The last 12 months have been ones of great change for humanitarian actors. Armed conflicts and the ever-more-serious impacts of climate change have left 305 million people in need of assistance and displaced almost 123 million. This growing global need and increasingly squeezed funding have forced the sector to rethink its aims and priorities.This year has also seen great change at Elrha, as we bid farewell to our founding CEO, Jess Camburn, who stepped down from her position after 15 years at the helm.One thing that remained unchanged: our commitment to demonstrating the value and transformative potential of humanitarian research and innovation (HRI).HRI can keep INGOs informed on effective, low-cost interventions, tailored to different contexts; champion locally led solutions to help communities to stay resilient and responsive to shocks; and produce cross-sector insights to support policymakers and strengthen the humanitarian system.As 2024 draws to a close, we’d like to share our highlights from the year and offer a preview of what we’ve got coming up in 2025, along with a message from our colleagues in the UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub. Explore the drop-down boxes below to find out what 2024 has looked like for us!

Looking ahead to 2025

The next year is set to be a busy one, as we continue our work on the prevention of undernutrition, guiding our grantees on their AI learning journey and facilitating the adoption and uptake of our funded research and innovations.We’ll also be supporting the ongoing response to the mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, launching a new research agenda for sexual and reproductive health and sharing the findings of our latest gap analysis on the inclusion of older people and people with disabilities. Most exciting is that we’ll be hosting two forums in Nairobi, bringing together humanitarian research and innovation specialists to discuss the key issues affecting the sector.

Highlights from the UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub (UKHIH)

Impactful reports

This year, UKHIH supported a range of impactful reports and practitioner-oriented outputs. Below are three highlights to add to your end-of-year reading list - each one challenged us to think deeply, question the status quo, and demonstrates the diversity of our work:

• Humanitarian surge: Stuck in a rut?
• No easy choice: A humanitarian's guide to ethical, principled decision making
• Life on the Line: Reshaping humanitarian surgery

Landscaping and mapping initiatives

We launched three unique directories this year, each aimed at making existing humanitarian endeavors more visible. These tools help humanitarians connect, better understand available resources, and avoid duplication.

• Directory of AI-enabled humanitarian projects
• Directory of humanitarian academic research centres in the UK
• Tool mapping: How can we better engage communities for vaccination in LMICs?

Supporting systems innovations

Our Systems Innovation Partnerships aim to address historically fragmented thematic areas. Through a phased approach, we identify and prioritise system-level innovations that benefit a range of actors, enabling good ideas to have transformational impact. Here are three initiatives we’re excited to be exploring:

• An AI safety label that incorporates a technical assessment and crisis-affected community preferences to determine whether an AI application is suitable for a particular context.

• Tailored technical assistance for organisations in Eastern Africa to use earth observation data for humanitarian decision-making.

• A governance mechanism to support routine and systematic mortality evidence generation in humanitarian crises.

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