Belgium intensifies its investment in humanitarian innovation

Alexander De Croo: “If we want to save more lives, we need more humanitarian innovation. Humanitarian organizations are increasingly waking up to the need to innovate. Many of them are trying to find solutions on their own, while the challenges faced by humanitarian actors are often similar. That’s why we need platforms such as the Global Humanitarian Hub to bring together creative minds, look at best practices and and find common innovative solutions”.

Alexander De Croo is due to speaking at the Sustainable Impact Hub’s informal reception where attendees explored collaboration on issues of mutual interest in support of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Partnership

The Belgian Government is officially joining the GHL as a Governing Board member as of January 2018. This partnership has been formed on the back of a shared desire to encourage cross-sector collaboration, accelerate innovative solutions and increase efficiency and impact in the humanitarian sector.

The GHL offers practical ways to share knowledge and lessons, facilitate risk outsourcing and aggregate needs across the three humanitarian families (UN, Red Cross and Red Crescent, NGOs). Ultimately the GHL accelerates innovative solutions with, for and by affected communities. Thanks to a €300,000 contribution from the Belgian government , this partnership will allow to focus on accelerating humanitarian innovation.

The official announcement will be made at the Sustainable Impact Hub’s informal reception, where Minister De Croo is a keynote speaker. The Sustainable Impact Hub, which has been powered by the GHL, is a demonstration of solidarity between organisations working towards a shared objective. The 2018 collaborative partners include: the ICRC, IFRC, IOM, OCHA, UN Women, UNDP, UN Foundation, UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP the World Bank, the Global Humanitarian Lab (GHL), the Global Alliance for Humanitarian Innovation (GAHI), the UN Global Compact and the Connecting Business Initiative (CBI).