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| What is humanitarian assistance? |
Humanitarian assistance is the aid and action designed to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain and protect human dignity during and in the aftermath of emergencies.
Humanitarian aid and action might come in a variety of forms – money, supplies, personnel – and come from a variety of sources:
- governments
- NGOs
- UN agencies
- Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
- public donations
- local community groups
- remittances from diaspora communities.
Counting the amount of humanitarian assistance is a challenge at local, national and international level as the various participants will account for their expenditure in different ways. The accounts may or may not then be made visible.
Humanitarian assistance expenditure reporting is obligatory for only one group of participants in the humanitarian relief effort – the European Commission and the 22 national governments that belong to the OECD DAC. These donors contribute to what is often referred to as official flows of humanitarian assistance.
| Official flows of humanitarian assistance |
Members of the OECD DAC are obliged to report their expenditure on both development and humanitarian assistance – together referred to as official development assistance (ODA) – each year.
What is reported as ODA is governed by strict rules. This means that there are objective, internationally comparable figures going back to 1960, which are produced and validated by the OECD DAC each year. These provide an accepted benchmark for measuring performance.
In April 2007, the OECD DAC published revised directives, aligning the definition of humanitarian aid with that agreed by the Good Humanitarian Donorship (GHD) initiative. More >
The directives now set out three main categories of humanitarian aid – emergency response; reconstruction and rehabilitation; and disaster prevention and preparedness.
Emergency response is further broken down into material relief assistance and services, emergency food aid and relief and coordination services.
Donors will report their expenditure against these codes for the first time in 2007 figures (to be published towards the end of 2008.
“ ... save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain and protect human dignity during and in the aftermath of emergencies"
The revised DAC directives on official humanitarian aid reporting align the definition with that agreed by the GHD initiative
The members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Sweden, the UK, the US and the European Commission
>Development Initiatives 2008