The "Humanitarian Reset" is a comprehensive reform project for the international humanitarian system, launched by UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher in March 2025. It aims to address a "profound crisis" of funding, legitimacy, and morale by making the system more efficient, effective, and locally led.
To us, this so-called “humanitarian reset" feels driven more by fear and short-term reactions than by real strategic vision. Despite all the promises of the Grand Bargain on localisation and participation, young people and local actors are still mostly sidelined from meaningful decision-making. That gap undermines legitimacy, ownership, and the long-term impact of humanitarian responses.
We are still seeing operational risks being shifted onto local actors and youth without providing the resources, power, or protection needed to carry them. We still have very little data showing what genuinely youth-centred models of aid can achieve, because they’re rarely funded, prioritised, or captured.
If we are being serious about a reset, a REAL reset, it has to start with inclusion, evidence, and shared power — not jargon.
#ChangeTheCode
#ChangeTheCode is a youth-led global initiative pushing back against the superficial and exclusionary approaches dominating the current Humanitarian Reset. We are here to amplify and collectivise the voices of young people on the frontlines, pairing advocacy with real evidence to build a sustained youth-led movement for structural change in the humanitarian architecture.
This campaign is…
- Youth-led: young humanitarians shaping the strategy, priorities, and actions.
- Policy-oriented: calling for structural changes in funding, decision-making, and accountability across the humanitarian system.
- Action-focused: blending advocacy with public awareness to influence both decisionmakers and youth communities.
- Diverse and inclusive: uniting young people across contexts, backgrounds, and expertise into one coalition.
- Evidence-based: grounded in research, lived experience, and local realities.
- Collaborative: engaging allies in civil society, the media, think tanks, and international organisations while keeping youth leadership at the core.
- Transparent and accountable: modelling the standards we are demanding from the wider humanitarian system.
We’re rewriting the code — not a quick system update, but instead building, line by line, the foundational architecture of a humanitarian system shaped with us, not for us.