Helping the Mediterranean – why we need to listen to those on the ground

The Greater Mediterranean region, both on land and at sea, is increasingly threatened by the impacts of climate warming, invasive species, erosion of cultural heritage, unsustainable tourism and other challenges, including humanitarian response. There are solutions, but as Nick van Praag, founder of the Vienna-based NGO Ground Truth Solutions stresses, we need to listen to ordinary people to ensure that their views drive the decisions that affect their lives.

In early May I spoke at an event in Monaco to launch the WIKI Centennial Expedition/Help Save the Med, an initiative to empower school kids and young adults to use media and storytelling to safeguard the greater Mediterranean region. (See Global Geneva article). My remarks, on which I expand in this post, picked up on the humanitarian dimension.

The focus on the 1.5 million people who have crossed the Mediterranean over the past decade, however tragic and politically challenging, should not deflect attention from the much larger numbers of people displaced in its hinterlands, some 45 million in Africa and 24 million spread across the Middle East and West Asia.

Time to get real: Humanitarian response must be up to the job

The March, a prophetic BBC drama made in 1990, told the story of a huge column of African migrants heading towards Europe. "We want what you've got," the group's leader tells the negotiator dispatched by the European Commission.

"We want what you've got!" = From the BBC film 'The March'

BBC

With conflict, insecurity, and poverty, exacerbated by the multiple vicissitudes of climate change, affecting so many places and people, the development and humanitarian response must be up to the job. This means addressing the many causes of displacement and offering people affected by them a minimum of opportunity and security, so they don't feel their best choice is to set off in search of opportunities elsewhere.

Right now, the international community is not well placed to meet these multiplying challenges. Aid budgets have been slashed, not just in the USA, where the bilateral aid agency is shut down, but in other traditional donor countries, from Canada and Europe to Japan and Australia. This is partly the result of the diversion of funds to military spending as threats grow, especially from Russia. Then there are the wars in the Middle East, the Gulf and Ukraine that suck attention from chronic crises elsewhere.

One necessary condition for achieving even a minimum of success in addressing these overlapping challenges is to reimagine humanitarian action. This is the topic - viewed through the eyes of people hit by crisis - of the Global Report published by Ground Truth Solutions in April 2026.

Refugee numbers 2025 (Jan - Sept)

Ground Truth Solutions

Circling of the wagons instead of dealing with priorities

My reading of that report suggests three priorities. First, we must recognise that the current setup hasn't delivered for those it is supposed to serve. A decade and a half of feedback data collected by Ground Truth Solutions (GTS) provides compelling evidence of where things have fallen short.

As the latest GTS report underlines, if aid is misaligned with people's top priorities, it often misses the most vulnerable people, doesn't adequately support communities' own initiatives to build better futures, and doesn't work in effective partnership with local civil society.

Rather than using such evidence as the starting point for change, there is a circling of the wagons with the very organisations that are the pillars of the existing system - UNOCHA, UNICEF, WFP and UNHCR - charged with its reform. No surprise that their instinct for survival influences their deliberations and recommendations.

Some months into the reset exercise, the thrust of their collective thinking seems to be to do less of the same. The 2026 Global Humanitarian Overview, a planning document compiled by OCHA, slashes the number of people seen as a priority to just 87 million out of 239 million identified as in need. While arbitrarily shrinking the target group, OCHA also proposes narrowing the focus to "life-saving aid", like food and basic shelter, rather than the longer-term solutions that most displaced people see as priorities as they seek to escape aid dependency.

Main migration routes from Africa

Ground Truth Solutions

More and different aid

The answer cannot be less of the same, but more and different. So, the second priority is to root humanitarian action in the capacity and experience of communities and people hit by crisis rather than the prescriptions of cash-strapped international organisations trapped in past models of humanitarian action. Communities are, and always have been. the first responders in times of crisis. It is time to recognise the key role they play, build on their local knowledge and, yes, harness their desperation as a force for positive change in their lives.

Communities have shown their mettle, organising themselves, pooling their scarce resources, and looking out for one another. What they have not acquired is any real influence over decisions to allocate resources or to design and run programmes. This mismatch must change before the big agencies, which dominate the sector, decide that the way forward closely resembles the way things were before.

Recognising the need for radical change in the distribution of power and asserting the primacy of communities in future arrangements does not mean that the established players should leave the stage. So, the third priority is to apply to the humanitarian space a variation on the EU's principle of subsidiarity, which holds that decisions should be taken at the most local level possible, with international intervention only justified when action is better managed at that level.

MSF humanitarian operation in the Mediterranean

MSF

Responding to what one does best, not to tick boxes

The international players should stick to doing things communities can't do, or can't do as well as they can. This includes mobilising and transferring resources from donor governments and passing them through to the local level. In doing so, they need to wean themselves of the ingrained habit of taking a large slice of the funds - often more than 30 per cent - they channel downstream to operational players.

They will also need to encourage donors to set aside concerns about the risks they now associate with funding local organisations. These fears fly in the face of the many risks donors accept in backing an underperforming system, albeit one run by members of an established club who give donors a sometimes-unjustified sense of fiduciary responsibility.

More attention to norms and principles

International organisations will also need to do better on some of their core responsibilities, notably promoting and monitoring respect for the norms and principles of humanitarian action. They also have a role to play in sharing experience across the humanitarian space. This includes galvanising action at the international level to support local efforts to deal with sudden-onset emergencies. Crucial too will be to finally bridge the gap between humanitarian action and the development sector, whose long-term finance and focus on resilience are exactly what people hit by humanitarian crises see as priorities.

With operational responsibilities largely delegated to local organisations, UN agencies or international NGOs, will need to consider merging with one another or in some instances closing shop. Savings on staff and administration will free up resources for rising humanitarian needs in the face of depleted aid budgets.

Acting on these priorities will require a complicated transition that in turn will demand careful management. The promise, though, is a system better able to deal with the humanitarian and development challenges facing not just the greater Mediterranean, but other regions grappling with crises that make the lives of their people miserable and create ripple effects that roil politics the world over.

Nick van Praag chairs the board of Ground Truth Solutions. His career spans the UNHCR, The World Bank and the European Commission.