BACKGROUND In order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian efforts, minimum standards for humanitarian assistance and key indicators, showing whether a standard has been attained, have been developed. However, many of these standards and indicators are based on a consensus on best practices and experiences in humanitarian response, because relevant evidence on the impact of...

Since the Sphere Project was launched in 1997, it has sought to integrate principles of human rights norms with adherence to technical standards. While the Sphere Handbook has evolved as both a field tool and a resource for articulating human rights, it does not fully offer a rights-based approach to humanitarian assistance. In the handbook's current edition, its Humanitarian Charter asserts an...

from War-Torn Societies Project Summary: Examines the circumstances giving rise to the refugee dependency syndrome, its manifestation in different phases of humanitarian assistance programmes and psycho-social implications into the long-term. The author looks at the proliferation of emergency aid situations, elements conducive to dependency, and the influence of trauma on coping mechanisms, par...

Presently, there is no shortage of methods for collecting data on populations requiring assistance from humanitarian health interventions. However, utilizing a working group, the authors of this paper have looked at these methods through a critical lens and found that there is need for improvement upon existing systems of data collection and analysis. The authors concluded that efforts to stand...

In this article, Gostin and Archer explore the varied lenses through which governments are obligated to address humanitarian needs. States'responsibilities to help others derive from domestic law, political commitments, ethical values, national interests, and international law. What is needed, however, is clarity and detailed standards so that States can operationalize this responsibility, maki...

Since 2005, the call for the military to conduct ?softer? missions, such as humanitarian assistance and partner training, has increased. These ?medical stability operations? are in fact to be given comparable priority to combat operations. Military leadership understands their the value of Medical Stability Operations across the range of military operations from shaping through postdisaster or ...

With 4.4 million people in need of health assistance, funding is urgently needed to respond to the rising needs. The South Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan launched earlier this year requests US$ 110 million, of which US$ 31.3 million has been received (71% funding gap). Of this amount, WHO requires US$ 17.5 million for 2016, of which only US$ 4.3 million has been received. More funding will be...

This paper describes VIStology’s HADRian system for semantically integrating disparate information sources into a common operational picture (COP) for humanitarian assistance/disaster relief (HADR) operations. Here the system is applied to the task of determining where unexploded or additional bombs were being reported via Twitter in the hours immediately after the Boston Marathon bombing in Ap...