Focus areas Parties to the agreement committed transparently and harmoniously sharing high-quality data on humanitarian funding within two years. The agreement indicated that the
International Aid Transparency Initiative data model was likely the best mechanism to record the data. They also commitment to increase spending on local organisations from 0.4% of the overall budget to 25% by 2020. In subsequent years, this effort became known as
Localisation. On
cash and voucher assistance, conflicting statements were made simultaneously mentioning the benefits of giving people with humanitarian needs cash, but without setting any specific targets, and also calling for more research into benefits and risks. Parties agreed to reduce duplication and management costs; to harmonise the templates for grant agreements between government donors and humanitarian agencies. There was agreement for unification of assessments of unmet humanitarian needs, although that element was criticised by
ACAPS for not addressing the necessary changes they called for. A commitment was made to better include the perspectives of the people in communities affected by humanitarian crisis. Parties committed to multi-year funding; to provide aid agencies with agreements to fund their activities for multiple years at a time, rather than requiring annual requests for funding. Parties committed to put more funding into emergency funds, such as the
Central Emergency Relief Fund, in order to increase flexibility of how funds can be used in emergencies. Government donors agreed to harmonise the reporting requirements they put on humanitarian agencies by 2018, and reduce the reporting volume. There was agreement to improve collaboration and coordination between groups working on prevention of humanitarian crisis, those working on mitigating the effects of crisis and those responding to emergencies. In total, the Grand Bargain included 51 specific commitments each grouped under the aforementioned themes. In 2021, a strategic shift was made as the Grand Bargain and its signatories adopted a narrower set of objectives and related adjustments to structures and ways of working to ensure a higher political engagement. This transition was driven both by what had been achieved to date in the various thematic areas of the original Grand Bargain framework from 2016. As part of the 2023-2026 Grand Bargain iteration, two focus areas have been decided among the Signatories:
• Focus Area 1: Continued support to localisation, participation of affected communities, and quality funding.
• Focus Area 2: Catalysing sector wide transformation through the Grand Bargain.
• Cross-cutting issues -Gender -Risk Sharing
Commitments The Grand Bargain sets out 51 commitments, distilled into 10 thematic workstreams:
• Workstream 1: Greater Transparency
• Workstream 2: More support and funding tools for local and national responders
• Workstream 3: Increase the use and coordination of cash-based programming
• Workstream 4: Reduce duplication and management costs with periodic functional reviews
• Workstream 5: Improve joint and impartial needs assessment
• Workstream 6: Participation Revolution: include people receiving aid in making the decisions which affect their lives
• Workstream 7&8: Increase collaborative humanitarian multi-year planning and funding & reduce earmarking of donor contribution
• Workstream 9: Harmonise and simplify reporting requirements
• Workstream 10: Humanitarian-development nexus In addition to improving the humanitarian system, the commitments were expected to save US$1 billion per year. Each of the ten focus areas has two co-conveners, a government donor and a humanitarian aid agency who report into a facilitation group that coordinates the work between the ten focus areas. ==Political leadership==