Displaying items by tag: UN

Major humanitarian crises in the past decade have prompted unprecedented amounts of private donations: the tsunami that caused widespread devastation across the Indian Ocean in December 2004 saw US$3.9 billion raised in private aid; the response to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti generated at least US$1.2 billion in contributions from the general public; US$450 million was channelled in response to the 2010 floods in Pakistan; and at least US$578 million went to Japan following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. While global private support to specific large-scale emergencies is relatively easy to gauge, it remains unclear how much private…

Strengthening Policy and Practice: meeting the challenges of working in complex environments is designed to draw on the experience and practice of participants, working in development, humanitarian aid or peacebuilding to influence internal policies and programmatic approaches. The course will identify how organisations can strive to balance their organisational mandate with the demands of working in complex and rapidly changing political contexts. Course aims The course will enable participants to contribute to developing constructive organisational and programmatic policies that will guide practical responses in the development, humanitarian and peacebuilding fields. It will draw on the experience of participants and tutors…

UN integration arrangements are the strategies and structures developed to facilitate greater coherence and coordination among UN agencies, funds and programmes, with the aim of maximising the collective impact of the UN’s response. The benefits and risks of UN integration for humanitarian space have been intensely debated for many years. Most humanitarian actors accept the need for greater coherence within the UN system, at least at a strategic level. However, many NGOs object to greater structural arrangements because they claim that this would result in the subjugation of humanitarian priorities to the UN’s political objectives. UN humanitarian actors have expressed…

The popular uprisings sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East, from Tunisia in the west to Syria in the east, and the generally violent response to them from state authorities, are challenging humanitarian organisations and policymakers in new ways. These are not ‘classic’ humanitarian emergencies, which are often associated with hunger, epidemics, displacement and a desperate daily struggle for survival. These crises are happening mainly in middle-income countries, in urban settings with functioning basic social services, and affecting a cross-section of the population. These crises have not developed into large-scale humanitarian emergencies – at least not yet. But they…

Des forces militaires étrangères importantes furent déployées en réponse au tremblement de terre de janvier 2010 à Haïti, avec des contingents des Etats-Unis, du Canada et d’un certain nombre de pays d’Amérique latine et d’Europe, en plus des forces armées et de police existantes qui opéraient comme élément de la Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH).  Ceci fait partie d’une tendance croissante : du tsunami de l’Océan indien au tremblement de terre de l’Asie du Sud-est, les forces militaires sont de plus en plus souvent chargées par leurs gouvernements de répondre aux désastres. Les acteurs humanitaires ont…

Afghanistan is now in its fourth decade of warfare, making it one of the most protracted conflicts in recent history. The nature of warfare, and related war agendas, have evolved over time and continue to do so in line with changing internal and external political objectives and ground realities. However, the absence of adequate measures to protect civilians has characterised the fighting since the outbreak of armed conflict in 1979. According to an ICRC survey from 2009, almost all Afghans – 96% – have been directly or indirectly affected as a result of the immediate or wider consequences of war;…

Large-scale foreign military forces were deployed in response to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, with contingents from the United States, Canada and a number of Latin American and European countries, in addition to existing military and police forces operating as part of the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). This is part of a growing trend: from the Indian Ocean tsunami to the South Asia earthquake, military forces are increasingly being tasked by their governments to respond to disasters. Humanitarian actors have an opportunity to utilise military capacities in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, when civilian capacities are…

Repeated bombings and attacks in Afghanistan, carjackings in Sudan and persistent insecurity in Somalia and elsewhere demonstrate the challenges of providing security for humanitarian aid workers. The statistics point to higher numbers of targeted attacks against aid workers between 2006 and 2008, driven largely by insecurity in Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan.[1] This growing insecurity has prompted media articles and a persistent and increasingly prevalent discourse among humanitarian organisations that challenges the efficacy of ‘acceptance’ as a legitimate, effective approach to security management. For example, a conference in April 2010 discussed the ‘limits and possibilities’ and the ‘(perceived) end’ of the…

A decade ago, only a handful of agencies were aware of and seriously considering the challenges posed by operational insecurity. At the time, few international or national organisations had designated security positions or policies on how to manage the risks of violence against their staff and operations. The impact of high-profile attacks such as the 1996 assassination of six ICRC workers in Chechnya spurred a number of international aid organisations into action. A collaborative learning initiative on security issues resulted in the earliest interagency security training, as well as the first edition of the Good Practice Review on Operational Security…

The Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in humanitarian action (ALNAP) works with key humanitarian organisations and experts from across the humanitarian sector and is dedicated to improving humanitarian performance by producing tools and analysis to increase learning and accountability, ALNAP’S guide Evaluating Humanitarian Action using the OECD-DAC Criteria , by Tony Beck looks at how to strengthen evaluation of humanitarian assistance, and how to foster more effective use of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) evaluation criteria. It draws on good-practice material including other guides, handbooks and manuals. If you would like more information on ALNAP, visit the website…