Saving lives and alleviating suffering – Sida’s work on humanitarian aid
(RiR 2025:33)
Summary
The Swedish National Audit Office has examined the effectiveness of the work of the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) on humanitarian aid, which is the part of international aid allocated to acute crises and disasters. Sweden is one of the world’s largest humanitarian donors and Swedish humanitarian aid amounted to SEK 9.6 billion in 2024, which is a significant part of Sweden’s total international aid. Sida manages the majority of that humanitarian aid and disburses it to selected partners, which engage in humanitarian operations in crises around the world.
This audit shows that Sida could simplify its processes for selecting partners and distributing funds for humanitarian assistance. It also shows that Sida’s decision-making is not always sufficiently clear and transparent. The Swedish National Audit Office notes that, in its allocation of humanitarian aid, Sida focuses on the most urgent humanitarian needs. At the same time, the extent to which Sida’s monitoring and assessment of partners and interventions affects allocation is unclear. The Swedish National Audit Office also notes that Sida’s monitoring of humanitarian interventions is not sufficiently systematic and that Sida could make greater use of available resources.
Sida could simplify its processes for selecting strategic partners and allocating humanitarian aid
Sida’s process for selecting strategic humanitarian partners is extensive and takes a lot of time and resources for both Sida and applicant organisations. This process is followed by further procedures – often several times per year, when Sida is to disburse humanitarian aid among partners. According to the Swedish National Audit Office, it is possible to simplify these processes and still be able to make informed decisions.
Sida’s decision-making is not always sufficiently clear and transparent
The Swedish National Audit Office notes that Sida’s decision-making related to its selection of strategic humanitarian partners and allocation of humanitarian aid is not always sufficiently clear and transparent. Many of the decisions have benefited or disadvantaged organisations. The Swedish National Audit Office assessment is that Sida should have followed administrative law principles of clarity and transparency in decisions by public authorities, which it has not always done.
Focus on the greatest needs, but difficult to see how monitoring and assessment affect allocation
Sida focuses on selecting partners and interventions that can meet the most urgent humanitarian needs in the world, which is a key principle of humanitarian aid. At the same time, the extent to which Sida’s monitoring and assessment of partners affects its allocation of humanitarian aid is difficult to gauge. For example, it is difficult to track how past results and lessons learned, as well as Sida’s assessment of partners’ budgets and financial outcomes, affect allocation of new funds to its partners.
Monitoring not sufficiently systematic
The Swedish National Audit Office notes that Sida’s monitoring of humanitarian aid is not sufficiently systematic. It is often difficult to see a common thread between Sida’s risk assessments, dialogue issues and follow-up plans, and the monitoring it performs. This impedes learning from past efforts and adjusting operations accordingly.
Sida could better harness internal resources
Sida monitors operations in numerous ways. Monitoring is impeded because many of the interventions are implemented in locations to which travel is difficult and costly, often with a challenging security situation. Having humanitarian staff posted at embassies facilitates and improves monitoring. The Swedish National Audit Office notes that there are challenges in the allocation of Sida’s staff resources at embassies and that Sida should be able to coordinate better internally to improve efficiency.
The Swedish National Audit Office’s recommendations
The Swedish National Audit Office’s recommendations to the Swedish International Development Agency are presented below.
- Make the process of selecting strategic partners in humanitarian aid more coherent in order to avoid an overly protracted process of overlapping assessments.
- Simplify the processes for allocating humanitarian aid. Consider, for example, increasing the proportion of multi-annual interventions and simplifying requirements concerning partner applications.
- Ensure that positions taken by Sida in its selection of partners and in its allocation of humanitarian aid are clear, and that the decisions taken follow the principles of administrative law.
- Clarify how information from Sida’s monitoring and its assessment of partners and interventions are taken into account in the allocation of humanitarian aid.
- Use a systematic approach to monitor each partner, and prepare supporting information to enable prioritising among various monitoring needs in the humanitarian assistance as a whole, based on risk and materiality.
- Take better advantage of the work of other departments within Sida regarding the same partners and countries.
- Review whether allocation of Sida’s staff resources at embassies is appropriate.