The humanitarian writer and analyst, Ben Ramalingam, explores what he sees as a slowly growing recognition that vulnerability itself has become globalised, just like the world economy, and argues that this insight shows that vulnerabilities in communities across the world are now tightly interconnected:

Jane Keylock will be discussing “Domestic Humanitarian Response” at the 26th ALNAP Meeting in Kuala Lumpur next week 16th-17th November. You can follow events at this meeting on the ALNAP website  throughout the week and participate through the forums on the site.

When a crisis hits, the main thing we hear about is what the international community is doing to help.  But how about what the people from the affected country are doing?  If you are affected by crisis, often the first, most visible, lifesaving and sometimes only response you will see is from people and organisations close at hand.....

Are visionary goals just self-indulgence to salve the consciences of world leaders? ......

HFPs core message, that the humanitarian community must gear up to prepare for greater and more diverse hazards of the 21^st Century, is echoed in a warning from the UK Defence Secretary.  Liam Fox highlights an almost unthinkable hazard -  an unprecedented solar flare destroying unprotected national electric grids. 

While controversial and contentious, the UN’s Millennium Development Goals [MDGs] nevertheless have a great deal to offer those who have humanitarian roles and responsibilities....

In response to Reuters’ observant  message that we need more preparedness to deal with future hazards, there is another important point to make.  It involves the term “natural disasters”.  The fact of the matter is that the hazards which trigger these humanitarian crises may well come from natural sources, but the disasters themselves are caused by the way human kind deals with the environment....

WORLD HUMANITARIAN DAY: A COMPELLING REMINDER

Three days before World Humanitarian Day, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon was pleading to the international community to speed up emergency operations to assist 20 million flood victims in Pakistan....

Whose principles, whose lives?

Conventional humanitarian agencies responding to crises such as the Pakistani floods, are going to have to deal with influential and popular “non-state actors” such as Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the hardline Islamist organisation thought to be a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which has incredible capacity to provide efficient relief for those affected by disaster.