanitarian organisation needs competent people, finance systems, safeguarding, monitoring, security, logistics, technology, leadership, governance, insurance and accountability mechanisms.

These are not necessarily costs away from the poor. Often, they are what makes responsible assistance to vulnerable people possible. And yet, we must also resist the opposite danger.

Humanitarian organisations must never become "lords of the poor".

If the people we exist to serve become merely a means through which organisations sustain themselves, build institutions, protect positions or perpetuate programmes, something fundamental has gone wrong.

•    The poor are not our clients.
•    Their suffering is not our business model.
•    Their vulnerability does not give us ownership over their lives, voices or future.

Good humanitarianism should ultimately make itself less necessary, not more powerful.

It should transfer agency, resources, capacity and decision-making closer to affected communities.

And this is where localisation becomes much more than a funding formula.

However, localisation remains one of humanitarianism's unfinished promises. In 2023, development Initiatives found that Grand Bargain signatories provided just 4.4% of their humanitarian funding to local and national actors on the basis of independently verifiable data — and only 0.6% directly. This is despite the Grand Bargain's commitment to reach 25%[3].

If we are serious about putting vulnerable people first, we must ask why those closest to them continue to have so little control over the resources intended for them.

And then there are the humanitarians themselves.

We often celebrate resilience.

Perhaps we should sometimes ask whether we have made resilience an excuse for asking too much of people.

The evidence should make us pause. A 2024 systematic review of more than 3,600 humanitarian aid workers found significant levels of psychological distress, burnout, anxiety, depression and PTSD among humanitarian personnel. Burnout alone ranged from 8.5% to 32% across the studies reviewed[4].

Frontline humanitarian workers are carrying enormous loads. And the burden is not simply the trauma of the crisis itself. Humanitarians routinely face impossible choices, scarce resources, heavy workloads and ethical dilemmas. We cannot continue to speak about the resilience of frontline workers without questioning the responsibility that organisations have for their employees’ wellbeing.

Many local responders work with short contracts, inadequate benefits and limited access to psychosocial support. Some are responding to crises in their own communities while simultaneously experiencing the same trauma as the people they serve.

We have professionalised the protection of affected populations while sometimes under-professionalising the protection and wellbeing of those serving them.

We cannot keep asking people to save lives while treating their own wellbeing as an overhead.

The wellbeing of the humanitarian is part of humanitarian effectiveness.

So, on World Humanitarian Day, perhaps our question should not simply be: "How much did we deliver?"

Perhaps it should be:

•     Did we reach the people who were easiest to forget?
•     Did we give communities agency, or merely assistance?
•     Did we spend responsibly without becoming obsessed with spending less?     
•   Did we protect the dignity of people affected by crisis?
•    Did we protect the people who put themselves at risk to serve them?

And perhaps most importantly: Did our humanitarian action leave vulnerable people with greater voice, greater dignity, greater resilience and greater hope?

While we welcome the latest grant to faith-based organisations, now let us make sure the investment reaches where the need is greatest, where the voices are least heard, and where the world's attention is weakest.

Because humanitarianism is not ultimately about organisations.

It is about humanity.

And humanity must include the forgotten.

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Written by Roshan Mendis

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