They gathered from all over the world for European Humanitarian Forum 2024 to debate and discuss issues affecting the entire global population, one third of whom are starving.
The enormous conference hall in the Belgian capital Brussels was packed to overflowing and the multitude of debates left no doubt that not enough can be done to solve the problems caused by war, conflicts and natural disasters.
The European Humanitarian Forum co-organised by the European Commission and the Belgian Presidency of the EU ended with a pledge of €7.7 billion in 2024 for global crises.
In most of the 35 panel discussions held over two days the message was direct and detailed, from aid organisations reporting hundreds of billions of shortfall in donation pledges, deaths of civilians including women and children right around the world as well as enormous numbers of deaths and injury to aid volunteers.
As one African delegate stated: “one third of the world’s population is starving.“
A repeated complain in the panel discussions was that donation pledges are not being upheld.
Across the debating panels references to the ‘waning interest of the media’ were recurrent.
Delegates commented that the public are not properly informed about the situation in Ukraine because corporate interests that fund newspapers and media outlets take the view that coverage will not help their commercial funding.
But There Is Some Good News..
European Humanitarian Forum 2024 Prize Winners
Three organisations won large financial donations for their work on innovation projects to help aid reach those who need it. The European Prize for Humanitarian Innovation.
The first prize of €250,000 went to a German organisation, the Rescue Committee [IRC], the second amounting to €150,000 was awarded to a Netherlands based organisation, GOAL 3 B.V.
And the third price of €100,000 went to the Humanitarian Logistics Cooperative based in France.
The competition aims to provide incentives for organisations to help speed-up communication and other technologies to overcome delays and general problems preventing aid reaching those in need.
Collaboration is the key.
“We hope this will breakdown doors and obliterate information barriers around the world. We hope the visibility of this will open doors.”
Second prize went to CEO Nick Versteede of Goal 3 B>V of the Netherlands and last, but as the organisers said ‘not least’, the third prize went to CEO Jean Baptiste Lamarche of Humanitarian Logistics Cooperative of France.
