Humanitarian aid has been present in some form throughout human history, yet the modern concept of humanitarian aid has only truly emerged since the later half of the 20th century. Through a complex progression of world events and largely brought about in response to armed conflict, modern humanitarian aid is provided by a multitude of organizations and actors. The purpose of this chapter is to...

As the humanitarian aid sector is expanding, the need for enhancing coordination capabilities increases as well. This holds especially for the area of logistics, because humanitarian operations typically take place in unstable and risky environments, where infrastructure is poor, while staff turnover is high. The effectiveness of humanitarian logistics critically depends on the availability and...

Given the rise of humanitarian crises in the recent years, and adoption of multiple data sharing platforms in offline and online environments, it is increasingly challenging to collect, organize, clean, integrate, and analyze data in the humanitarian domain. On the other side, computer science has built efficient technologies to store, integrate and analyze structured data, however, their role ...

It is a privilege to publish the 2011 Harvard Humanitarian Action Summit summaries in this issue of Prehospital and Disaster Medicine. The annual Humanitarian Action Summits, which began in 2009, have included international experts from all fields of the humanitarian community. The 2011 Summit was particularly important because those attending were able to review and analyze the humanitarian ac...

INTRODUCTION Expatriate healthcare professionals frequently participate in international relief operations that are initiated in response to disasters due to natural hazards or humanitarian emergencies in low resource settings. This practice environment is significantly different from the healthcare delivery environment in the home countries of expatriate healthcare professionals. Human rights,...

BACKGROUND Famine early warning systems clearly identified the risk of famine in South Central Somalia in 2010-2011 but timely action to prevent the onset of famine was not taken. The result was large scale mortality, morbidity, and population displacement. DISCUSSION The main factor that turned a drought-related food crisis into a famine was the war that afflicted southern Somalia and the ta...

Rationale Humanitarian agencies and actors from all corners of the world work to serve communities and people affected by conflicts, technological and natural hazards. Over the past decade, the roles, responsibilities and visibility of organisations engaged in humanitarian activities in the international arena have increased exponentially, as have the resources committed to such endeavours. As ...

Western governments to legitimize a new and sometimes controversial security agenda. The use of humanitarian reasons to justify international military interventions, combined with the fact that the governments involved in these military operations are usually also the main financiers of the humanitarian system, has led to revived discussions among international humanitarian organizations and NG...

There have been significant improvements in the design and management of humanitarian aid responses in the last decade. In particular, a significant body of knowledge has been accumulated about public health interventions in emergencies, following calls for developing the evidence base of humanitarian health interventions. Several factors have prompted this, such as the increased volume of huma...

3 THIS REPORT COMES AT a time when the international humanitarian community is facing unprecedented challenges that are growing in scale, scope and complexity. There is growing awareness of the need for transformational change in what humanitarian actors do and how they do it, to maintain relevance, reputation and impact. This report focuses on new and growing efforts to achieve such change thr...