It is a privilege to publish the 2011 Harvard Humanitarian Action Summit summaries in this issue of Prehospital and Disaster Medicine. The annual Humanitarian Action Summits, which began in 2009, have included international experts from all fields of the humanitarian community. The 2011 Summit was particularly important because those attending were able to review and analyze the humanitarian ac...

INTRODUCTION Expatriate healthcare professionals frequently participate in international relief operations that are initiated in response to disasters due to natural hazards or humanitarian emergencies in low resource settings. This practice environment is significantly different from the healthcare delivery environment in the home countries of expatriate healthcare professionals. Human rights,...

BACKGROUND Famine early warning systems clearly identified the risk of famine in South Central Somalia in 2010-2011 but timely action to prevent the onset of famine was not taken. The result was large scale mortality, morbidity, and population displacement. DISCUSSION The main factor that turned a drought-related food crisis into a famine was the war that afflicted southern Somalia and the ta...

Rationale Humanitarian agencies and actors from all corners of the world work to serve communities and people affected by conflicts, technological and natural hazards. Over the past decade, the roles, responsibilities and visibility of organisations engaged in humanitarian activities in the international arena have increased exponentially, as have the resources committed to such endeavours. As ...

Western governments to legitimize a new and sometimes controversial security agenda. The use of humanitarian reasons to justify international military interventions, combined with the fact that the governments involved in these military operations are usually also the main financiers of the humanitarian system, has led to revived discussions among international humanitarian organizations and NG...

There have been significant improvements in the design and management of humanitarian aid responses in the last decade. In particular, a significant body of knowledge has been accumulated about public health interventions in emergencies, following calls for developing the evidence base of humanitarian health interventions. Several factors have prompted this, such as the increased volume of huma...

BACKGROUND Between the late 1980s and 2000s, Northern Uganda experienced over twenty years of armed conflict between the Government of Uganda and Lord's Resistance Army. The resulting humanitarian crisis led to displacement of a large percentage of the population and disruption of the health care system of the area. To better coordinate the emergency health response to the crisis, the humanitar...

FOR MEDICAL HUMANITARIAN ORGANIZATIONS, MAKING THEIR SOURCES OF LEGITIMACY EXPLICIT IS A USEFUL EXERCISE, IN RESPONSE TO: misperceptions, concerns over the 'humanitarian space', controversies about specific humanitarian actions, challenges about resources allocation and moral suffering among humanitarian workers. This is also a difficult exercise, where normative criteria such as international ...

Given the increased numbers of disasters and humanitarian crises which occur in the face of diminishing global resources, the contemporary disaster management and humanitarian fields face greater challenges to optimize cooperation and coordination processes among actors as well as in ensuring and increasing humanitarian aid delivery performance. This research, by using two case studies, will co...

Britain's leading independent think-tank on international development and humanitarian issues About HPG The Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute is dedicated to improving humanitarian policy and practice. It conducts independent research, provides specialist advice and promotes informed debate.