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Humanitarian assistance has attracted the attention of the global community in recent years and the conceptual framework for participation in the humanitarian assistance operations is gaining increasing urgency among policy makers of the world. While the humanitarian gesture – the will to relieve the suffering of others- is centuries old and genuinely global, has been present in various forms throughout the human civilisation often in the form of food or material aid providing during famine, drought or natural disaster. With the end of Cold War, both the concept and the practice of the humanitarian assistance has significantly changed due to rising armed and ethnic conflicts, which offer much broader and long term objectives, such as development and peace. After the end of cold war Humanitarian assistance has emerged as an important mission for major militaries around the world and the mission that was largely left to the organisations such as the International Red Cross has now become an important part of the security agenda of nations with significant military capability. Since independence from Britain, which coincided with the partition of the subcontinent, India has come to the aid of people in need. Due to the significant expansion of the Indian economy from the last decades, the availability of greater financial resources in hand and a sense of growing regional and international responsibilities, India has revived and rejuvenated its tradition of giving humanitarian assistance. Although not formulated in policy, India's approach to Humanitarian assistance is derived from set of principles and priorities derived from the core values of its foreign policy. The purpose of the paper is to provide an introduction to the emergence of the international humanitarian assistance system with a review of the principles of humanitarian assistance. The paper also focuses on India's conception of humanitarian assistance and its underlying principles, motives and priorities for providing humanitarian assistance.

Humanitarian assistance in armed conflict and other disasters can involve a great variety of institutions and participants all operating simultaneously, including national civil defence organizations, military units, Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, international governmental organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

This report provides the U.S. governmental response of the international disasters and humanitarian assistance.

Donors, the UN, & other international organizations & NGOs are increasingly interested in using participatory & beneficiary-based methodologies in their evaluation processes.

This essay discusses the economic impact of relief & rehabilitation aid, including the expansion of the "disaster industry" & the effects on the recipient country. The growth & proliferation of nongovernmental relief agencies during the late 1980s & 1990s are recounted. The political & economic implications of the global relief industry are addressed, including the donor-driven nature of funding that increases the likelihood of agencies becoming an arm of their home countries' foreign policy initiatives. The prospects & suggestions for developing appropriate focus on the beneficiaries rather than the donors are reviewed. Economic effects of humanitarian aid on the local economy include currency & exchange rate payment issues, inflationary impact of large cash inflows, & the rise of the informal sector, among several other issues. Recommendations & criteria for relief agencies' activities are proposed. L. Collins

United States (us) counter-terrorism measures – including the us Code on material support, sanction regimes and donor restrictions – have the unintentional affect of constraining humanitarian action. Under current us law, incidental financial transactions with designated entities, even when necessary for the provision of purely humanitarian aid, are prohibited. Engagement to ensure the protection of civilians, gain access to vulnerable populations, ensure staff security or coordinate the implementation of humanitarian programmes that could be considered "training […] or expert advise" would similarly be subject to individual criminal liability under us jurisdiction. In contexts where designated entities are present, humanitarian actors are potentially faced with undermining their impartiality and neutrality by choosing beneficiaries on criteria other than needs alone, or compromising the principle of humanity by choosing not to provide assistance in certain areas despite potential greater needs there. Passage of the House Resolution 3526, otherwise known as the Humanitarian Assistance Facilitation Action, would decriminalize incidental financial transactions with designated entities, but it would do little to change the legal challenges to a range of other types of humanitarian engagement for the provision of assistance and protection to civilians. It would also not change us donor restrictions that often prevent any direct engagement with designated entities.

Military assets, which include personnel, make an important contribution to disaster relief. However, military deployments can be politically sensitive, and the relevant international law is contested and not binding. This article compares two sets of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) Guidelines on this issue. The 2007 Oslo Guidelines1 state that military assets should be used in disaster relief only as a last resort, while the 2014 Asia-Pacific Regional Guidelines2 acknowledge that military assets are often the first to respond to disasters in the region. Drawing on examples primarily from Asia, this article explores the apparent conflict between these two UN Guidelines and asks two questions about the deployment of foreign military assets in disaster relief. First, to what extent does international law authorize or limit the deployment of foreign military assets in disaster relief? Second, what are the politics of deploying military assets in disaster relief? This article argues that, rather than representing a global standard, the Oslo Guidelines better reflect European practice within Europe, while the Asia-Pacific Regional Guidelines are more representative of practice worldwide. It concludes that the type of military aid provided is key to its compliance with international law and its political acceptance.

Abstract
Global counterterrorism efforts have had a number of detrimental effects on the work of humanitarian actors in conflict zones. To mitigate these adverse effects and the underlying normative conflict between counterterrorism frameworks and international humanitarian law (IHL), scholars and humanitarian practitioners have been advocating for the introduction of humanitarian exemptions. These are clauses that exempt humanitarian assistance and related conduct from counterterrorism frameworks in order to ensure an unimpeded provision of humanitarian assistance in areas in which entities designated as 'terrorists' are active. This article argues that the progress promised by the emergence of these exemptions remains at least partially illusive. The exemptions remain shaped by a security-oriented perspective on humanitarian assistance and are preoccupied with actors. As a result, they are beneficial primarily to the largest and most prominent humanitarian actors established in the Global North while neglecting small and local humanitarian actors in conflict areas. As such, they defy IHL's deliberate openness regarding the actors providing humanitarian assistance. Moreover, they violate the obligations of non-belligerent states under IHL to allow and facilitate the free passage of relief consignments which equally protects transnational financial support to local humanitarian actors and applies irrespective of the source of that support. We conclude that humanitarian exemptions are detrimental to efforts to 'localize' and decolonize the humanitarian sector. Therefore, instead of focusing on humanitarian exemptions as a 'micro-solution', advocacy should pursue a more comprehensive critical approach towards the global counterterrorism architecture.