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By Harpinder Collacott, Director of Innovations & Partnerships at the Atlantic Institute
Recently, I had the privilege of spending time in two separate convenings with thinkers, practitioners, donors, consultants, academics and friends - all grappling with a big question: how does the 80-year multilateral experiment reinvent itself for a very different world?
The question is no longer just “How much money is available?” but whether the entire architecture of humanitarian finance is still fit for purpose.
From Bretton Woods to today, the architecture of global cooperation has delivered extraordinary progress. But it was designed for a post-war era, not one defined by climate volatility, protracted displacement, fiscal strain, geopolitical fragmentation and compounding crises.
Every year the Humanitarian Finance Summit offers space for leaders across public, private and philanthropic sectors to reimagine funding models for humanitarian action. After decades working across development, investment and humanitarian systems, I’ve sat in many rooms discussing funding gaps. But our gathering in London at the end of February felt different. There was an honesty, perhaps even an unease, about the fact that the old models of humanitarian financing need to change radically to keep pace with the scale, duration and complexity of today’s crises.
The existing financial mechanisms were built for a different era. One in which we could rely on predictable donor financing, annual appeals and responses to short-term crises. In today’s world, we face protracted displacement, climate volatility, overlapping shocks and geopolitical fragmentation. The question is no longer just “How much money is available?” but whether the entire architecture of humanitarian finance is still fit for purpose.
What stayed with me most from the Humanitarian Finance Summit 2026 were how often the conversations returned to systems, power and risk, not just dollars and cents. As traditional forms of government funding for humanitarian action continues to tighten and governmental priorities change, it becomes increasingly urgent to unlock alternative sources of capital. Managed risk capital and blended finance are no longer just options on the table. Their feasibility feels almost existential.
But here’s another uncomfortable truth: this is not solely a liquidity problem but a structural one. The international humanitarian financing architecture is flawed.
Panel after panel highlighted:
- A growing shortfall in predictable, long-term financing.
- The complete mismatch between the amounts of risk involved and where capital could be found to address situations in fragile contexts.
- The incentives that currently channel funding toward the low-risk, low-impact environments rather than the hardest-hit communities in greater need.
No amount of incremental tinkering will solve these systemic problems. Without wholesale reform, we risk redesigning the plumbing while ignoring the cracks in the foundations.
Coming away from the summit, the most powerful takeaway was a call for how humanitarian financing operates isn’t about change for change’s sake. It is about creating a more just world for the most vulnerable people and communities, greater accountability to the donors for the risks and how we spend funding and alignment, so we link humanitarian finance to broader capital markets. We need to shift from a paradigm of aid to one of investment in resilience and dignity.
That shift requires courage from donors, investors and multilaterals alike, as well as from those of us working in the humanitarian sector. It will mean rethinking risk-sharing and elevating local leadership. We will need to source capital that is not about returns over the short term.
While the challenge is urgent, the discussions about the need for change opened new possibilities. We need to move fast because the funding gap is not abstract: the reality is that many more vulnerable communities are not receiving the support they need.
The tools and innovative frameworks that would allow those of us working in the humanitarian sector to do a better job already exist, we need to move from talking about emerging concepts to mainstream deployment.
The summit reinforced a mandate: to rethink, rebuild and redirect financial flows to match the scale and character of humanitarian crises in today’s world.
The question is whether we are prepared to move from discussion to structural change.
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