Humanitarian Leadership for the Future: When 2023 is the new 2030

In 2019 the IFRC network adopted its global Strategy 2030. While there are
many factors, contexts, and situations that will either facilitate or act as barriers in the process of implementing the strategy, leadership is and will remain
an essential component to drive the envisioned changes forward.
With this in mind, the IFRC Solferino Academy engaged senior leaders of
National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in a series of interviews to
hear a global perspective and discover what will be important about how we
lead in the coming years. We aimed to understand better how our organizations need to change to adapt for the future, and what kind of leadership will
be necessary to achieve those changes sustainably.
We aimed to provide spaces for secretaries general, presidents, governing board members, and senior IFRC sta to contribute their perspectives
on imagining the critical aspects of humanitarian leadership in the future.
This new research showcases leadership reflections from the world’s largest humanitarian network, where 15 million volunteers respond to crises and
disasters, and support people and marginalised communities in vulnerable
situations every day, everywhere.
Leaders talk about the future based on their human experiences, their contexts and perspectives. What you will encounter in this report are not only
narratives about the future of leadership and our organisations, coming from
very diverse parts of the world, but also a call for change articulated as urgent
and crucial, if we are to truly create better solutions for future humanitarian
risks and challenges.
We take this opportunity to thank every leader who engaged with us in these
conversations. It was an incredible privilege to listen to your stories, personal
experiences, worries and strategies to navigate it all. Our hope is that this
report not only reveals the richness and diversity of views and approaches in leadership of our network, but also provides practical ways to strengthen
leadership so that it becomes — and remains — future fit.
This is just the beginning. We hope that this initiative will inspire people across
the IFRC network to engage creatively and systematically in the search for
and support of conditions for leadership to drive transformation.