Over the past year, the world faced an aggravation of protracted crises and conflicts. The UK aid-funded Humanitarian and Stabilisation Operations Team (HSOT) provides HMG with capacity and specialist expertise to effectively respond to disasters, crises, and complex emergencies around the world. From Mozambique to Afghanistan, Haiti to Ukraine, Yemen to Bangladesh, HSOT responded to 26 different global crises to meet populations’ humanitarian needs and restore stability in fragile and conflict-affected states. HSOT’s core staff of over 70 members worked across 63 countries, providing high-calibre humanitarian, procurement and logistics, stabilisation, security, and operations expertise. The team also includes over 900 ancillary humanitarian and stabilisation consultants deployed to UK Overseas Missions.
In Afghanistan, the team strengthened the UK’s ability to swiftly set up a humanitarian response and contributed to the strategy of UN agencies and partners on key issues such as upholding the rights of women and girls. Palladium is at the forefront of HMG’s current response in Ukraine. To date, it has delivered over 5 million items of medical equipment and £1 million of food aid. Palladium is also currently the provider of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) humanitarian logistics, and it works as part of the UK-Australia Humanitarian Partnership to deliver supplies.
Against a backdrop of challenges and uncertainty, HSOT’s drive to constantly adapt, innovate, and improve its work (and the wider sector) allows it to maximise the value of UK taxpayers’ money and the positive impact on the lives of the world’s most vulnerable people.
