The evidence is clear - the types and impacts of humanitarian crises, and their dimensions and dynamics, are increasing and will increase exponentially over the coming decade and beyond.  We have a sense of this intensity and frequency from recent memory and current imagery on our TV screens virtually every day, and the facts support it.  

Remember the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami; the 2005 Hurricane Katrina hitting a major US city, New Orleans; and this year alone - the Haiti earthquake, the Chile earthquake, the Mongolian blizzard, the Icelandic volcanic ash, the BP oil blowout, the unprecedented and catastrophic Pakistan floods and the heatwave that triggered forest fires and destruction of the Russian wheat harvest with massive economic impact.  

Indeed, the trend of rising intensity, frequency and diversity of such humanitarian crises is confirmed by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) EM-DAT database for hazards between 1960 and 2007.  Look at this very dramatic film which illustrates the different hazards the world is facing and challenges us to answer some fundamental questions:

• What are CRISIS DRIVERS?
• What makes people VULNERABLE and who are the VULNERABLE?
• What is HUMANITARIAN ACTION and who are the HUMANITARIAN ACTORS?
• and…what is HUMANITARIANISM in the 21^st Century?

HFP has developed a Global Humanitarian Timeline as a snapshot of evidence of increasing intensity, diversity and frequency of threats to the world as a whole.  Please click here to view the time line.

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