The World Food Programme (WFP) is an international organization within the United Nations that provides food assistance worldwide. It is the world's largest humanitarian organization and the leading provider of school meals. Founded in 1961, WFP is headquartered in Rome and has offices in 87 countries. In 2023 it supported over 152 million people, and is present in more than 120 countries and territories.
CARE is a major international humanitarian agency delivering emergency relief and long-term international development projects. Founded in 1945, CARE is nonsectarian, impartial, and non-governmental. It is one of the largest and oldest humanitarian aid organizations focused on fighting global poverty. In 2019, CARE reported working in 104 countries, supporting 1,349 poverty-fighting projects and humanitarian aid projects, and reaching over 92.3 million people directly and 433.3 million people indirectly.
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.
The Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations, formerly known as the European Community Humanitarian Aid Office, is the European Commission's department for overseas humanitarian aid and for civil protection. It aims to save and preserve life, prevent and alleviate human suffering and safeguard the integrity and dignity of populations affected by natural disasters and man-made crises. Since September 2019, Janez Lenarčič is serving as Commissioner for Crisis Management in the Von der Leyen Commission, and since 1 March 2023, Maciej Popowski leads the organisation as the Director-General.
A humanitarian crisis is defined as a singular event or a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or well-being of a community or large group of people. It may be an internal or external conflict and usually occurs throughout a large land area. Local, national and international responses are necessary in such events.
Islamic Relief Worldwide describes itself as "a faith-inspired humanitarian and development agency which is working to support and empower the world's most vulnerable people".
Humanitarian assistance is aid and action designed to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity during and after man-made crises and disasters. It encompasses a wide range of activities, including providing food, water, shelter, medical care, and protection. Humanitarian assistance is grounded in the principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is a United Nations (UN) body established in December 1991 by the General Assembly to strengthen the international response to complex emergencies and natural disasters. It is the successor to the Office of the United Nations Disaster Relief Coordinator (UNDRO).
Disaster response refers to the actions taken directly before, during, or immediately after a disaster. The objective is to save lives, ensure health and safety, and meet the subsistence needs of the people affected. It includes warning and evacuation, search and rescue, providing immediate assistance, assessing damage, continuing assistance, and the immediate restoration or construction of infrastructure. An example of this would be building provisional storm drains or diversion dams. Emergency response aims to provide immediate help to keep people alive, improve their health and support their morale. It can involve specific but limited aid, such as helping refugees with transport, temporary shelter, and food. Or it can involve establishing semi-permanent settlements in camps and other locations. It may also involve initial repairs to damage to infrastructure, or diverting it.
Acted is a French international solidarity non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 1993. It is headquartered in Paris.
Sphere is a global movement started in 1997 aiming to improve the quality of humanitarian assistance. The Sphere standards are the most commonly used and most widely known set of core humanitarian standards. Sphere's flagship publication is The Sphere Handbook.
Shelter Centre is a Swiss humanitarian NGO that works to support bodies involved in the shelter of populations affected by conflict and natural disaster, stating that is supplies collaboration, consensus, and capacity but does not implement operations directly.
Humanitarian Accountability Partnership International, established in 2003, was the humanitarian sector's first international self-regulatory body. A multi-agency initiative working to improve the accountability of humanitarian action to people affected by disasters and other crises, HAP members ranged from organisations with a mandate for emergency relief and development activities to institutional donors. The organisation aimed to strengthen accountability towards those affected by crisis situations and to facilitate improved performance within the humanitarian sector. The ultimate goal of the organisation was to uphold the rights and the dignity of crisis-affected populations across the world.
ShelterBox is an international disaster relief charity established in 2000 in Helston, Cornwall, UK, that provides emergency shelter and other aid items to families around the world who have lost their homes to disaster or conflict.
Humanitarian Initiative Just Relief Aid (HIJRA) is an African humanitarian organization focused on the implementation of emergency and resilience programming in the greater Horn of Africa, Somalia, Kenya, and Uganda.
RedR is an international NGO whose stated mission is to “rebuild lives in times of disaster by training, supporting, and providing aid workers to relief programmes across the world.” It was originally an acronym for Register of Engineers for Disaster Relief, although it is no longer used as such.
The Emergency Capacity Building Project is a collaborative capacity-building project aimed at improving the speed, effectiveness and delivery of humanitarian response programs. The ECB Project is a partnership between seven non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and implements programs in one region and four countries known as consortia.
Evidence Aid is an international platform that was formed out of the need to deliver time sensitive access to systematic reviews for use in the event of disasters and other humanitarian emergencies. The method of using systematic reviews is to provide evidence for use by policy makers, clinicians, regulators, and even the general public who benefit when these materials are easy to understand and are accessible. The vision of Evidence Aid is to create and satisfy an increasing demand for evidence to improve the impact of humanitarian aid by stimulating the use of an evidence-based approach. Evidence Aid was founded in 2004. It is currently a project that is housed by the Cochrane Collaboration and Queen's University Belfast. Evidence Aid was established by several members of the international Cochrane Collaboration following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Evidence Aid was formed to provide systematic reviews on the effects of interventions and actions of relevance prior to, in the course of and during the aftermath of disasters or other humanitarian emergencies, in order to improve health-related outcomes; their aim is to work with those who need and use this evidence, as well as working with researchers and publishers to facilitate freely accessible materials to meet the information needs for those facing humanitarian emergencies and disasters. Evidence Aid works in collaboration with other organizations including Public Health England; Red Cross Flanders, International Rescue Committee; Centers for Disease Control; Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine; and the University of Oxford.
The United Nations World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) was held in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 23 and 24, 2016. The summit was an initiative of the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon and was organized by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI) is a NGO registered in India. Located at Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, it works on disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and disaster mitigation. It is a community-based ; action planning, action research and advocacy organization, working towards bridging the gap between policy, practice and research related to disaster mitigation. AIDMI have been working on six pillars: (i) Awareness generation, (ii) Capacity building, (iii) Policy advocacy, (iv) Direct implementation, (v) Research and publications, and (vi) Networking.
