Regional Organisations and Humanitarian Action

This Working Paper examines the literature on regional organisations’ humanitarian priorities and activities. While a stand-alone piece of research, it sets the stage for a broader study into regional organisations and humanitarian action by reviewing – and identifying gaps in – the existing literature. Indeed, it is important to acknowledge that there are many gaps in understanding, as research on (and attention to) regional economic cooperation and regional trade agreements has long outpaced work on regional organisations’ humanitarian efforts.
Following this introduction, Chapter 2 examines key concepts applicable to regional organisations, including foundational issues such as subsidiarity and sovereignty. While this paper primarily focuses on tangible issues, a basic conceptual overview helps to address some of the assumptions and conventional wisdom surrounding regional organisations. Chapter
3 offers a short review of the emergence of regional organisations’ humanitarian institutions, and Chapter 4 addresses an issue about which far less is known – the activities of regional organisations in crisis- affected contexts. Given the breadth of humanitarian action, this chapter focuses on assistance to refugee populations – given that they comprise a regional challenge – as well as DRR and conflict management. Then, wrapping up the discussion, Chapter 5 presents a series of questions which have not yet been addressed within the existing literature on regional organisations’ role in humanitarian action. Such questions will, in the future, be addressed in the Humanitarian Policy Group’s broader ‘Zones of Engagement’ project, which involves fieldwork concerning regional organisations in the Sahel and Southeast Asia (see HPG, 2013). However, before addressing key concepts, institutions and activities, it is useful to clarify some of the core terms used in this paper.