There are 901 occurrences of Grand Bargain in the HE Corpus. The acronym GB was also found to be used for Grand Bargain. However, it can also be used to refer to many other concepts. For this reason, occurrences of this acronym were excluded for the purposes of this linguistic analysis.

The Grand Bargain is a specific concept and therefore appears to be written in capital letters. A selection of 18 rich definitional contexts for Grand Bargain were extracted from the HE Corpus.

What is the Grand Bargain?

The Grand Bargain is mostly described as an agreement, with one context specifying voluntary agreement. Three other more detailed descriptions were found:

• a set of proposed reforms to humanitarians

• a catalyst for institutional and system-wide change; and

• a show of high-level political commitment by signatories.

What are the origins of the Grand Bargain?

Multiple statements were found to include information about the origins and the general notional nature of the Grand Bargain. The following assertions are based on definitional contexts extracted.

The Grand Bargain...

• was launched at the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit;

• originated from one of the key recommendations of the report of the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing;

• is primarily focused on protracted crisis;

• is meant to address most of the gaps in humanitarian response; and

• is predicated on a 'quid pro quo' arrangement in which signatories would deliver on a set of actions with the goal of making the humanitarian system more efficient and effective.

Increased its signatories since its inception

What are the overall goals of the Grand Bargain?

Contextual analysis has revealed multiple general goals of the Grand Bargain. The notions of effectivity and efficiency are very frequent in definitional contexts, but there are other less frequent yet meaningful goals stated across the HE Corpus. The Grand Bargain goals include:

• to make aid delivery more efficient by getting donors to give more;

• to make aid organisations more transparent and cost-conscious;

• to harmonise donor reporting;

• to change the humanitarian system to enable more locally-led response;

• to overcome silo approaches between humanitarian and development assistance;

• to deliver an extra billion dollars over 5 years for people in need of humanitarian aid.

What are the components of the Grand Bargain?

A context from a 2018 document states that the Grand Bargain contains 51 voluntary commitments, which are made under 10 workstreams. The following context provides a good summary of the elements that constitute the Grand Bargain:

Other more components and concrete targets include:

• to channel 25% of financing to national and local responders as directly as possible by 2020;

• to promote more cash-based assistance;

• to reduce earmarking of donor contributions with a target of 30% of unearmarked or softly earmarked humanitarian contributions by 2020;

• to publish timely, transparent, harmonised and open high-quality data on humanitarian funding by mid-2018, using IATI as the basis of a common standard;

• to develop a "localisation marker" to track funding flows;

• to ensure "impartial, unbiased, comprehensive, context specific, timely and up-to-date" needs assessments that provide a "sound evidence base" for response;

• to increase multi-year planning and funding instruments; and

• to fund directly from donor to local or national actor via a pooled fund or one intermediary.

Frequent words that accompany a term are known as collocates. A given term and its collocates form collocations. These can be extracted automatically based on statistics and curated manually to explore interactions with concepts.

Comparisons over time between organisation types with the greatest number of hits (Net, IGO, NGO, C/B and RC organisations) prove to be meaningful. Below is an histogram for the top yearly collocation for each of the five organisations with the greatest contribution as well as across all organisation types.

Occurrences of Grand Bargain were highest in 2018, which also coincides with the highest relative frequency recorded (683%).

Europe generated the greatest number of occurrences and is on part with North America in terms of highest frequency with 118%. However, North America accounts for considerably fewer occurrences.

The top 5 organisation types with the highest relative frequency of Grand Bargain are WHS, Net, Project, C/B and IGO.

General documents reports provided the greatest number of occurrences. However, Strategy documents obtained the highest relative frequency with 245%.

This section contains a summary of debates and controversies on Grand Bargain-related issues. It was abstracted from a total of 16 contexts. Some were grouped under a common headline because they touch on similar issues.

Issues with evaluating the Grand Bargain and measuring progress

• The quality of the Grand Bargain commitments is yet to be tested. It is not clear whether there is a link between these commitments and effective humanitarian action, or filling the gaps in humanitarian responses, especially those seen in armed conflicts.

• Somalia is listed as a country example for workstream 7 (multi-year planning) and workstream 10 (humanitarian-development nexus), as well as a pilot country for workstream 9 (harmonised reporting), but it is unclear whether this is part of a coordinated effort, or to what extent signatories will monitor or evaluate what impact or what outcomes the Grand Bargain is achieving in that context.

• Current approaches to measuring progress are unlikely to adequately capture the qualitative improvements that the Grand Bargain is bringing about.

• Some stakeholders hold mixed views as to the progress made since the Grand Bargain.

The Grand Bargain should remain HQ-focused

• Certain signatories believe that the Grand Bargain was intended as and should remain an HQ-focused policy change process that will eventually result in more efficient and effective country-level operations.

The priorities of the political leaderships of Grand Bargain signatories may not coincide with the Grand Bargain itself

• Technical staff of donor signatories must navigate the institutional priorities set by their political leadership.

• A failure to recognise, communicate and make the most of the complementarities risks the Grand Bargain being sidelined by the political leadership of its own signatories.

The Grand Bargain is not a priority for certain INGOs

• INGOs were not invited to the initial negotiation process for the Grand Bargain and had to argue for their inclusion as signatories, limiting the degree to which they – as a group – could influence the language in the commitments. This may be why certain INGOs do not see the Grand Bargain as a priority.

Non-earmarked funding could lead to prompter response, more accountability, reduce admin costs and reporting requirements

• Commitments to reduce earmarking of donor contributions through the Grand Bargain state that flexible funding could facilitate swifter responses to urgent needs, strengthen accountability to affected and refugee-hosting states, and reduce grant-specific administration costs and reporting requirements.

There has not been a major shift in funding despite multi-year financing initiatives

• The Grand Bargain includes commitments to increase multi-year planning and funding instruments. However, despite evidence of initiatives by donors to enable more multi-year financing in varying degrees, no major collective shift in funding is yet apparent.

The WHS focuses on key definitions for localisation

• Localisation was a strong theme throughout the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) and has maintained momentum since through several processes and commitments.Discussions since the WHS have focused on agreeing common definitions of local and national responders.

Transparency is paramount in assessing Grand Bargain progress

• Transparency, in the form of better reporting and sharing of information, is also needed to track progress on a number of other Grand Bargain commitment areas, including localisation, multi-year funding, earmarking and cash.

The OCHA's Financial Tracking Service should also monitor activity costs associated with strategic priorities and contributions from new kinds of actors

• Tracking of humanitarian aid flows through the OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service should shift from its narrow focus on projects included in joint appeals to tracking the cost of activities linked to common strategic priorities as well as tracking contributions from new types of actors such as the private sector.

There is not a common understanding of what the Grand Bargain entails

• There is currently no consistent or common understanding of what changes the Grand Bargain aims to bring about, or what actions are necessary to deliver them.

• With more signatories, differences in expectations, interpretations and understanding of both specific commitments and the Grand Bargain's overall goals have grown.

Effectiveness and efficiency may not be mutually supportive

• The goals of seeking enhanced effectiveness (which many aid organisations consider to be the main goal of the Grand Bargain) and increased efficiencies (which many donors consider to be the main goal of the Grand Bargain) are not necessarily mutually supportive or compatible.