Diaspora organizations provide tremendous added value to humanitarian assistance. Historically, diasporas are key contributors to their countries of origin or heritage through remittances and other financial or in-kind contributions, but their involvement in humanitarian efforts mean so much more.
How can we more effectively support communities affected by crises?
Local actors like diasporas are instrumental to humanitarian interventions and development. Diasporas are more than just remittance providers and are not new actors within the field of humanitarian response. They bring intellectual, political, social, economic, and cultural capital, and are often the first international actors to respond when a crisis occurs alongside national and local responders.
IOM, in partnership with Haiti Renewal Alliance, has developed a Framework for Diaspora Engagement in Humanitarian Assistance. The Framework is a suggested guide to support more streamlined coordination among diasporas and institutional humanitarian actors, to promote more effective humanitarian assistance to affected people and communities worldwide.
The Framework itself is made up of internal and external models for coordination, communication and collaboration, as well as a set of flow charts on diaspora engagement in preparedness & prevention and response & recovery.
- Explore the interactive Internal model
- Explore the interactive External Model
- Explore the Flow Charts
Operationalization of the Framework for Diaspora Engagement in Humanitarian Assistance is ongoing. The project, now in its third phase in partnership with the DEMAC initiative of the Danish Refugee Council, continues to consolidate and adapt the Framework for broader application to relevant crisis contexts. Thus far, the following nine organizations have fully endorsed the Framework while other endorsements are presently under review.
For more information or to get involved with the project, please contact diasporaforhumanity@iom.int. Follow the project on Twitter (@DiasporaEngaged) or sign up here for updates: https://diaspora.pub/3Bgb1TD.
The Framework for Diaspora Engagement in Humanitarian Assistance is funded by USAID's Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.
