Défis Humanitaires. Hello Jean-Baptiste Lamarche. Our review, Défis Humanitaires, believes in the synergy of humanitarian engagement, particularly around skills, innovation, and resource pooling. Early on, we published articles on the RLH (Humanitarian Logistics Network), the humanitarian air bridge during COVID, the creation of hulo, and your impact reports. To begin this interview and summarize hulo’s journey, could you briefly remind us of it?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche. Hulo was born from a very simple observation: while humanitarian organizations have long cooperated on operations, they have often continued to manage their supply chains in a very fragmented way.

The story began with the Humanitarian Logistics Network (RLH), and then with the European humanitarian air bridge during the COVID crisis. These experiences demonstrated that by pooling certain logistical resources, it was possible to serve more beneficiaries with the same means.

In June 2021, exactly five years ago, several humanitarian organizations decided to go further by creating hulo, the first humanitarian cooperative, whose goal was to turn one-off cooperation into lasting shared capacities.

Today, more than 150 organizations take part in the hulo community. Within a few years, we have moved from an experimental approach to a demonstrative one. The question is no longer whether cooperation works, but how to scale it up while preserving the diversity and autonomy of the actors involved.

 

Défis Humanitaires. What are the main findings in your 2025 Impact Report?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche The report confirms above all the maturity of the model.

In 2025, hulo supported 41 pooled procurements representing more than €23 million in financial volume. The average savings observed reach 15% on average over three years (2023-2025), with a peak of 16% in 2025, representing nearly €3.7 million. Beyond the savings, pooling also helps harmonize purchase prices, which, according to the data collected, vary on average by 73% between organizations for the same product purchased on the same market.

But beyond the figures, the main lesson is probably the shift in behavior. We are seeing more and more organizations now view logistics cooperation as a normal management practice rather than an experiment.

That is probably the most encouraging signal for the future.

Défis Humanitaires. In this 2026 impact report, you write that “the question is no longer whether the model works, but how it can be scaled up, strengthened, and more broadly embedded in the sector.” What solutions has hulo devised to meet this challenge and convince other organizations of the value of pooling, including in terms of advocacy?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche. For a long time, the main challenge was demonstrating the value of the model. Today, now that value creation has been confirmed over several consecutive years and in several countries, the challenge is more organizational and cultural.

We have identified three levers.

The first is local anchoring. Cooperation must not be steered solely from headquarters. It must be driven by operational teams in-country.

The second is interoperability. Organizations must be able to cooperate without giving up their systems, procedures, or identity. Our approach is to standardize what needs to be standardized and to preserve specificities where they create value.

The third is advocacy. We work with NGOs, the United Nations, donors, and platforms like VOICE to show that operational cooperation is not an end in itself but a means of improving the collective efficiency of the humanitarian system.

Our report “Delivering Better Together” is part of that effort.

 

Défis Humanitaires. How does the sharp decline in humanitarian funding — driven both by the US administration and by two-thirds of the OECD’s DAC member countries, as well as within the European Union — affect humanitarian supply chains and hulo’s activity?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche. The consequences are already visible.

Organizations are cutting staff, closing certain programs, and trying to lower their operating costs. But the risk is that, by seeking savings individually, they end up destroying part of the collective efficiency.

In a supply chain, fragmenting purchases reduces volumes and raises prices. Fragmenting transport often produces the same effects.

The reduction in funding therefore makes cooperation even more necessary.

Paradoxically, the current crisis confirms the relevance of the hulo model. We are seeing growing demand for pooling because organizations are trying to preserve their capacity to act despite more limited resources.

The benefits of pooling are now known and publicly recognized. Donors, particularly DG ECHO and the CDCS, are increasingly encouraging their partner organizations to engage in pooled initiatives. The conclusions of the “Humanitarian Leadership Group on Supply Chain” conference, held on December 10, 2025, by DG ECHO with more than 50 humanitarian actors, also point toward the standardization of cooperative practices.

 

Défis Humanitaires. The overall savings rate reported for 2025 is 16%, three points higher than the previous year — results well above hulo’s initial estimates. Do you expect this increase to continue over time?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche. The question is perhaps less about whether the percentage of savings will keep rising than about understanding whether the value created is sustainable.

We have now reached a particularly interesting stage: several of the first pooled contracts launched by hulo are coming up for renewal. And we find that the terms initially negotiated are broadly holding up over time.

In other words, the savings observed do not reflect a one-off gain from an initial tender. They reflect a new market benchmark. When several organizations durably combine their volumes, they gain access to terms that gradually become the norm for them.

We can therefore say that prices have stabilized at a level roughly 15% lower than previously observed. Looked at another way, this means that the cost of not cooperating remains, today, around 15%.

The real outlook for the future therefore lies less in a continuous increase in the savings percentage than in extending this approach to more organizations, more countries, and more services. Every euro saved in the supply chain is a euro that can be reinvested directly in aid to affected populations.

 

Défis Humanitaires. For our readers, could you describe how the humanitarian supply chain works between humanitarian actors — international NGOs in particular — and national and local actors, in light of the localization agenda, along with its added value and progress?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche. Localization is often approached from the angle of funding or the transfer of responsibilities to national actors. These dimensions are essential, but our experience shows that there is also a major issue around supply chains.

A often-overlooked fact is that more than 90% of the financial volume of purchases made by organizations participating in hulo initiatives is already spent locally. The challenge, then, is no longer simply to buy locally. It is to durably strengthen the local ecosystems that make these purchases possible.

This involves building long-term relationships with suppliers, gaining better visibility into future needs, establishing cooperation mechanisms between organizations, and investing in the capacities of local economic actors.

We find that when several organizations cooperate over time, they do not only generate savings. They also help strengthen the resilience of local markets. Suppliers can invest more, anticipate needs, improve their standards, and expand their production or distribution capacities.

This logic also applies to national and local NGOs. Cooperation allows for the sharing of tools, data, contracts, logistical capacities, and operational experience. It enables the building of collective capacities that go beyond what any single organization could achieve on its own.

Ultimately, the resilience of a supply chain does not rest solely on infrastructure or stockpiles. It also rests on the quality of relationships among the actors that make up the ecosystem. That is why we consider cooperation to be one of the most powerful levers of localization: it strengthens, simultaneously, the capacities of organizations, suppliers, and local markets, all in service of affected populations.

 

Défis Humanitaires. In our June issue, Maria Groenewald, Director General of VOICE, the network of EU humanitarian NGOs in Brussels, called for a “humanitarian reset” of the United Nations involving all humanitarian actors, NGOs in particular. In your recent report “Delivering Better Together,” you stress the risks of excessive centralization. How can pitfalls such as the concentration of operational capacities, reduced diversity of actors, or the homogenization of crisis responses be avoided? Isn’t this essentially the same underlying problem as the one facing both the design of the UN’s “humanitarian reset” and the organization of the international humanitarian supply chain?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche. First, I think it’s important to say that the humanitarian sector does indeed need to transform. Needs are increasing, resources are shrinking, and crises are becoming more complex and more numerous. No one can reasonably defend the status quo.

The current reform momentum — whether the “humanitarian reset,” the thinking around UN80, the work undertaken by DG ECHO through the “Humanitarian Leadership Group on Supply Chain,” or the pooling approach taken by NGOs through the hulo cooperative — is therefore moving in the right direction.

The risk would be to think that a single organization, however high-performing, could on its own respond to the diversity of humanitarian crises. Local contexts are extremely different, access constraints vary, the actors present on the ground are numerous, and ties with local communities are built over years by a wide variety of organizations.

The richness of the humanitarian system lies precisely in this diversity. International NGOs, national organizations, donors, UN agencies, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the private sector: each brings different capacities, expertise, and access. The challenge, then, is not to replace this diversity with a single model, but to enable all these actors to work together far more effectively.

This is where interoperability becomes essential. It is not about making organizations uniform, but about enabling them to share standards, data, tools, and modes of cooperation while retaining their specificities. We often sum up this approach with a simple phrase: “As standardised as possible, as tailored as necessary.”

For five years now, hulo has been testing precisely this approach with more than 150 organizations. Our role is not to operate in place of others, but to structure, facilitate, and institutionalize cooperation among autonomous actors. We believe this experience can now usefully contribute to the discussions taking place across the sector as a whole.

Ultimately, the future of the humanitarian system probably lies neither in fragmentation, where everyone acts alone, nor in centralization, where a single actor would try to coordinate everything. It lies in a network of complementary, interoperable actors capable of cooperating effectively in service of affected populations.

 

Défis Humanitaires. The European Commission, through DG ECHO, committed fairly early on, in 2022, by adopting a Humanitarian Logistics Policy for a strategic humanitarian supply chain. Where do things stand today, and what are the prospects for 2026 and 2027?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche. The adoption of the Humanitarian Logistics Policy by DG ECHO in 2022 was an important milestone, as it recognized that the humanitarian supply chain was no longer simply a support function, but a strategic capacity in service of aid effectiveness.

This policy rests on a simple observation: when organizations work in silos or end up competing on activities that create no value, the system loses efficiency collectively. Conversely, when cooperation is organized, the resulting efficiency gains allow more resources to be reinvested for the benefit of affected populations.

To turn this ambition into concrete action, DG ECHO launched a collective effort through the Humanitarian Leadership Group on Supply Chain (HLGSC). Its distinctive feature is that it brings together the entire humanitarian ecosystem: UN agencies, international and national NGOs, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, donors, the private sector, and academia.

The work is organized around five priorities: procurement, environmental sustainability, digitalization, emergency preparedness, and localization.

On December 10, 2025, more than fifty leaders representing these different groups of actors endorsed the main recommendations and priority workstreams for the coming years.

In 2026 and 2027, the goal is to turn these directions into concrete achievements, through pilot projects, operational experiments, and a joint mobilization of the logistics and supply chain community, together with a group of committed donors to support this transformation.

Hulo’s members are heavily involved in this work. It is a natural continuation of our mission: to demonstrate, through operational experience, that cooperation can become a structured, sustainable, and replicable capacity serving the humanitarian sector as a whole.

Défis Humanitaires. The recent G7 summit, held from June 15 to 17 in Evian under the French presidency, included preparatory meetings with NGOs that sparked discussion on the future of international logistics supply chains in the face of crises. What is the outcome so far, and what are the next steps?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche. The fact that the French presidency chose to place the humanitarian supply chain on the G7 agenda is, in itself, a very important signal. It shows that issues of logistics, cooperation, and efficiency are no longer seen as purely technical matters, but as strategic levers for strengthening the impact of humanitarian action.

As part of the G7 preparations, hulo was consulted several times by the Crisis and Support Centre (CDCS) of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs. We also had an exchange with Minister Jean-Noël Barrot on these topics. We see this as a recognition that solutions developed by operational actors can usefully feed into the thinking of public decision-makers.

This approach is fully complementary to the one undertaken by DG ECHO through the HLGSC. On one side, operational actors are jointly building concrete solutions; on the other, states and donors are considering the conditions needed to support and spread these transformations across the sector.

This is probably the most significant development. When donors take an interest in efficiency gains and cooperation, these issues are no longer simply a matter of voluntary good practice. They begin to be embedded in public policy, funding terms, and the expectations set out in calls for proposals. This creates a much more favorable environment for the development of lasting collaborative practices.

We are entering a new phase. After a period in which organizations demonstrated that cooperation creates value, donors are now beginning to create the conditions that will allow this cooperation to scale up.

 

Défis Humanitaires. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is facing a serious Ebola virus outbreak in the Bunia region in the northeast of the country. On the ground, the NGOs responding are very concerned about the risk of spread and the potential number of victims. Where does the logistics supply chain stand in the DRC in responding to Ebola, in an operational context made especially difficult by insecurity and geographic access constraints?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche. As the Ebola response is still being structured and does not yet rest on sufficiently tangible results at this stage, I would prefer not to answer this question and suggest removing it from the interview, if that is acceptable to you.

 

Défis Humanitaires. How would you like to conclude this interview?

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche. If I had to keep just one idea, it would be that the humanitarian sector is going through a new stage in its transformation.

For more than twenty years, humanitarian actors have sought to work better together. The 2005 humanitarian reform, notably with the introduction of the cluster approach, marked a major step forward by strengthening the coordination of operational responses. The 2016 World Humanitarian Summit then marked a further stage, bringing together all stakeholders around a shared ambition: to collectively rethink how we respond to humanitarian challenges, notably through the Grand Bargain, localization, and a heightened pursuit of efficiency.

Today, faced with more numerous, more complex crises and more constrained resources, a new stage of transformation is opening up. The Humanitarian Reset, the UN80 initiative, and the work of the HLGSC all illustrate this dynamic. The initiatives developed by hulo fit fully within this evolution. All of them raise, from different angles, the same question: how can a humanitarian system made up of autonomous actors function as a genuine collective capacity? The answer does not lie in greater centralization, but in organizing lasting cooperation between organizations capable of sharing their capacities, their data, their infrastructure, and their supply chains — while preserving the diversity that makes the sector so rich.

We have had the chance to test this transformation over the past five years with more than 150 organizations taking part in hulo’s pooled initiatives. This experience points to two major lessons. First, cooperation should no longer be seen as a series of one-off initiatives, but as a strategic capacity in its own right within the humanitarian system. Second, its success depends on the existence of a neutral structure, whose sole interest is the success of the cooperation itself. It is this neutrality that builds trust, allows actors to move beyond institutional logics, and enables collaborative approaches to take root over the long term.

That is precisely the ambition behind our latest publication, Delivering Better Together – The New Log-Smart Humanitarian Supply Chain, written in partnership with VOICE. More than a report, it is an open contribution to the sector as a whole. It formalizes a method, drawn from operational experience at the local level, to enable very different organizations to institutionalize their cooperation, develop their interoperability, strengthen their resilience, and durably increase their collective effectiveness — without giving up their specificities.

In the end, that may well be the next great humanitarian innovation: not inventing one organization that outperforms the others, but enabling all organizations to become more effective together. That is the ambition behind Log-Smart.

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Jean-Baptiste Lamarche

Jean-Baptiste Lamarche is Managing Director and Co-founder of Hulo, the first humanitarian cooperative that connects actors and innovates in the pooling and optimization of resources in supply chains.  He holds an Executive MBA International from HEC Paris and has devoted most of his career to humanitarian logistics.  Before founding hulo, Jean-Baptiste held management positions in several international NGOs, including as Director of Logistics and Information Systems for Action Against Hunger.  Leader and committed collaborator, Jean-Baptiste is passionate about innovation as a lever to increase the impact of humanitarian aid.

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Discover other articles from this edition :

• “Today, the global humanitarian system is on the brink of collapse.” – European Commission – Alain Boinet
• Once upon a time in Vakaga… – Magali Ratajczak
• Humanitarian: Supply Chain Pooling Is Underway with HULO – Salomée Languille
• Armenia at a Crossroads in Its Destiny – Arthur Robert
• Hervé Gouyet, former president of Electriciens Sans Frontières, writes to Défis Humanitaires