The Determinants of Strategies in the Delivery of Humanitarian Assistance PDF Download

Author: Teresa Adair Booker
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Author: Hugo Slim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190613327
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Humanitarians are required to be impartial, independent, professionally competent and focused only on preventing and alleviating human suffering. It can be hard living up to these principles when others do not share them, while persuading political and military authorities and non-state actors to let an agency assist on the ground requires savvy ethical skills. Getting first to a conflict or natural catastrophe is only the beginning, as aid workers are usually and immediately presented with practical and moral questions about what to do next. For example, when does working closely with a warring party or an immoral regime move from practical cooperation to complicity in human rights violations? Should one operate in camps for displaced people and refugees if they are effectively places of internment? Do humanitarian agencies inadvertently encourage ethnic cleansing by always being ready to 'mop-up' the consequences of scorched earth warfare? This book has been written to help humanitarians assess and respond to these and other ethical dilemmas.

Author: Eilidh Kennedy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100046704X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 119

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This book provides humanitarian practitioners and policy makers with a manual for how to apply foresight and strategy in their work. Drawing on extensive research, the book demonstrates in practical terms how embedding futures-focused thinking into practice can help humanitarian actors to enhance their impact and fit for the future. The book provides readers with a step-by-step guide to an innovative combination of tools and methods tested and refined over the course of several years. However, it also goes beyond this, by grounding the approach within the broader ambition of making humanitarian action more effective. Overall, the analytical and strategic processes outlined in this book will accompany a decision maker through every stage of creating a robust, agile and impactful long-term strategy. This accessible guide will be an essential point of reference for practitioners and decision makers in the humanitarian ecosystem, as well as students studying humanitarian affairs, global development, conflict studies and international relations.

Author: Thorsten Volberg
Publisher: diplom.de
ISBN: 395636192X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 91

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Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: The past two decades have seen a significant increase in frequency and intensity of complex emergencies and natural disasters, leading to a rapid transformation in the policy and the institutional context of humanitarianism. Humanitarian assistance, which once covered a very narrow set of basic relief activities carried out by a small group of relatively independent actors, has expanded significantly to an ever-widening and much more complex range of rehabilitation work. This includes the definition of aid as being a starting-point for addressing poverty or being a tool for peace-building in internal conflicts. A growing diversity of non-humanitarian actors in the field, such as various profit agencies, governmental and non-governmental armed forces, also changed the picture of humanitarian aid and the perception of its character. This transformation has created a broad variety of standards for performance in the field, and led to increasing uncertainties on the quality of humanitarian responses and its accountability. Humanitarian catastrophes, like the Rwandan genocide, finally forced humanitarian agencies to think beyond traditional relief assistance based on the delivery of food, shelter or basic health care, and take a deeper reflection on how they actually perceive their own role and accountability in the humanitarian sphere. In 1997, the Sphere project was launched to develop inter alia a so-called Humanitarian Charter , which tries to put relief aid on a legal basis provided by international law. It emphasizes humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality and expresses agencies commitment to act in accordance with them. These principles provide an ethical framework, which defines and delineates the humanitarian space within which NGOs are supposed to operate. Sphere and its commitment to these traditional principles have both supporters and critics within the humanitarian system, especially when it comes to its usefulness in addressing the complexity of political factors surrounding an emergency situation. Humanitarian assistance has always been a highly political activity, as it involves engaging authorities in conflict-affected countries or relying on financial support that can be driven by a donor s political considerations. Nowadays, relief organizations seem to remain even less in control of their working environment due to expanding peacekeeping and military-led missions of the [...]

Author: Taylor B. Seybolt
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199252432
Category : Altruism
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Military intervention in a conflict without a reasonable prospect of success is unjustifiable, especially when it is done in the name of humanity. Couched in the debate on the responsibility to protect civilians from violence and drawing on traditional 'just war' principles, the centralpremise of this book is that humanitarian military intervention can be justified as a policy option only if decision makers can be reasonably sure that intervention will do more good than harm. This book asks, 'Have past humanitarian military interventions been successful?' It defines success as saving lives and sets out a methodology for estimating the number of lives saved by a particular military intervention. Analysis of 17 military operations in six conflict areas that were thedefining cases of the 1990s-northern Iraq after the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor-shows that the majority were successful by this measure. In every conflict studied, however, some military interventions succeeded while others failed, raising the question, 'Why have some past interventions been more successful than others?' This book argues that the central factors determining whether a humanitarian intervention succeeds are theobjectives of the intervention and the military strategy employed by the intervening states. Four types of humanitarian military intervention are offered: helping to deliver emergency aid, protecting aid operations, saving the victims of violence and defeating the perpetrators of violence. Thefocus on strategy within these four types allows an exploration of the political and military dimensions of humanitarian intervention and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four types.Humanitarian military intervention is controversial. Scepticism is always in order about the need to use military force because the consequences can be so dire. Yet it has become equally controversial not to intervene when a government subjects its citizens to massive violation of their basic humanrights. This book recognizes the limits of humanitarian intervention but does not shy away from suggesting how military force can save lives in extreme circumstances.

Author: Thomas Bowen
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464815755
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Adaptive social protection (ASP) helps to build the resilience of poor and vulnerable households to the impacts of large, covariate shocks, such as natural disasters, economic crises, pandemics, conflict, and forced displacement. Through the provision of transfers and services directly to these households, ASP supports their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to the shocks they face—before, during, and after these shocks occur. Over the long term, by supporting these three capacities, ASP can provide a pathway to a more resilient state for households that may otherwise lack the resources to move out of chronically vulnerable situations. Adaptive Social Protection: Building Resilience to Shocks outlines an organizing framework for the design and implementation of ASP, providing insights into the ways in which social protection systems can be made more capable of building household resilience. By way of its four building blocks—programs, information, finance, and institutional arrangements and partnerships—the framework highlights both the elements of existing social protection systems that are the cornerstones for building household resilience, as well as the additional investments that are central to enhancing their ability to generate these outcomes. In this report, the ASP framework and its building blocks have been elaborated primarily in relation to natural disasters and associated climate change. Nevertheless, many of the priorities identified within each building block are also pertinent to the design and implementation of ASP across other types of shocks, providing a foundation for a structured approach to the advancement of this rapidly evolving and complex agenda.

Author: Rob Kevlihan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136157395
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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This book examines the circumstances under which aid can contribute to the management and transformation of intra-state conflicts. How and when do insurgents govern? How does the presence of aid and social services influence how insurgents govern? Under what circumstances can aid contribute to the management and transformation of civil wars? The established literature in this area argues that aid exacerbates civil wars where resources are scarce as greedy rebels steal resources for themselves. This book, however, argues that under certain conditions such greed can be good. Drawing on primary research from three very different conflicts – Northern Ireland (1969–1998), southern Sudan (1983–2005) and Tajikistan (1992–1997) – and more than 10 years’ experience working in and researching humanitarian crises, this study breaks new ground through its wide-ranging comparison of conflicts. The book argues that insurgent efforts to reap rewards from aid and social services have in turn facilitated organizational changes and that these changes, while they may have had conflict-enhancing effects in the short term, have also contributed to conflict transformation over the long term. This book will be of much interest to students of insurgencies, civil wars, comparative politics, conflict management, humanitarian emergencies, public health and IR/Security Studies in general.

Author: Hanja Eurich
Publisher: Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH
ISBN: 3832524851
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Communication in the broadest sense gains increasing importance in UN peace missions. However, a gap between demand and reality can be observed that points to a multitude of problematic issues. These are taken up by the thesis and it is finally argued: Successful communication strategies need to be aligned to the goals and tasks of the UN mission on all levels in order to be credible; they need to be conflict and context responsive, inclusive and participatory, consider cultural peculiarities and cross vertical as well as horizontal conflict lines. In the tradition of conflict transformative approaches a framework for analysis and evaluation of communication strategies is built and applied to the UN peace missions in Timor-Leste and Nepal. Derived is a dynamic model for the design of communication strategies that covers all relevant fields of action and performances.

Author: R. Tomasini
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230233481
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Imagine planning an event like the Olympics. Now imagine planning the same event but not knowing when or where it will take place, or how many will attend. This is what humanitarian logisticians are up against. Oversights result in serious consequences for the victims of disasters. So they have to get it right, fast.

Author: B.S. Sahay
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 8132224167
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This book discusses emerging themes in the area of humanitarian logistics. It examines how humanitarian logistics and supply chains play a key role, focusing on rapidly delivering the correct amount of goods, people and monetary resources to the locations needed to achieve the success of relief efforts in response to global emergencies such as flood, earthquakes, wars etc. With an increase in the frequency, magnitude and impact of both natural and manmade disasters, effective delivery of humanitarian aid is an issue that is becoming increasingly important in the context of disaster management. The book focuses on how logistics systems and supply chains responsible for delivering this aid from origin to recipients can be made more effective and efficient. It also discusses how the development of information technology systems that can provide visibility to the disaster relief supply chain marks a huge step forward for the humanitarian sector as a whole. As more organizations begin to adopt and implement these systems and visibility is established, the use of key performance indicators will then become essential to further enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of these supply chains.