Supporting Mutual Aid: What the Evidence Tells Us (2025)

The international humanitarian system is under severe strain, facing politically driven funding cuts, rising needs and uncertainty about its future direction. Although calls for “resetting” and “prioritising” continue, what these shifts mean in practice remains unclear. At the same time, interest is growing in the informal systems and networks through which communities have always supported one another in crisis—often without involvement from the international system.

Mutual aid sits at the centre of these locally led responses. These self-organised, voluntary actions draw on existing relationships, resources and knowledge, yet they remain largely unrecognized and unsupported. This review explored what happens when international actors support mutual aid.