A Primer on War and Peace

Humanitarian relief is the provision of life-saving assistance to those in need, including victims of both conflicts and natural disasters. The scope of need is staggering – according to the United Nations, there are 11.6 million refugees worldwide, in addition to 26 million people displaced within their own countries. These figures don't include millions more across the globe that haven't fled their homes, yet still desperately need assistance in order to survive. Humanitarian assistance encompasses everything from providing food to shelter, as well as other basic services such as health and water and sanitation.

The majority of this assistance is provided by humanitarian agencies, including the United Nations, the Red Cross movement, and international and national non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These agencies are first and foremost motivated by the principle of humanity, which is defined by the Oslo Guidelines: "Human suffering must be addressed wherever it is found, with particular attention to the most vulnerable in the population, such as children, women and the elderly."

The Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movements and NGOs in Disaster Relief lays out other core humanitarian principles, including the humanitarian imperative (the right to offer and receive assistance), impartiality, neutrality and independence.

Humanitarian relief is distinct from development aid, which takes a longer-term approach which addresses the economic, social and political causes of poverty. The total amount spent on humanitarian assistance by the twenty-two major donors that comprise the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) has grown from $3 billion in 1990 to approximately $9 billion in 2006, the last year for which full figures are available. This represents slightly less than 9% of the $102 billion spent by DAC donors that year.

Core Issues and Controversies

Some of the main issues facing the humanitarian community today include:

1. Decreasing humanitarian space – humanitarian space is defined in terms of humanitarian access; i.e. the ability of humanitarian agencies to operate in a given environment. In conflicts ranging from Afghanistan to Darfur to Iraq, however, humanitarian staff increasingly find themselves a target, thereby undermining their ability to deliver assistance to those most in need.
2. Increasing politicization of assistance – the tendency of donor governments to use development assistance to further explicitly political or military goals (i.e. the United States and the global war on terror) calls into question the independence and neutrality of aid agencies which receive such funding.
3. Humanitarian reform efforts – it is still unclear the extent to which reform efforts around coordination (the cluster approach) and funding (CERF and pooled funds) are improving humanitarian response in the field.
4. Impact and accountability – agencies still struggle to measure the actual impact of their work, and to ensure that their interventions do not cause unintended harms.
5. Staffing – lack of training and high turn-over often complicate humanitarian response; at the same time, agencies have only recently started to pay more attention to issues around staff stress and wellness.