A number of trends will shape the humanitarian sector through to 2030:

Populations are growing larger (especially in Sub-Saharan Africa), older, more urban, wealthier. Climate change will be threat multiplier – putting pressure on resources in already environmentally fragile parts of the world. Inequality in access to services, in wealth, in vulnerability and, across rural and urban divide is likely to continue worsening. Protracted state fragility will be concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.

It is in these countries that the least progress towards human development will be made. Humanitarian needs will continue to grow, crises will be increasingly politicized and rising protectionism will mean that states will prefer to respond without external assistance. The slow shift towards the global south with intensify within humanitarian organisations as resources, values, knowledge, and eventually power shift to developing countries.

New actors will continue to challenge traditional humanitarian principles and actors with their advocacy and their ways of working.

Find out more about each of these trends: