Today, humanitarian organizations are facing complex crises. Following the growing needs of beneficiaries amidst difficult economic conditions in some countries, the COVID-19 crisis has emerged as a new challenge for these organizations. These organizations find themselves in dilemmas and difficult times, testing the strength of planning, the effectiveness of policies, the efficiency of institutional capabilities, and the strength of the foundations of sound institutional work.
For the benefit of humanitarian organizations, and after reviewing analyses and studies from several Arab and foreign sources on the expected outcomes following the COVID-19 pandemic and its repercussions in the coming period, this article has been carefully prepared to leverage it to increase the efficiency of allocating limited resources to organizations, implement proactive measures instead of response mechanisms, and inform interim and future planning for humanitarian organizations, taking the necessary steps to ensure the sustainability and continuity of their work.

Below, we will outline what humanitarian work will look like after the COVID-19 crisis, and we will highlight the initiatives and projects drawn from this new reality that will benefit humanitarian work in the future:
During the next phase and after the pandemic, class divisions will increase within some countries, resulting in inequality and increased poverty and need rates. This requires an increase in projects targeting the poor and marginalized groups by humanitarian organizations.

The frequency of conflicts and disputes will increase, requiring humanitarian organizations to prioritize the establishment of immediate and short-term response funds for solidarity against COVID-19 and long-term resilience. It also requires facilitating humanitarian response procedures, which will be more difficult and costly. Climate change and conflict will cause the number of people in need of international humanitarian assistance to rise to 200 million by 2022, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The climate crisis will force humanitarian workers to adopt a more sustainable approach to shelter, energy provision, water resources, and food assistance. This means that humanitarian organizations must re-engineer their role and prioritize environmental projects (energy provision, sustainable shelter, food assistance, water resources, and sanitation projects). The spread of infectious diseases will increase, making them more difficult to control. This requires humanitarian organizations to collaborate with governments to provide rapid diagnosis of infectious diseases, reduce the number of people at risk, increase vaccination programs and quality healthcare, achieve universal health coverage, and increase investment in health systems.

There will be a surge in technological development, leading to unequal access to technology and leaving many people out of this rapid pace of change, especially countries still struggling to achieve high-quality (3G) connectivity. This will create a growing gap between the haves and have-nots of technology. This requires humanitarian organizations to become more technology-driven, more thoughtful about technological literacy, strengthen communities with technical education, and rely more heavily on digital assistance.
The number of humanitarian organizations will increase, and governments will increasingly need humanitarian organizations and ask them to assume additional roles in service delivery. Therefore, it is best to establish new humanitarian organizations with additional, renewable roles depending on the expected situations.
The number of humanitarian workers will increase, and there will be more vacancies in the humanitarian field. However, reliance on indigenous workers will increase, and expatriate positions will continue to decline due to the increased leadership capacity of national staff, limited access of expatriates to some areas, and the localization of administrative roles for some organizations. Volunteer work (unpaid) will slowly disappear, and people will no longer be able to afford unpaid work. This will require humanitarian organizations to allocate greater costs to their human resources. However, smaller humanitarian organizations that rely on unpaid volunteer work will likely continue to use unpaid volunteers, but with greater appreciation for their efforts.

Humanitarian work will increasingly require distance learning, technical training, and professional expertise. The type and specialization of human resources required for humanitarian work will change. Some jobs will become more dependent on remote work, and new jobs with new titles will emerge.
Since humanitarian organizations rely directly on funding, and their need for it will increase, these organizations will incur additional costs to manage the new burdens that reflect administrative transparency and achieve oversight, accountability, and governance.

There is no doubt that the economic recession caused by the pandemic will have an impact on humanitarian work, as it is largely dependent on funding from economic organizations and their wealthy owners. However, this impact may not be comprehensive. Compared to the 2008 economic crisis, according to the research study "Charitable Giving in the UK," conducted by the National Council for Voluntary Organizations and Humanitarian Aid UK, which examined the impact of the 2008 economic recession on humanitarian work in Britain, the study found that the volume of charitable giving in Britain declined by only 11%. In the United States, the decline in charitable giving amounted to only 6.3%. In contrast, donations in Canada rose by 12%. The study also indicated that the percentage of adult donors in Britain after the recession remained high, reaching more than half of the population (54%). This is perhaps due to the fact that giving and doing good are considered an essential part of human life, as they are linked to monotheistic religions.

The humanitarian sector will be faster than other sectors to recover from this.