Literature monitoring

With Grand Bargain 3.0 coming to an end in October 2026 and in view of the rapidly changing humanitarian landscape, the Grand Bargain Ambassadors commissioned this independent Think Piece to inform reflections on the future of the process and its platform. The Think Piece provides a strategic foresight analysis of future humanitarian challenges and humanitarian financing and reform initiatives. It uses a stress testing approach to explore how the humanitarian system might respond to growing pressure and examines whether the architecture is robust enough for what may lie ahead.

Can anticipatory action help solve the problem of humanitarian climate crisis? This paper analyses the ethical and policy implications of this ‘anticipatory turn’ in international humanitarian affairs. It focuses specifically on Anticipatory Action which uses pre-agreed activities, triggers and decision-making rules to act ahead of a predicted hazard to prevent or reduce its acute humanitarian impacts.

This ICVA paper explores how humanitarian pooled funds manage and share risk across delivery chains and how these practices impact localisation and response effectiveness. Drawing on research from Sudan, Myanmar, Syria, and Ukraine, the report identifies barriers faced by local actors, highlights scalable good practices in risk-sharing, and offers actionable recommendations for donors, fund managers, intermediaries, and local partners. It calls for more equitable, codified risk-sharing approaches to ensure quality funding reaches local actors and strengthen partnerships across the humanitarian system.