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The Changing Context of Humanitarian Action: Key Challenges and Issues

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International Humanitarian Action

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the main external and internal challenges facing humanitarian action and the key issues in its agenda. The convergence of global trends such as climate change, migration and population growth, urbanization, growing inequalities and resource scarcity together with the inability to resolve intractable conflicts and protracted crises are exacerbating people’s vulnerability. The humanitarian system needs to adapt to a changing humanitarian context and make humanitarian action more effective and inclusive to respond to the needs of people in crises. However, shifting the focus to managing risk and prevention will require the full extent of political will, capacity, and resources of donor governments and affected States.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    UN General Assembly (2016a).

  2. 2.

    UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon took stock of these changes in his address to the 66th General Assembly, ‘We the Peoples’, on 21 September 2011. One of the actions foreseen for building a safer and more secure world was to build a more global, accountable and robust humanitarian system by, among other specific measures, ‘convening a world humanitarian summit to help share knowledge and establish common best practices among the wide spectrum of organisations involved in humanitarian action’ (UNSG 2011, p. 8).

  3. 3.

    This chapter draws on research conducted for a study commissioned to the author by the European Union Directorate-General for External Policies of the Union at the request of the European Parliament’s Committee on Development (DEVE) to prepare a common European position for the World Humanitarian summit: Churruca Muguruza (2015), http://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?reference=EXPO_STU(2015)549048.

  4. 4.

    See: Borton (2009); Cairns (2012); CaLP (2013); EUPRHA (2013), http://www.euprha.org/library; Gelsdorf (2010); Global Humanitarian Assistance (2014), available (together with older as well as the most recent reports) at: www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/reports/; OCHA (2014).

  5. 5.

    Betts (2010), pp. 361–382.

  6. 6.

    OECD (2015).

  7. 7.

    World Bank (2011), p. 2.

  8. 8.

    See, von Seidel et al. (2014).

  9. 9.

    Ibáñez Muñoz and Sánchez Aviles (2015); Stepanova (2010), http://www.sipri.org/yearbook/2010/02. World Bank (2011), p. 2.

  10. 10.

    Muggha (2012).

  11. 11.

    Savage and Muggah (2012), http://sites.tufts.edu/jha/archives/1524.

  12. 12.

    Ibid.

  13. 13.

    Ibid.

  14. 14.

    See, UN Security Council (2015).

  15. 15.

    Ibid.

  16. 16.

    UN General Assembly (2016c).

  17. 17.

    Duffield (2002), pp. 153–166.

  18. 18.

    UN General Assembly (2016a).

  19. 19.

    At the end of 2015, each of the 10 largest consolidated humanitarian appeals involved situations of armed conflict. At the beginning of 2016, and throughout that year, the world had to deal with four L3 (level 3) disasters, the highest UN categorisation of crises: South Sudan, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

  20. 20.

    World Bank (2011), p. 4.

  21. 21.

    Institute for Economics and Peace (2016), p. 3.

  22. 22.

    European Parliament Directorate-General for External Policies, Policy Department (2015), p. 21.

  23. 23.

    Inter-Agency Standing Committee Principals, The Centrality of Protection in Humanitarian Action, 17 December 2013, http://interagencystandingcommittee.org/sites/default/files/centrality_of_protection_in_humanitarian_action_statement_by_iasc_princi.pdf.

  24. 24.

    UN General Assembly (2015).

  25. 25.

    Slim and Trombetta (2014), p. 45.

  26. 26.

    ICRC (2012), p. 7.

  27. 27.

    UN General Assembly (2016b).

  28. 28.

    UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2015).

  29. 29.

    The majority of these migrants set sail from Libya and are either Syrians or Sub-Saharan Africans, especially from Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia. See, MHub (2015), http://www.mixedmigrationhub.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Conditions-and-Risks-in-Mixed-Migration-in-North-East-Africa.pdf.

  30. 30.

    International Organization for Migration (IOM) (2015), http://missingmigrants.iom.int/latest-global-figures; Brian and Laczko (2014).

  31. 31.

    The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) (2015), p. 15.

  32. 32.

    There is evidence of the rising impact disasters have had over the past 30 years: over 3.3 million people killed; 50% of deaths occurred in poverty-stricken countries, but they accounted for only 9% of disasters. The economic cost of disasters has tripled. Disasters also push people into poverty. Poverty levels after the Haiti 2010 earthquake and Djibouti 2011 drought returned to early 2001–2003 levels. See, OCHA (2014).

  33. 33.

    Rubin (2006).

  34. 34.

    ICRC (2014), p. 5.

  35. 35.

    Save the Children (2014), p. 15.

  36. 36.

    Ibid.

  37. 37.

    Id., p. 1.

  38. 38.

    Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Inter Agency Standing Committee Principals (2013), p. 5, http://www.globalprotectioncluster.org/_assets/files/tools_and_guidance/human_rights_protection/OHCHR-UNHCR%20Joint%20Paper_EN.pdf.

  39. 39.

    Ibid.

  40. 40.

    There is a lot of confusion about the meaning of protection. Protection can be understood in three ways: as an objective, as a legal responsibility and as an activity. Protection is an objective that requires equal respect for the rights of all individuals, without discrimination, in accordance with national and international law. Protection is also a legal responsibility, mainly of the State and its agents. Protection of civilians is a legal concept based on IHL, human rights and refugee law. It refers to the protection of civilians in armed conflict according to IHL and human rights law.

  41. 41.

    Harvey (2009).

  42. 42.

    Slim and Trombetta (2014), p. 61.

  43. 43.

    Drumtra (2014).

  44. 44.

    Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Oxfam International, the International Save the Children Alliance and World Vision International (ALNAP, 2015).

  45. 45.

    Svoboda et al. (2015).

  46. 46.

    Ogata (2005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain

    Cristina Churruca-Muguruza

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  1. Cristina Churruca-Muguruza
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Correspondence to Cristina Churruca-Muguruza .

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  1. Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Hans-Joachim Heintze

  2. Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Pierre Thielbörger

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Churruca-Muguruza, C. (2018). The Changing Context of Humanitarian Action: Key Challenges and Issues. In: Heintze, HJ., Thielbörger, P. (eds) International Humanitarian Action. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14454-2_1

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