Humanitarian Assistance: Truly Universal? A mapping study of non-Western donors

A serious imbalance characterizes the international humanitarian system. Most of the international governance mechanisms where humanitarian assistance is discussed and shaped, such as donor support groups or the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC), are closed circles of primarily Western humanitarian donors. States like China, Russia, Saudi Arabia or Brazil, all of whom have increased their humanitarian assistance provision, do not take part in these fora1 (Development Initiatives (DI) 2010). Outside the diplomatic fields of the United Nations General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), no meeting ground exists for established donors and their counterparts from the non-Western world to deliberate the normative and technical aspects of international humanitarian assistance. As a result, the current discourse overlooks the different traditions and approaches to humanitarian aid (Donini 2010), opening the door for uncoordinated donorship that may lead to duplications, gaps and other inefficiencies in humanitarian response.