Bridging the gap: how the private sector is streamlining humanitarian response

In an emergency, a humanitarian organization’s speed of response can be the difference between life and death. In rapidly changing contexts, sometimes involving thousands of responders, the situation can be overwhelming, leading to duplication of effort and a lack of clarity on who is responsible for what. This confusion often results in people affected not receiving the help they urgently need.

Twenty years ago, the Cluster Approach – an accountable framework that brings humanitarian actors together under clear leadership while dividing work within various sectors of assistance – was born out of necessity. It helps to ensure coordination, enhance collaboration, keep emergency responders informed, avoid duplications, share resources and optimize efforts.

For over 20 years, the Logistics Cluster, led by the World Food Programme (WFP), has been the enabler of inter-agency logistics assistance in emergency preparedness and response. Leveraging the capabilities of the largest humanitarian agency, it has one clear mission: to enable emergency response logistics to be as effective and efficient as possible.

Today, the Logistics Cluster leads a global community of more than 1,150 partner organizations, of which 37% are national NGOs, working together towards locally led, sustainable solutions, increased predictability and collaborative responses, while building national capacities.

Its ultimate goal is to ensure that vulnerable communities around the world are served during crises by a logistics system that is capable, prepared and locally driven. This vision extends beyond immediate responses; it also includes minimizing the negative environmental impacts of humanitarian supply chains.

However, this cannot be done alone, and the need for partnership with the private sector has never been more acute.

With this in mind, the World Economic Forum brought together four global logistics leaders – Agility, UPS, Maersk and DP World – to create the Logistics Emergency Team (LET). In the past 20 years, LET has supported 43 disasters across 29 countries and trained over 600 humanitarian logisticians.

LET, the Logistics Cluster and the World Economic Forum got together at the Humanitarian Networks and Partnerships Weeks (HNPW) to discuss the evolution of this partnership, specifically looking for lessons from recent emergencies where LET was instrumental in enabling the humanitarian community to respond effectively.

In the Gaza and Lebanon responses, there was an urgent need for warehouses that would handle incoming humanitarian assistance, ensuring that aid was efficiently received, sorted and distributed where most needed.

Maersk and UPS were able to immediately provide fully equipped and staffed warehouses for the Logistics Cluster community. In Jordan, Maersk made 5,000 m² (the equivalent of 19 tennis courts) of storage space available to humanitarian responders to consolidate and position relief items to be sent into Gaza. From this warehouse, the Logistics Cluster coordinated 1,266 trucks to deliver desperately needed aid into the territory.

In Lebanon, UPS donated the use of its warehouse in Beirut, opening up 3,400 m² of storage space to serve as a central hub to store 800 metric tonnes of critical relief supplies, including shelter, food, water and medical items, before moving them to heavily conflict-affected regions. Twenty-two convoys from Beirut and two convoys from Amman were organized by the Logistics Cluster, facilitating the timely delivery of aid to people in need on behalf of 14 humanitarian partners, including NGOs and UN agencies.

LET is the first partnership of its kind, formalizing multistakeholder cooperation between the private and public sectors.

In 2025, more than 307.6 million people worldwide will be in need of humanitarian assistance. As crises become increasingly frequent and complex, effective logistics coordination is vital to ensure that life-saving support is delivered in a timely, efficient and cost-effective manner. The Logistics Cluster combines the voices of all emergency responders to turn shared challenges into action – amplifying impact, unlocking access and driving system-wide solutions that no single actor could achieve alone.

With growing humanitarian needs and reduced budgets, private-sector partnerships are more crucial than ever. No single organization can address the challenge alone. It’s time to redefine the role of the private sector – not just as a last resort but as an integral, proactive partner in humanitarian response. Beyond financial contributions, businesses can also offer in-kind services, industry expertise and operational capacity that can revolutionize aid delivery.

Long-term strategic partnerships between private and humanitarian sectors will be essential to meeting the rising scale of global humanitarian needs. This is not just about responding to crises – it’s about reshaping the future of humanitarian logistics through proactive, collaborative solutions.