Reflections on the first MENA Dialogue Platform

A few weeks ago, the Weather and Climate Information Services (WISER) MENA team at the Met Office, the UK’s national meteorological service, attended the first MENA Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action.

We know that acting sooner can save lives and livelihoods, but knowing how and when to act can be difficult for the humanitarian sector, as can getting the information needed to trigger anticipatory action. The fantastic first MENA Dialogue Platform brought together a diverse range of organizations and people working in this area to share, collaborate and learn from each other’s experience in implementing anticipatory action at community and institutional levels.

During the event, we heard about some of the unique challenges this region faces in implementing anticipatory action, including the sheer scale of need – an estimated 55 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance – and fragility, which is linked to past and ongoing conflicts.

However difficult it may seem to prioritize anticipatory action, all the participants passionately agreed on the need to do so, given the potential benefits that acting early can bring. Nevertheless, the complexity of doing this in the MENA region is considerably greater than other regions – and so learning what works and what doesn’t is essential.

One of the many stand-out moments for us was when all the participants came together on the last day to agree a roadmap for anticipatory action in the region up to 2028. WISER MENA is currently one of the only funds supporting anticipatory action in MENA, and the roadmap highlighted how important it will be to broaden out this funding base so that anticipatory action can be sustainably supported at scale.

WISER MENA was delighted to fund this event through its support of the Istibak project, run by the Red Cross and the World Food Programme, and organize it in collaboration with the Anticipation Hub. Istibak, which will seek to stimulate anticipatory action in Iraq, Syria and Yemen, is one of the first projects of its type. Learning and reflecting on how anticipatory action can be supported in fragile contexts will be a key element of the project, and this started at the MENA Dialogue Platform. In addition to sharing experiences, we also hope that forums like this can be used to enable the seeds of anticipatory action to grow in the region over the next decade, so it can become a widespread and systematized approach to tackling extreme events.