“Coordination” was the leitmotif of 2021. Recent crises – from the ones in Afghanistan, Ethiopia or Myanmar to the COVID-19 pandemic – have shown that while progress has been made to improve humanitarian coordination in the last decades, its effectiveness is still elusive. Throughout the year, we looked at different elements of humanitarian coordination, both through commissioned pieces of work and our independent research. Consistently, our work indicates that many of the challenges that stand in the way of effective coordination are systemic ones. 

While coordination was a recurring theme for HERE in 2021, it was not our only focus: our work this year spanned almost all our core areas of expertise – humanitarian principles, accountability, leadership and strategy, protection, forced displacement, and humanitarian architecture and coordination – allowing us to carry out a reality check on the relationship between policy and humanitarian practice. 

2021 was also the last year of implementation of HERE’s Strategy for 2019-2021, which was defined to consolidate achievements and build a stronger foundation. The work in line with this strategy has showed its effects: we are no longer a young start-up but are becoming an experienced and well-recognised institution.