Earthquakes, hurricanes, disease outbreaks, conflicts, droughts, floods, tsunamis. Unfortunately, there are many humanitarian disasters that occur around the world every year.  

The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) brings together 15 leading UK aid charities to respond to major disasters, launching appeals with our network of national media and corporate partners to provide a trusted way for the UK public to help. Our appeals raise millions of pounds for people in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.

The DEC has launched 77 appeals covering 60 countries over the last 60 years, but there are many disasters that our member charities respond to that we don’t launch joint national fundraising appeals for.  

So how do we decide when to launch an appeal?  

We only launch when we know that we can make a difference and add value to the work already being done by our member charities. Our three criteria for launching an appeal help ensure that the DEC launches the right appeals at the right time. 

The three criteria:

The DEC has three criteria which must be met before we start the process of launching a nationwide fundraising appeal. The severity of the crisis, our member charities’ ability to deliver aid and the level of public awareness are all key factors that are considered.  

Some disasters such as earthquakes happen suddenly, and it is quickly clear that the criteria are met. In other cases such as drought, the disaster unfolds over time and it is more difficult to assess if and when all the criteria are met.  

The three criteria that must be met to launch an appeal are as follows: 

1. The disaster must be on such a scale and of such urgency as to call for swift international humanitarian assistance. 

DEC appeals are initiated to provide humanitarian assistance during some of the world’s worst disasters. We know that local responders will be the first ones on the ground providing support, but when dealing with the most severe crises, where communities are overwhelmed and are unable recover without large scale external assistance, they will need help from aid agencies to meet the needs of everyone affected. Often in these cases, governments of affected countries will issue a request for international assistance.  

Because every disaster is unique and takes place in a different context, there is no set number of people affected that must be reached in order to meet this criteria, but the numbers are often in the millions.  

For example, after the 2023 earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria, 18 million people were left in need of humanitarian assistance. The floods that affected huge areas of Pakistan in 2022 affected one in seven Pakistanis – an estimated 20 million people. The DEC went on to launch appeals for both disasters.

If a disaster is limited to a small or sparsely populated area and has not caused humanitarian need on a large scale, some DEC member charities may respond, alongside other organisations, without a joint appeal being launched. Similarly if the local authorities can meet most of the need alongside aid agencies, there may not be the need for a joint appeal. 

2. The DEC’s member charities, or some of them, must be in a position to provide effective and swift humanitarian assistance at a scale to justify a national appeal. 

Funds raised by the DEC are allocated to our 15 member charities. They work both directly and through local, national and other partners to deliver humanitarian aid. If we are going to ask the UK public for money, we need to know that enough of the member charities are in a position to use funds to scale up their existing work or quickly set up operations to deliver aid to communities effectively.

As a middle-income country not prone to natural disasters, not many of the DEC’s member charities have ongoing programmes in Morocco. As a result, when a major earthquake struck the country in September 2023, only a limited number of members were in a position to respond immediately, meaning that this criterion was not met.

In other cases where there are high levels of need that are expected to continue for some time, member charities will rapidly scale up their work both directly and through local partners, as they did in Ukraine and neighbouring countries in the wake of the escalation of the conflict there in 2022.

Unfortunately, there are also situations where restrictions imposed on our member charities by governments or armed groups prevent them from being able to deliver humanitarian assistance at a scale to justify a national appeal. 

3. There must be reasonable grounds for concluding that a public appeal would be successful, either because of evidence of existing public sympathy for the humanitarian situation or because there is a compelling case indicating the likelihood of significant public support should an appeal be launched. 

We need to assess whether launching an appeal is likely to succeed in raising significant funds to enable our member charities to help people affected. There are significant costs involved in launching an appeal, both for the DEC and for our partners and we need to make sure we will raise enough to be able to provide significant support to people affected by the crisis.

The UK public are extraordinarily generous in supporting DEC appeals. When they are aware of humanitarian crisis, the evidence and experience is that they will respond. So we track media coverage of a crisis to gauge the level of awareness among the UK public.  

Because of the way we launch appeals, we usually have one chance to raise the most money possible, so timing must be chosen carefully. This criterion helps make sure that we not only launch the right appeals to maximise the funds available to our member charities, but launch at the right time as well. 

A reality is that many crises with great levels of need may meet the first two criteria, but not the third. However, many of our member charities will be raising money for these crises that haven’t gained widespread national attention and we provide links to their individual appeals to help them raise as much as they can. We are also constantly monitoring crises around the world, and provide information and updates via our website monitoring page.

Taken together these criteria ensure the DEC can raise incredible amounts of money thanks to the generosity and empathy of the British public, helping support those who need it most. For example, in the two years after its launch, the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal raised over £420 million, enabling our member charities and their local partners to reach an estimated 6.9 million people affected by the conflict, and that number continues to rise.  

Guided by these criteria, we are confident in launching the right appeals at the right time, and maximising the money raised for people affected by some of the world’s worst disasters.