Following an official request from the UN Secretary General, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is moving ahead with plans for a World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May 2016. The objective of the event – which will be the first-ever humanitarian summit of this scale and scope – is to set a future agenda for humanitarian action to ensure improved responsiveness to the changing humanitarian landscape in terms of greater needs, more diverse actors, new technologies, and political and economic shifts.
Through this initiative, PHAP members and their broader professional networks are provided an effective channel for meaningful participation in a process that promises to significantly improve how humanitarian action is carried out. Summit discussions are intended to reach outside of the groups that are normally consulted, in the hope that the outcomes of the process will be more relevant and have a firmer grounding in the humanitarian community. In this way, working on the Summit process is an important opportunity for PHAP to pursue its mission to “enhance the capacity of the global humanitarian community to respond effectively and professionally to current and future crises.”