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...

This background note focuses on the current discussion among actors in the humanitarian and social protection sectors regarding the use of existing social protection programmes to provide an emergency response. It outlines the overlaps between social protection and humanitarian responses, considers a range of recent examples from lowand middle-income countries and sets out a set of key consider...

BACKGROUND Neonatal deaths account for over 40% of all deaths in children younger than five years of age and neonatal mortality rates are highest in areas affected by humanitarian emergencies. Of the ten countries with the highest neonatal mortality rates globally, six are currently or recently affected by a humanitarian emergency. Yet, little is known about newborn care in crisis settings. Und...