The Currency of Humanitarian Reform

Publication language

English

Pages

8pp

Date published

01 Nov 2005

Type

Research, reports and studies

Keywords

Funding and donors, System-wide performance

Organisations

The international humanitarian community faces an evergrowing

range of complex crises and changing threats, from

the challenges of protracted conflict and pandemics both

old (HIV/AIDS) and potentially new (avian flu) to sudden

and devastating natural disasters. The mechanisms that

humanitarians draw upon to respond to this diverse range of

crises have often been considered inadequate to the

challenges posed. In the past decade and a half, the

international humanitarian system has gone through more

than one round of reform in an attempt to address the

system’s flaws and limits. Measures adopted under the UN’s

General Assembly resolutions in 1991–92, the follow-up to

the Joint Evaluation of the Rwanda response in the mid-

1990s and changes introduced under the UN Secretary-

General’s 1997 reform package have all sought to improve

the coverage, coordination and effectiveness of the

humanitarian system. For all these efforts, however, the

system is still struggling to keep pace with the challenges it

confronts.

ALNAP