The humanitarian system cannot keep planning as if volunteers do not exist.
That sounds absurd. Yet it is exactly what we do.
Every major crisis tells the same story. Volunteers are the first to respond. They keep services running when roads are cut off, institutions collapse or conflict blocks access. They are often the last people still standing when international organizations are forced to leave. But they remain largely invisible in humanitarian plans, budgets, coordination mechanisms and safeguarding arrangements.
This is not a minor oversight. It is a warning that the humanitarian system is out of step with how humanitarian action actually happens.
The United Nations’ Humanitarian Reset — a reform plan for relevant organizations — starts from a similar premise. It recognizes that today’s humanitarian system must become leaner, more locally led and more accountable amid growing needs and shrinking resources. That ambition is welcome. Yet it might remain incomplete if it continues to overlook one of the system’s greatest strengths: The volunteers who make humanitarian action possible every day.
The recent UN Volunteers report , Volunteerism in Humanitarian Action, delivers an uncomfortable finding. Humanitarian responses consistently rely on volunteers while planning, financing and safeguarding as if volunteer-based delivery barely exists.
That is not an implementation gap. It is a design flaw.
Nowhere is this clearer than in today’s crises.
In Sudan, neighborhood-based Emergency Response Rooms, rooted in the longstanding tradition of nafeer , or a call to rally communities, emerged as the humanitarian system in many communities. Volunteers organized evacuations, ran community kitchens, delivered health services, provided psychosocial support and coordinated protection when formal institutions and international players could not reach people. Their legitimacy came from trust, proximity and accountability to their neighbors, not from organizational status. Yet these same volunteer networks remained largely outside formal financing and decision-making.
In Haiti, konbit — the deeply rooted tradition of collective mutual support — has enabled communities to sustain assistance where institutions are absent or overwhelmed. Again, these volunteer systems are not substitutes for humanitarian response. They are humanitarian response.
Crises do not create volunteerism. They reveal the existing social infrastructure.
This reality matters because the humanitarian system still tends to treat volunteerism as something mobilized during emergencies rather than recognizing it as a permanent source of resilience embedded in communities long before disaster strikes.
It also exposes an uncomfortable truth about localization.
For nearly a decade, humanitarian leaders have committed themselves to shifting power closer to people affected by crisis or catastrophes. Too often, however, localization has meant transferring responsibility without transferring power, resources or protection.
Sudan illustrates this situation starkly. Communities assumed enormous operational responsibility — and personal risk –without gaining equivalent influence over funding or strategy.
Ukraine tells a similar story. Volunteer and municipal networks have sustained evacuations, logistics, shelter support and essential services throughout the war, often adapting faster than international systems. But much of this capacity still operates alongside, rather than within, humanitarian planning and financing structures.
The people closest to the crisis increasingly carry the greatest burden while remaining furthest from the decisions that shape the response.
The Humanitarian Reset rightly calls for decision-making to move closer to crisis-affected communities. But that ambition cannot be realized if the people and volunteer networks delivering much of the response remain largely invisible within the system itself.
Humanitarian systems understandably prioritize organizations that are registered, compliant and easily fit into coordination structures. Yet communities often trust people before they trust institutions.
That is why volunteer networks continue to sustain access in places such as Sudan, Haiti and Palestine. Their legitimacy comes from relationships built over years. They know who is most vulnerable. They understand local dynamics. They can continue working where outsiders cannot.
If the Humanitarian Reset is serious about rebuilding trust and legitimacy, this is exactly the kind of locally rooted capacity it should recognize and strengthen.
The evidence also points to another imbalance. Across humanitarian response plans reviewed in the UN Volunteers study, volunteers appear most often as collectors of information — supporting community feedback, referrals and accountability to affected populations. The system readily recognizes volunteers when it needs information from communities.
It is far less willing to recognize them as part of the humanitarian workforce that requires training, supervision, insurance, safeguarding, psychosocial support and duty of care.
Recognition without protection is not recognition at all.
The encouraging news is that we know what works.
Current responses to Ebola outbreaks and treatment showed that investing in volunteers before crises happen pays off. Community volunteers were progressively integrated into national health systems with defined roles, training, supervision, protective equipment and clear accountability. Bangladesh has similarly embedded volunteers in its national disaster preparedness systems, with established activation mechanisms, safeguarding standards and government-endorsed guidance.
Preparedness, not improvisation, is what turns volunteer commitment into humanitarian capacity.
This is precisely where the Humanitarian Reset offers an opportunity.
Recognizing volunteers is not about creating another layer of humanitarian bureaucracy or formalizing every act of civic solidarity. It is about acknowledging how humanitarian action is already delivered and taking responsibility for it. Governments should integrate volunteer engagement into national preparedness and disaster management systems. Donors should ensure humanitarian financing can support volunteer-enabled delivery, including training, safeguarding and duty of care where volunteers are central to the response.
UN agencies and humanitarian partners should make volunteer roles explicit in humanitarian response plans, coordination structures and workforce planning, rather than allowing them to disappear behind phrases such as “community outreach” or “local mechanisms.”
The Humanitarian Reset calls on us to rethink how humanitarian action is organized. Recognizing volunteerism is one of the most practical ways to make that ambition real.
As we mark World Humanitarian Day, recognized on Aug. 19, during the International Volunteer Year 2026, we should certainly celebrate volunteers.
But celebration is not enough. The humanitarian system should start planning as if volunteers do exist.
Toily Kurbanov is the executive coordinator of the United Nations Volunteers, based in Bonn, Germany.
We would love your thoughts. Please comment:
Very important findings. Its volunteers who are first on the scene, they never leave, yet get the least amount of support from the system. How will the recommendations be operationalized?
We recently had the wonderful opportunity to interview Mr. Kurbanov for AFICS/NY’s Summer Bulletin. The points he makes here are extremely valuable. An exciting innovation UNV has started is the invitation for retired staff to consider working as volunteers. It is extremely overdue validation that retiring in your 60’s does not mean you have no more to offer the international community. And for so many who have seen the humanitarian and aid system being gutted, this should never be forgotten – volunteers will keep this work alive.
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