The Grand Bargain: Agenda for Humanity, usually called the Grand Bargain, is an agreement to reform the delivery of humanitarian aid, that was struck at the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016. The agreement contains 51 specific commitments, grouped into ten focus areas, with activity targets to be completed by January 1, 2020.

Parties to the agreement are national governments and humanitarian aid agencies, 30 of which initially signed up, rising to 48 within the first year; the 48 signatories controlled 95% of global humanitarian aid spending at the time. As of 2025, 71 signatories were part of the Grand Bargain process reform, representing an array of humanitarian actors including, 25 members states, 30 NGOs, 12 UN agencies, 2 Red Cross/Red Crescent movements and 2 Inter-governmental organisations.List of Signatories(https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/grand-bargain-official-website/grand-bargain-signatories)

By 2020, only partial progress had occurred, prompting criticism from some humanitarian practitioners and reflection from others that the original ambitions has an unrealistic time frame.

Five years after the initial agreement of the Grand Bargain in 2016, the Signatories undertook a review in 2021, resulting in the launch of the Grand Bargain 2.0 for two years (until 2023).Grand Bargain 2.0 explained by ICVA, https://reliefweb.int/report/world/grand-bargain-20-explained-icva-briefing-paper-march-2022

In June 2023, the 66 signatories endorsed the new iteration of the Grand Bargain for the 2023-2026 period. Anchored in the original commitments of the agreement, the humanitarian actors focus their efforts on quality funding, localisation, participation of affected populations, the nexus approach, innovative financing, and anticipatory action.Grand Bargain 2023-2026, Relief Web, https://reliefweb.int/report/world/grand-bargain-beyond-2023

Background

As part of his 2012 goal to improve the humanitarian system, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convened the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul with the goal of knowledge sharing and creating best practices. Ki-moon created the High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing, appointing Kristalina Georgieva and Nazrin Shah of Perak, as co-chairs. +High-Level Panel on Humanitarian FinancingNameNationalityAffiliationRoleKristalina GeorgievaBulgariaVice President for Budget and Human Resources, the European Commissionco-chairSultan Nazrin ShahMalaysiaRuler of Perak, Malaysiaco-chairHadeel IbrahimUnited KingdomExecutive Director, Mo Ibrahim FoundationmemberBadr JafarUnited Arab EmiratesManaging Director, the Crescent GroupmemberWalt MacneeCanadaVice Chairman, MastercardmemberTrevor ManuelSouth AfricaSenior Advisor, Rothschild GroupmemberLinah MohohloBotswanaGovernor, Bank of BotswanamemberDhananjayan SriskandarajahSri LankaSecretary-General, CIVICUSmemberMargot WallströmSwedenMinister for Foreign Affairsmember The High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing produced the report Too important to fail - addressing the humanitarian financing gap which was presented at the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016. The report highlighted a US$15 billion shortfall between the cost of addressing humanitarian needs and the global budget to respond. It called for new ways to fund growing humanitarian needs, such as taxation for luxury goods and services. The group's report called for a Grand Bargain between nations to address the unmet humanitarian needs.

Agreement

Focus areas Parties to the agreement committed transparently and harmoniously sharing high-quality data on humanitarian funding within two years. The agreement indicated that the International Aid Transparency Initiative data model was likely the best mechanism to record the data. They also committed to increase spending on local organisations from 0.4% of the overall budget to 25% by 2020. In subsequent years, this effort became known as Localisation. On cash and voucher assistance, conflicting statements were made simultaneously mentioning the benefits of giving people with humanitarian needs cash, but without setting any specific targets, and also calling for more research into benefits and risks. Parties agreed to reduce duplication and management costs; to harmonise the templates for grant agreements between government donors and humanitarian agencies. There was agreement for unification of assessments of unmet humanitarian needs, although that element was criticised by ACAPS for not addressing the necessary changes they called for. A commitment was made to better include the perspectives of the people in communities affected by humanitarian crisis. Parties committed to multi-year funding; to provide aid agencies with agreements to fund their activities for multiple years at a time, rather than requiring annual requests for funding. Parties committed to put more funding into emergency funds, such as the Central Emergency Relief Fund, in order to increase flexibility of how funds can be used in emergencies. Government donors agreed to harmonise the reporting requirements they put on humanitarian agencies by 2018, and reduce the reporting volume. There was agreement to improve collaboration and coordination between groups working on prevention of humanitarian crisis, those working on mitigating the effects of crisis and those responding to emergencies. In total, the Grand Bargain included 51 specific commitments each grouped under the aforementioned themes.

In 2021, a strategic shift was made as the Grand Bargain and its signatories adopted a narrower set of objectives and related adjustments to structures and ways of working to ensure a higher political engagement. This transition was driven both by what had been achieved to date in the various thematic areas of the original Grand Bargain framework from 2016.

As part of the 2023-2026 Grand Bargain iteration,Grand Bargain Framework 2023-2026, Relief Web, https://reliefweb.int/report/world/grand-bargain-beyond-2023 two focus areas have been decided among the Signatories:

• Focus Area 1: Continued support to localisation, participation of affected communities, and quality funding.

• Focus Area 2: Catalysing sector wide transformation through the Grand Bargain.

• Cross-cutting issues

-Gender

-Risk Sharing

Commitments The Grand Bargain sets out 51 commitments, distilled into 10 thematic workstreams:

• Workstream 1: Greater Transparency

• Workstream 2: More support and funding tools for local and national responders

• Workstream 3: Increase the use and coordination of cash-based programming

• Workstream 4: Reduce duplication and management costs with periodic functional reviews

• Workstream 5: Improve joint and impartial needs assessment

• Workstream 6: Participation Revolution: include people receiving aid in making the decisions which affect their lives

• Workstream 7&8: Increase collaborative humanitarian multi-year planning and funding & reduce earmarking of donor contribution

• Workstream 9: Harmonise and simplify reporting requirements

• Workstream 10: Humanitarian-development nexus

+Summary of the Grand Bargain donor (and aid agency) commitmentsTopicStakeholder(s)CommitmentTransparencyAid agencies and donorsPublishing transparency, timely, open, and harmonized high quality data on funding, within two years of the summit To make use of data that explains the distinctness of aid agencies, and the contexts in which they workTo improve use of digital tools for accountability, decision making, efficiency, and funding traceabilityTo support others with regards to data access and data publishingLocalisationAid agencies and donorsProvide multi-year funding to local and national aid agenciesRemove barriers that block partnerships with local and national aid agenciesTo support and collaborate with national governments coordination of humanitarian aidTo provide 25% of funding to local or national organizations as directly as possibleTo agree, with the Inter Agency Standing Committee, key performance indicator about localisation effortsTo increase the use of funding tools that enable more funding to local and national aid agenciesUse of cashAid agencies and donorsTo increase the use of cash, vouchers and in-kind in humanitarian aid.To fund new aid delivery models that can increase the scale of aidTo assess the cost and benefits of cash (including for protection) compared to in-kind aid.To agree standards and share information about cash programming to better understand the costs and benefitsTo monitor and evaluate cash programming in a coordinated wayTo do more cash programming, where appropriate Cost efficiencyAid agencies and donorsTo increase efficiencies of delivery aid with a focus on technology and innovationHarmonize partnership agreements and share information about the needs of people affected by crisesAid agenciesTo provide transparent and comparable cost structuresTo maximize efficiency with regards to procurement of goods and servicesDonorsTo reduce individual donors monitoring and evaluations and to make joined assessmentsNeeds assessmentAid agencies and donorsTo collaborate on one centralised needs assessment for each individual humanitarian emergencyTo coordinate data collection with a view to reduce intrusion for people affected by crisesTo quickly share needs assessment data, while being mindful of privacy and protection needsTo fund expert third-party support for data collection to improve collaborationTo prioritize activities based on evidence.To fund independent evaluation of needs assessmentsTo undertake risk and vulnerability assessments in collaboration with local authorities and international development agenciesParticipation and inclusionAid agencies and donorsImprove national leadership and governance capacityCreate common standards for community participation and engagementImprove dialogue with local stakeholdersCreate systems to ensure that feedback from local stakeholders is acted uponDonorsTo be flexible with funding to allow adaptions to local community feedbackTo fund and invest time in participation and inclusionAid agenciesTo ensure that monitoring and evaluation plans include community feedback by 2017Multi-year fundingAid agencies and donorsTo increase funding agreements to cover multiple years, to document efficiency and effectiveness, and to pass on multi-year funding agreements to implementing sub-contractors.To provide multi year funding and associated monitoring and evaluation to at least five national response plans by 2017To improve coordination and collaboration on sharing needs assessments between humanitarian aid and international development stakeholders.Reducing the earmarking of funds by nationAid agencies and donorsTo collectively annually agree the most effective mechanism to report on unearmarked or "softly earmarked" funds by 2017To increase flexibility of funding, to reduce earmarking funding to certain nationsAid agenciesTo transparently and regularly share information on how unearmarked funds are spent.To publicly acknowledge donors who provide flexible fundsDonorsTo reduce national earmarked fundsReportingAid agencies and donorsTo harmonize and simplify donor reporting by the end of 2018To increase use of digital technology in donor reportingTo improve the efficiency and quality of reportingCoordinationAid agencies and donorsTo increase efforts to prevent humanitarian needsTo invest in sustainable solutions for people who are forcibly displaced and those returningTo bolster local systems and to improve local social protectionTo undertake collaborative vulnerability and risk analysis with international development agenciesTo engage better with multilateral development banks. In addition to improving the humanitarian system, the commitments were expected to save US$1 billion per year.