In this article I set out an agenda of good practice for today's humanitarian practitioner. I first outline the distinctive political and conflict-related features of today's complex political emergencies, and the new interventionist strategies of the international community and the United Nations in responding to them. From this description of the new operating environment faced by humanitaria...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide future researchers with a framework for conducting research in the unique field of humanitarian logistics. Design/methodology/approach – The authors categorized humanitarian logistics research articles. Borrowing from the theory of constraints and management information systems literature, the authors developed a framework for research. Findings...

BACKGROUND Low retention of humanitarian workers poses constraints on humanitarian organisations' capacity to respond effectively to disasters. Research has focused on reasons for humanitarian workers leaving the sector, but little is known about the factors that can elucidate long-term commitment. OBJECTIVE To understand what motivates and supports experienced humanitarian health workers to ...

The importance of specialist intervention in the form of humanitarian aid from governments, NGOs and other aid agencies during a humanitarian emergency cannot be over-emphasised. Humanitarian aid is the assistance provided in response to a humanitarian crisis. Humanitarian aid may be logistical, financial or material and its central aim is to alleviate human suffering and save lives. This paper...

With the growth in length and breadth of extended supply chains, more companies are employing risk management techniques and resilience planning to deal with burgeoning and costly supply chain disruptions. As companies can learn from humanitarian groups, so can humanitarian groups learn from industry how to respond, recover, and prepare for these disruptive events. This paper looks at industry ...

In December 2011, OCHA hosted a humanitarian policy and research conference on the theme of 'Risk, Adaptation and Innovation in Humanitarian Action'. The conference aimed to identify priority policy research areas for the humanitarian community, and to strengthen partnerships with and among policy and research organisations. Over 50 attendees came from a global network of research institutes, u...

BACKGROUND Humanitarian crises are associated with an increase in mental disorders and psychological distress. Despite the emerging consensus on intervention strategies in humanitarian settings, the field of mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) in humanitarian settings lacks a consensus-based research agenda. METHODS From August 2009 to February 2010, we contacted policymakers, acad...

The coordination problem of relief items’ distribution operations is essential in humanitarian relief chains. If the coordination is proper, it will improve the response phase to the crisis. In order to improve the coordination in humanitarian relief chains, distribution and warehousing operations of relief items were outsourced to the third-party logistics. In this paper, the procurement-distr...

the international criminal court , which is part of the fourth generation of the criminal courts, plays a prominent role in the institutionalization of international humanitarian law (ihl). hence, it was expected that negotiators utilized from previous criminal tribunals experiences and they terminated in the distinctions between gross breaches of international humanitarian law. it was expected...