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Over the past five years, hunger has been on the rise again, and the number of food crises has increased. In 2022, 828 million people worldwide went hungry – 46 million more than in the previous year. According to the World Food Programme’s 2023 Global Report on Food Crises, there were fifty-eight food crises across the […]

This latest issue of Humanitarian Alternatives focuses on the multiple humanitarian concerns Central America is grappling with. Often regarded as a transit region, Central America is undergoing major demographic change that is destabilising the socioeconomic equilibrium in an already vulnerable area. This issue seeks to shed light on the daily lives of both the resident […]

At the end of the first World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May 2016, diplomats and heads of state were agreed on the goal of “upholding the norms that safeguard humanity”. The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s report, published prior to the event, put the emphasis on the promotion of international humanitarian law (IHL). Six years […]

Since the mid-1990s, mental health has been recognised as a crucial aspect of human suffering in humanitarian crises. Many organisations have built expertise specific to acute crisis situations based on years of experience and practices, developed in Bosnia, Rwanda or Chechnya. This increased awareness has highlighted new needs and formalised new approaches spanning the whole […]

Together with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and specialised United Nations (UN) entities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from international civil society are the third-largest family of international actors. Still overwhelmingly Western, they bring together and organise citizens who share an ambition to change public policies in their countries of origin. But they also […]

Co-director of this issue’s Focus, with Boris Martin, Editor-in-Chief

Valérie Gorin • Senior lecturer and researcher at the Centre of Humanitarian Studies, Geneva (University of Geneva and Graduate Institute) and member of the Humanitarian Alternatives Editorial Board Co-editor of this issue’s Focus, with Boris Martin, Editor-in-Chief

Co-editor of this issue’s Focus with Boris Martin, Editor-in-Chief

In spite of some notable bridge-building efforts and much joint work carried out in recent years, researchers and humanitarian actors continue to regard each other too often with suspicion rooted in a mutual lack of understanding. The former are still sometimes perceived as preaching from the comfort of their ivory tower while the latter are […]

& Boris Martin • Editor-in-Chief In early 2018, several employees of a British non-governmental organisation (NGO) were accused of sexual abuse in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. What would become known as the “Oxfam scandal” shows that humanitarian aid is not immune to the scourge of gender-based and sexual violence. Other NGOs, as well as […]

Joint editor with Boris Martin, Editor-in-Chief,  of this issue under a partnership between Humanitarian Alternatives and the International Humanitarian Studies Association We have not seen the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. After attempting to manage – with extremely variable results from one continent to another – the first episode of the pandemic during the first semester […]

The entire world has, to say the least, been “gripped” by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the “little” humanitarian world has not escaped. It was undoubtedly less surprised by this explosion, even though it is still trying to measure all the related direct and collateral damage. This is what this entire issue is about, since the […]

Sophie Zaccaria est copilote du Focus de ce numéro, avec la participation de Pierre Gallien, directeur Impact, Information et Innovation à Humanité & Inclusion

Vincent Léger is co-pilot of this issue’s Focus.

Christophe Buffet is co-director of this issue’s Focus “Are humanitarian aid workers ready to tackle the challenge of climate change?”  We were already asking ourselves this question in 2009[1]Christophe  Buffet, « Les humanitaires sont-ils prêts à relever le défi du changement climatique ? », Humanitaire, n° 23, décembre  2009, http://journals.openedition.org/humanitaire/598 on the eve of the COP15 in Copenhagen. Where do […]

From the plains of Solferino to the mountains of Afghanistan, by way of Ethiopian villages and the South American bush, humanitarian aid has mainly been forged at a distance from urban settings. Certainly, cities have never been spared their share of wars, natural disasters or epidemics. Lisbon, Hiroshima, Saigon, Beirut, Sarajevo and Sanaa spring to […]

If ever there was an expression seemingly devised for the study of humanitarian action, the one that fits the bill perfectly is “critical juncture” – a series of events which, when combined, mark a turning point in the history of a society. The history of humanitarian action is punctuated with such junctures, the most visible […]

Danielle Tan and Pierre Gallien are members of the editorial board and co-editors of this issue’s Focus Innovation is not a new phenomenon for leading actors of international solidarity. A number of historical examples has shown this, such as the creation of bamboo prostheses for Cambodian refugees by Handicap International in the 1980s, the development […]

Everybody has heard of the concept of squaring the circle, unsolved since ancient times, referring to the mathematical challenge of constructing a square with the same area as a given circle with a compass and a ruler. Humanitarian action has its own equivalent – amongst many others: the growing cohabitation of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) with the […]

For a number of years, the humanitarian ecosystem has been undergoing changes. One of the reasons for the existence of our review is to accompany this transition and open it up for debate by inviting its actors and observers to exchange with each other. If there is one phenomenon that is emblematic of this transformation, […]

Modern humanitarian aid took shape and formulated its vision on European battlefields with the creation of the Red Cross. Almost a century later, in the 1960s, international aid, which was finishing its mission of European reconstruction, turned to Africa and the Third World. Development NGOs, national development aid agencies, and different programmes and funds of […]

You have to wake people up; to revolutionize their way of identifying things. You’ve got to create images they won’t accept; oblige them to express their outrage; force them to understand that they’re living in a pretty queer world, a world that’s not reassuring, a world that’s not what they think it is.” This quote […]

We have discussed what would be the added value of Humanitarian Alternatives’ contributing to the abundant debate over migrants and moving populations. First and foremost, the migrant crisis constitutes a mandatory injunction for politicians to make the appropriate decisions, like the German Chancellor did in the summer of 2015. But it also challenges humanitarian actors […]

After February’s inaugural release of Humanitarian Alternatives, it was obvious that this second issue could only be devoted to the first major event of its kind: the World Humanitarian Summit. Many of you will be present in Istanbul on May 23 and 24 to attend this great international gathering organized by the United Nations in […]

At the beginning of the 1970’s, the creation of Médecins sans Frontières wrote the first pages of a history in which numerous initiatives sharing a renewed conception of humanitarian action are inscribed. Close to half a century later the following recognition is required: the reputation of the “frontierless” movement remains attached to the original ruptures […]