The World Humanitarian Summit set out to coordinate an international relief effort by asking attendees to commit to specific action on issues from education to emergency response. Some participants were optimistic about the outcome, but there was also skepticism from aid agencies and humanitarian observers.

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The World Humanitarian Summit ended yesterday evening — and though it may come as a surprise to many, much of the discussion in Istanbul focused squarely on the Sustainable Development Goals – the set of 17 anti-poverty goals established at the United Nations Summit last September.

Of the many aims of the World Humanitarian Summit, one at the top of the list is reshaping the way aid is funded and delivered. A two-way approach – targeting both donors and service providers – is called the Grand Bargain, and it is driving much of the discussion here in Istanbul.

The international community meets next week in Istanbul for the first ever World Humanitarian Summit. Over the course of two days, key issues such as humanitarian financing and the global refugee crisis will be discussed as governments, aid agencies and the private sector try to develop a new way forward in addressing humanitarian needs.

It is clear that the status quo on humanitarian funding is no longer feasible. While gaps in what was needed have always existed, the current “megacrises” have created a system where what is lacking almost matches what is being given. 

A sliver of good news came out of Syria yesterday with the announcement that the Syrian government would allow aid into the besieged city of Madaya. Located on the border with Lebanon, reports of starvation emerged earlier this week, highlighting once again the dire situation facing many inside Syria. However hundreds of thousands of others remain out of reach of aid agencies, lacking basic means of survival in a war where starvation has become a weapon wielded by all sides.

One of the exciting things about the opening of the UN General Assembly in the wide variety of politicians, activists and civil society organizations it brings to New York every year. This year, one of those activists was Graça Machel, an international activist for women and children rights as well as the former first lady of Mozambique and South Africa. In a briefing following her appearance at the Social Good Summit, she talked about the launch of the SDGs and the challenges that lay ahead.

With more refugees in the world today than any point since the Second World War and as Western governments like Canada slash spending on foreign aid, aid agencies are increasingly looking for help from an unlikely quarter: the corporate sector.

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As the international community races to address the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, there is another group pitching in to help - the African diaspora. 

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It is difficult to understate the humanitarian toll the Syrian conflict has taken, not just on the 22 million Syrians that once called the country home but on the region as a whole. These numbers represent millions of individuals and families desperately fighting to survive as well as a massive burden on neighboring countries as they struggle to absorb and care for new arrivals in addition to their own people. Yet despite being the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, aid funding for this disaster consistently comes up short despite demand.