Health in a World of Crises and Impunity

Transform humanitarian governance and operationalise localisation and decolonisation.

• Shift governance, funding, and decision-making to affected communities and locally legitimate actors.
• Apply a crisis typology and decision matrix to guide context-specific governance models and clarify the rationale, scope, and duration of regional and international actor involvement.
• Consolidate the fragmented UN humanitarian system toward a single, integrated and accountable operational entity, replace the Cluster System/Refugee Coordination Model where appropriate with fit-for-purpose incident management systems, and ensure coordination delivers clear leadership and measurable results.

Centre accountability in international humanitarian law and principled humanitarian action.

• Establish a Global Health Protection Alliance – comprising States, UN entities, and NGOs – to systematically act when health protections are violated.
• Apply five core humanitarian principles – humanity, impartiality, do no harm, solidarity, and accountability – to guide principled humanitarian action in contemporary humanitarian settings. Neutrality and independence remain essential and context-dependent means to ensure access and acceptance.
• Use health outcomes as measures of performance, indicators of compliance, and triggers for formal investigation and accountability across the system

Scale predictable, needs-based, and equitable financing that centres the needs of affected populations and
supports the agency of local actors.

• Establish an independent global pooled humanitarian fund, governed independently of UN agencies and bilateral donors, with allocations based on assessed need and equity.
• Substantially expand cash-based assistance so that affected populations have agency over their own lives, strengthen local economies, and support more efficient and equitable delivery of assistance.
• Integrate humanitarian action with national health and social protection systems, ensuring displaced populations have access through these systems rather than parallel structures.
• Deploy innovative financing instruments – including anticipatory financing, blended finance, and disaster risk insurance – to diversify and stabilise financing.

Ensure continuity of equitable, safe, and locally anchored healthcare, with a focus on populations most at risk.

• Anchor health responses in the right to health, prioritising equity and essential services for populations at greatest risk, including women, children, older adults, and people with disabilities.
• Ensure continuity, quality, and safety of care across crisis settings, delivering essential services based on need and adapted to context, and integrate climate resilience and the use of technology – including artificial intelligence – as core enablers of system performance, with appropriate safeguards from the outset.
• Ensure the protection of health care and health workers as a non-negotiable right, integral to health outcomes and shared across States, non-State actors, and the humanitarian ecosystem.
• Integrate climate resilience into health systems transformation from the outset, including across health infrastructure, supply chains, and service delivery models.
• Deploy technology, including artificial intelligence, with appropriate safeguards for equity, data protection, and human oversight.