Launch of the Belgian Humanitarian Strategy

On 28 January 2026, Vincent Coppens and Hannah Vaughan-Lee from ADE attended the launch of the Belgian Humanitarian Strategy at the Egmont Palace in Brussels. The event brought together leaders from the humanitarian sector to discuss key issues such as community protection, localisation, and the importance of international humanitarian law in today’s complex world.

At ADE, we had the opportunity to conduct the evaluation of the previous Belgian humanitarian strategy (2014–2021), commissioned by the Special Evaluation Office. It provided key insights to improve the effectiveness of Belgium’s humanitarian efforts. It’s exciting to see how the lessons from the evaluation and recommendations have been integrated into Belgium’s new humanitarian strategy.

Here are a few examples of how the new strategy incorporated learning and responded to recommendations :

• Focus on localisation
  The new strategy recognises the criticality of local actors at the heart of humanitarian response. In renewing and deepening the commitment to localisation, Belgium is working to increase funding to local organizations and support partners to build equitable and meaningful collaboration with national and local actors.
• Nexus
  Recognising the importance of addressing root causes and reducing humanitarian needs and the corresponding need to work across the humanitarian, development and peace domains, Belgium is looking at how to practically implement the principles of a Nexus approach so that both short-term and long-term needs of affected populations are addressed.
• Commitment to flexible funding
  In response to our recommendation to adapt funding mechanisms to better support flexible and/or multi-year funding, the new strategy reflects Belgium’s emphasis on quality funding, giving priority to core funding and global, thematic and national humanitarian funds.

Speakers at the Strategy’s launch repeatedly highlighted both the increasing needs, access challenges and complexities presented by today’s humanitarian crises and applauded Belgium’s strategic vision grounded in both a principle and ethical approach and people-centred humanitarian action.

The new strategy demonstrates a genuine commitment to improving the effectiveness of Belgium’s humanitarian aid, and we’re pleased to see that our evaluation work has contributed to shaping this new approach that is better suited to current needs.

We look forward to seeing this strategy put into action and to following its real-world impact in crisis areas!