Insights from USAID Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance Multi-Year Humanitarian Activities

In 2019, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) introduced an Annual Program Statement (APS) for multi-year international emergency food security assistance, initiating a pilot of multi-year activities in several recurrent and protracted crisis contexts. This shift towards longer-term, multi-year humanitarian funding and planning stemmed from commitment to enable stronger program linkages across the humanitarian-development-peace (HDP) nexus to maximize program outcomes and ultimately reduce the need for humanitarian assistance. The APS resulted in an initial activity in Nepal and three activities in South Sudan, followed by a similar activity in Somalia, although not through the same APS mechanism.

In 2023, the IDEAL activity conducted a study of these five BHA multi-year humanitarian activities. This study identified promising practices and lessons learned to improve the implementation of future multi-year humanitarian activities in different regions and contexts, and examined how these activities facilitated HDP coherence, coordination, and constraints. This report highlights these results with the aim of guiding future multi-year initiatives, increasing the effectiveness of multi-year humanitarian assistance, and improving the lives and strengthening the resilience of communities affected by recurrent and protracted crises.

In May 2024, IDEAL hosted an online event to share findings from the study, you can watch a recording and access slides here. This event was part of the HDP Coherence in Practice: Insights from the Implementing Community series.