The Humanitarian Forum had participated actively in the Summit. We have organised two side events, and were invited as key speakers in many other special sessions and other events.

As part of the Summit process, we have facilitated 39 preparatory consultations meetings with 1,940 participants representing 1,324 humanitarian organisations. Each of our national and regional consultations used as its base, the four themes of the UN World Humanitarian Summit: humanitarian effectiveness; reducing vulnerability and managing risk; transformation through innovation; serving the needs of people in conflict. The opportunity to work on the World Humanitarian Summit process gave us the chance to put key recommendations for improving the international humanitarian system in the run up to the summit in Istanbul in 2016. We put these recommendations in a ‘Thematic Report’ that we have shared with the Summit secretariat.

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THF had also issued a ‘Statement’ of our most urgent recommendations and it was endorsed by more than 64 organisations from across the world. The statement called for an urgent call to reshape the aid system and to focus on saving lives and ending suffering, as the main goal of the humanitarian work.

THF organised “Humanitarian NGOs Role in Re-shaping Aid” meeting in Istanbul in the first week of December. The meeting was attended by over 70 organisations. The purpose of the meeting was to encourage humanitarian actors and government representatives to take into consideration the perspectives of aid workers and organizations who work tirelessly at national and local levels. The meeting also made a space available for sharing of expertise between key humanitarian partners who are able to address specific aspects of the consultation.