This is a critical year to ensure UN80 and the Humanitarian Reset translates into results on the ground for people in the most severe need.
A central component of the vision defined in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s Humanitarian Reset Roadmap is a humanitarian system that is locally led and globally supported. Devolving power is at its heart, but more focus is required to identify and agree how international agencies need to work differently in their own programming to deliver this vision. The changes proposed to coordination, strengthening Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators and increasing pooled funding are positive but even if fully implemented may not deliver the local leadership nor the effectiveness and cost efficiency that the system requires.
This Wilton Park dialogue considers the implications of ‘as local as possible’ for the UN footprint and for the specific role of UN agencies with respect to their normative function and protective role, coordination function, procurement role, as intermediaries and delivery partners. It aims to unpack what a more streamlined, prioritised and efficient UN system at country level, stepping up on leadership, stepping back on service delivery looks like in practice.
It will bring together up to 45 selected Member States, UN, national and local actors, with the aim of:
- agreeing collective recommendations on the shifts required to move the humanitarian system to be as local as possible, including the development of common principles on UN agencies’ operational roles and responsibilities in humanitarian contexts;
- building commitment around empowered Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators who are well selected, supported and held accountable.
It builds on discussions at the UK co-hosted Global Partnerships Conference in May and aims to advance these issues further ahead of UNGA High-Level Week in September 2026.
In partnership with
