Humanitarian aid
Humanitarian aid is material and logistic assistance, usually in the short-term, to people in need. Among the people in need are the homeless, refugees, and victims of natural disasters, wars, and famines. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity.
While often used interchangeably, humanitarian aid and humanitarian assistance are distinct concepts. Humanitarian aid generally refers to the provision of immediate, short-term relief in crisis situations, such as food, water, shelter, and medical care. Humanitarian assistance, on the other hand, encompasses a broader range of activities, including longer-term support for recovery, rehabilitation, and capacity building. Humanitarian aid is distinct from development aid, which seeks to address underlying socioeconomic factors.
Humanitarian aid can come from either local or international communities through international non-governmental organizations. In reaching out to international communities, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the United Nations is responsible for coordination responses to emergencies. It taps to the various members of Inter-Agency Standing Committee, whose members are responsible for providing emergency relief. The four UN entities that have primary roles in delivering humanitarian aid are United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Refugee Agency, the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Food Programme.According to the Global Humanitarian Overview of OCHA, nearly 300 million people need humanitarian assistance and protection in 2024, or 1 out of 27 people worldwide. In 2024, the estimated global humanitarian response requirements amount to approximately US$46.4 billion, targeting around 188 million of the most vulnerable people in 69 countries. The three major drivers of humanitarian needs worldwide are conflicts, climate-related disasters, and economic factors.
Types
Food aid
Food aid is a type of aid whereby food that is given to countries in urgent need of food supplies, especially if they have just experienced a natural disaster. Food aid can be provided by importing food from the donor, buying food locally, or providing cash.The welfare impacts of any food aid-induced changes in food prices are decidedly mixed, underscoring the reality that it is impossible to generate only positive intended effects from an international aid program. Although food aid constitutes a significant part of humanitarian assistance, evidence also suggests that it can initiate or amplify violent conflicts in the recipient countries.
Changed consumption patterns
Food aid that is relatively inappropriate to local uses can distort consumption patterns. Food aid is usually exported from temperate climate zones and is often different than the staple crops grown in recipient countries, which usually have a tropical climate. The logic of food export inherently entails some effort to change consumers' preferences, to introduce recipients to new foods and thereby stimulate demand for foods with which recipients were previously unfamiliar or which otherwise represent only a small portion of their diet.Massive shipments of wheat and rice into the West African Sahel during the food crises of the mid-1970s and mid-1980s were widely believed to stimulate a shift in consumer demand from indigenous coarse grains – millet and sorghum – to western crops such as wheat. During the 2000 drought in northern Kenya, the price of changaa fell significantly and consumption seems to have increased as a result. This was a result of grain food aid inflows increasing the availability of low-cost inputs to the informal distilling industry.
Natural resource overexploitation
Recent research suggests that patterns of food aid distribution may inadvertently affect the natural environment, by changing consumption patterns and by inducing locational change in grazing and other activities. A pair of studies in Northern Kenya found that food aid distribution seems to induce greater spatial concentration of livestock around distribution points, causing localized rangeland degradation, and that food aid provided as whole grain requires more cooking, and thus more fuelwood is consumed, stimulating local deforestation.Medical humanitarian aid
There are different kinds of medical humanitarian aid, including: providing medical supplies and equipment; sending professionals to an affected region; and long-term training for local medical staff. Such aid emerged when international organizations stepped in to respond to the need of national governments for global support and partnership to address natural disasters, wars, and other crises that impact people's health. Often, a humanitarian aid organization would clash with a government's approach to the unfolding domestic conflict. In such cases, humanitarian aid organizations have sought out autonomy to extend help regardless of political or ethnic affiliation.Limitations
Humanitarian medical aid as a sector possesses several limitations. First, multiple organizations often exist to solve the same problem. Rather than collaborating to address a given situation, organizations frequently interact as competitors, which creates bottlenecks for treatment and supplies. A second limitation is how humanitarian organizations are focused on a specific disaster or epidemic, without a plan for whatever might come next; international organizations frequently enter a region, provide short term aid, and then exit without ensuring local capacity to maintain or sustain this medical care. Finally, humanitarian medical aid assumes a biomedical approach which does not always account for the alternative beliefs and practices about health and well-being in the affected regions. This problem is rarely explored as most studies conducted are done from the lens of the donor or Westernized humanitarian organization rather than the recipient country's perspective. Discovering ways of encouraging locals to embrace bio-medicinal approaches while simultaneously respecting a given people's culture and beliefs remains a major challenge for humanitarian aid organizations; in particular as organizations constantly enter new regions as crises occur. However, understanding how to provide aid cohesively with existing regional approaches is necessary in securing the local peoples' acceptance of the humanitarian aid's work.Funding sources
Aid is funded by donations from individuals, corporations, governments and other organizations. The funding and delivery of humanitarian aid is increasingly international, making it much faster, more responsive, and more effective in coping to major emergencies affecting large numbers of people. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs coordinates the international humanitarian response to a crisis or emergency pursuant to Resolution 46/182 of the United Nations General Assembly. The need for aid is ever-increasing and has long outstripped the financial resources available.The Central Emergency Response Fund was created at the 2005 Central Emergency Response Fund at the United Nations General Assembly.
Delivery of humanitarian aid
Methods of delivery
Humanitarian aid spans a wide range of activities, including providing food aid, shelter, education, healthcare or protection. The majority of aid is provided in the form of in-kind goods or assistance, with cash and vouchers constituting only 6% of total humanitarian spending. However, evidence has shown how cash transfers can be better for recipients as it gives them choice and control, they can be more cost-efficient and better for local markets and economies.It is important to note that humanitarian aid is not only delivered through aid workers sent by bilateral, multilateral or intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations. Actors like the affected people themselves, civil society, local informal first-responders, civil society, the diaspora, businesses, local governments, military, local and international non-governmental organizations all play a crucial role in a timely delivery of humanitarian aid.
How aid is delivered can affect the quality and quantity of aid. Often in disaster situations, international aid agencies work in hand with local agencies. There can be different arrangements on the role these agencies play, and such arrangement affects the quality of hard and soft aid delivered.