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 position paper discusses the ongoing debate on the topic of humanitarian effectiveness and highlights the need to look at the structuring of the humanitarian system from an ethical point of view. The paper makes the argument that any community engagement with the affected population is a matter of ethics and dignity of those needs to be considered as a central focus to the discussion. The ...

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...

Humanitarian operations research holds a considerable allure for researchers, often promising interesting contexts to develop and extend current theory, large pools of data to validate theory and generate new insights, and, more generally, the opportunity to conduct “research that matters”. For many of these reasons, we embarked on several research initiatives over the past several years with m...

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,...

The GICHD Guidebook on Detection Technologies and Systems for Humanitarian Demining (http://www. gichd.ch/1248.0.html) presents a schematic, non-exhaustive overview of several landmine detection and area reduction sensing technologies and systems for humanitarian demining. The operating principle of each technology is presented first, followed by a schematic summary of the possible application ...

Purpose The aim of the article is to identify gaps in research and to set up a research agenda that investigates how gender attributes and different sets of skills contribute to logistics performance. The article focuses on humanitarian logistics and outlines the areas in which gender issues impact on the effectiveness of the provision of aid following a disaster. Design/methodology/approach A ...

Humanitarian crises as a result of conflict are often characterised by failure of the social contract between the state and its citizens. For a variety of reasons, children with disabilities are often particularly vulnerable in time of humanitarian crisis. This paper draws on research undertaken by the authors in a series of countries affected by conflict, and looks at how the politics and poli...

Low- and middle-income countries carry a disproportionate share of the global burden of pediatric surgical disease and have limited local healthcare infrastructure and human resources to address this burden. Humanitarian efforts that have improved or provided access to necessary basic or emergency surgery for children in these settings have included humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, ...

During the last decade, funds to face humanitarian operations have increased approximately ten times. According to the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report, in 2013 the humanitarian funding requirement was by US$ 22 billion, which represents 27.2% more than the requested in 2012. Furthermore, the transportation cost represents between one third to twothirds from the total logistics cost. There...