Every so often, the world forces us to slow down and pay attention. A country declares a state of disaster, and suddenly everyone wants to know what the United Nations is doing about it. The inherent truth is that the real work starts long before the headlines.
And buried inside that work is something most people have never heard of — the Global Emergency Response Fund, or CERF.
I’ve known about CERF for years, but I never really understood the scale of what it’s been doing quietly in the background.
Twenty years of moving money fast enough to matter. Quiet enough that most people, even in development, only talk about it when a crisis hits. And, perhaps most importantly: dependable enough that when the UN’s humanitarian chief briefs member states, CERF is always the example of “this is what efficiency looks like in an imperfect world.”
To put it plainly: CERF is the UN’s emergency wallet. A global fund that sits ready, waiting for the moment when a country hits a threshold — severity, data, vulnerability — and needs help IMMEDIATELY. Not eventually. Immediately.
Because people don’t starve or drown or get displaced on donor timelines.
When an emergency is severe enough, CERF can release money in hours. Not weeks of negotiations, not months of pledges. Hours.
That is the difference between life continuing and life collapsing.
Last year, Malawi learned this firsthand.
We had an El Niño–induced drought that left millions at risk, and CERF stepped in with lifesaving support — seeds that could survive erratic rain, health services, emergency school meals, and cash assistance for families whose entire agricultural cycle had failed. The projects funded in 2024 carried into 2025, building a cushion for communities who don’t have the luxury of waiting. Today, Malawi is facing growing hunger yet again.
It is the kind of thing donors love to talk about at conferences, but it is very different when you’re from the place receiving the help. You see the dignity in the detail. You see the gap between when a crisis begins and when the world decides to notice it. CERF exists to narrow that gap. Not just in Malawi. Everywhere.
Syria. Sudan. Haiti. Afghanistan. Mozambique.
Conflicts, cyclones, locusts, cholera outbreaks, floods, droughts — CERF has touched almost every kind of emergency you can imagine. In 2023 alone, CERF allocated over $600 million to crises across more than 40 countries. And still, the message from the UN is the same: if CERF falters, people suffer. The speed is the story.
Now, to answer the question I get from my own audience: Why should I care? Why now?
Because we are living in a world where disasters are no longer seasonal. They overlap. They compound. They bleed into each other until the line between “humanitarian” and “development” disappears. And as the climate continues to shift, countries like mine are carrying the weight of shocks we did not create.
CERF is not the whole solution. It is not supposed to be. But it is one of the few global tools designed for the moment when the window to act is closing fast.
As the world is warming, as the shocks are accelerating, and as the question is no longer if we need humanitarian financing — but whether the mechanisms we have can keep up with the scale of what’s coming, CERF is:
food on the table.
medicine in a clinic.
a child staying in school because a meal was guaranteed.
a community rebuilding with dignity, instead of desperation.
And if you’ve ever lived through a crisis — truly lived through it — you know that speed is everything. CERF is one of the few tools that still understands this.
That is why I care.
That is why you should care.
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