A report by the UN suggested the number of people in need of humanitarian aid jumped 50% to 235 million, resulting in the aid funding gap doubling to $24 billion in 2020.
WEF and GIB – which are both part of the Humanitarian and Resilience Investing Initiative – said the impact investment market jumped 43% to $715 billion by the end of 2019.
Nonetheless, a lack of reliable data has acted as a "critical barrier" to identifying and investing in high-impact projects. The pair of organisations called on the market to work together to standardise data in order to facilitate the "crucial role" the private sector could play in "plugging this funding gap through innovative financial models such as humanitarian and resilience investing".