A recent IMF publication (Gupta et al. 2006, p. 24) notes, helpfully, that not all aid is geared to promoting economic growth. Some forms of aid, such as for roads and electricity, have obvious direct links to growth. Other forms of aid, such as for education or health, might affect growth less directly and more over the long term. But a third form of aid, such as for humanitarian relief, might...

This paper examines the role of reconstruction assistance in Cambodia from 1990 to 1994. In terms of international cooperation, the case of Cambodia in the restoration period after a long civil war was an unprecedented success as a whole. This is mainly due to the continuous and consecutive runs of assistance, continuum of effective aids, which was appropriate for each stage from humanitarian a...

This paper outlines the implications of international approaches to humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan, focusing in particular on the period since the Taliban assumed power. It argues that international efforts to use conditionality on humanitarian assistance have proved ineffective in influencing the Taliban's policies, and have been implemented despite the negative impact on the welfare o...

Although the war in Liberia in July 2003 claimed hundreds of lives, the international community was reluctant to intervene. In this article, the author debates the question: does international military intervention equal protection of populations? The role of humanitarian organisations in military intervention is considered. Aid organisations cannot call for deployment of a protection force wit...

This paper examines the present value of the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Disaster Relief, in view of discussions on neutrality and the Western bias of the humanitarian aid system, and assesses how it can retain its relevance in future. The Code of Conduct was launched just after the Rwanda genocide of Apr...

Knowledge management systems (KMS) are designed to support and enhance the process of creating, storing, retrieving and transferring knowledge. In this contribution we investigate the use of such systems for the acquisition of knowledge in humanitarian disaster response teams. First, we present a framework describing how KMS should enhance group process gains and alleviate group process losses,...