Humanitarian aid is material and logistic assistance to people who need help. It is usually short-term help until the long-term help by the government and other institutions replaces it. Among the people in need are the homeless, refugees, and victims of natural disasters, wars, and famines. Humanitarian relief efforts are provided for humanitarian purposes and include natural disasters and man-made disasters. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity. It may, therefore, be distinguished from development aid, which seeks to address the underlying socioeconomic factors which may have led to a crisis or emergency. There is a debate on linking humanitarian aid and development efforts, which was reinforced by the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. However, the conflation is viewed critically by practitioners.
Nation-building is constructing or structuring a national identity using the power of the state. Nation-building aims at the unification of the people within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run. According to Harris Mylonas, "Legitimate authority in modern national states is connected to popular rule, to majorities. Nation-building is the process through which these majorities are constructed."
Human security is a paradigm for understanding global vulnerabilities whose proponents challenges the traditional notion of national security through military security by arguing that the proper referent for security should be at the human rather than national level. Human security reveals a people-centred and multi-disciplinary understanding of security which involves a number of research fields, including development studies, international relations, strategic studies, and human rights. The United Nations Development Programme's 1994 Human Development Report is considered a milestone publication in the field of human security, with its argument that ensuring "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear" for all persons is the best path to tackle the problem of global insecurity.
Development aid is a type of foreign/international/overseas aid given by governments and other agencies to support the economic, environmental, social, and political development of developing countries. Closely-related concepts include: developmental aid, development assistance, official development assistance, development policy, development cooperation and technical assistance. It is distinguished from humanitarian aid by aiming at a sustained improvement in the conditions in a developing country, rather than short-term relief. Development aid is thus widely seen as a major way to meet Sustainable Development Goal 1 for the developing nations.
In international relations, aid is – from the perspective of governments – a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another.
State-building as a specific term in social sciences and humanities, refers to political and historical processes of creation, institutional consolidation, stabilization and sustainable development of states, from the earliest emergence of statehood up to the modern times. Within historical and political sciences, there are several theoretical approaches to complex questions related to role of various contributing factors in state-building processes.
A fragile state or weak state is a country characterized by weak state capacity or weak state legitimacy leaving citizens vulnerable to a range of shocks. The World Bank, for example, deems a country to be ‘fragile’ if it (a) is eligible for assistance from the International Development Association (IDA), (b) has had a UN peacekeeping mission in the last three years, and (c) has received a ‘governance’ score of less than 3.2. A more cohesive definition of the fragile state might also note a state's growing inability to maintain a monopoly on force in its declared territory. While a fragile state might still occasionally exercise military authority or sovereignty over its declared territory, its claim grows weaker as the logistical mechanisms through which it exercises power grow weaker.
Peacebuilding is an activity that aims to resolve injustice in nonviolent ways and to transform the cultural and structural conditions that generate deadly or destructive conflict. It revolves around developing constructive personal, group, and political relationships across ethnic, religious, class, national, and racial boundaries. The process includes violence prevention; conflict management, resolution, or transformation; and post-conflict reconciliation or trauma healing before, during, and after any given case of violence.
The Fragile States Index is an annual report published by the United States think tank the Fund for Peace and the American magazine Foreign Policy from 2005 to 2018, then by The New Humanitarian since 2019. The list aims to assess states' vulnerability to conflict or collapse, ranking all sovereign states with membership in the United Nations where there is enough data available for analysis. Taiwan, the Palestinian Territories, Northern Cyprus, Kosovo and Western Sahara are not ranked, despite being recognized as sovereign by one or more other nations. Ranking is based on the sum of scores for 12 indicators. Each indicator is scored on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being the lowest intensity and 10 being the highest intensity, creating a scale spanning 0−120.
Alan Claude Doss is a British international civil servant who has spent his entire professional life in the service of the United Nations, working on peacekeeping, development and humanitarian assignments in Africa, Asia and Europe as well as at United Nations Headquarters in New York City.
The Center on International Cooperation (CIC) is a foreign policy think tank based at New York University that works to enhance multilateral responses to global problems, including conflict, humanitarian crises, and recovery; international security challenges, including weapons proliferation and the changing balance of power; resource scarcity and climate change. It was founded in 1996 by Dr. Shepard Forman.
Bruce D. Jones, Ph.D. is an academic, an author and policy analyst. He is Director of the Foreign Policy program and Director of the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution. He is also a consulting professor at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University and chair of the advisory council of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.
Promoting recovery from conflict is not limited to simply a humanitarian, security or development issue and often involves a combination of all three. Stabilization of fragile states is an approach and a process regarding the fragility and security of said states. Hence, stabilization is an essential concept in relation to fragile and failed states, where basic institutions and services are lacking and where conflict is an influential factor. OECD uses the term from fragility to resilient to describe the process of stabilization.
Emília Pires was East Timor's Minister of Finance from April 2007 until 16 February 2015. Ms. Pires was sworn in as the Minister of Finance of the V Constitutional Government of East Timor on August 8, 2012 under the leadership of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmão.
The Azerbaijan International Development Agency (AIDA) was established in September 2011 under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan. AIDA is responsible for the provision of international humanitarian and development assistance by the Republic of Azerbaijan and coordinates activities of all relevant government bodies in this field.
The g7+, established in 2010, is an intergovernmental voluntary organisation bringing together countries that are either facing active conflict or have recent experience of conflict and fragility. It has 20 member countries from Asia, the Pacific, Africa and the Caribbean with a combined population of 260 million.
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.
UNITAR PTP is the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) peacekeeping training programme. The peacekeeping training programme contributes to the international community's efforts towards the peaceful resolution of conflicts and the building of lasting peace. Recognizing that peace is a prerequisite for the achievement of the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, the peacekeeping training programme supports the development of capacities in the areas of peacekeeping, peacebuilding and crisis management. Through innovative and results-oriented approaches, the Programme strengthens knowledge and skills of individuals, groups or institutions.
The Institute for Human Security is an interdisciplinary education and research organization founded in 2001, devoted to the study of human security, within The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, at Tufts University. IHS promotes research and education on the overlaps between humanitarianism, development, human rights, and conflict resolution. It is recognized as one of the early leading academic institutions in its field.
Global Humanitarian Overview is an annual report published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
