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Climate change is the single largest threat to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and sustainable development. Addressing climate risk is a challenge for all. This book calls for greater collaboration between climate communities and disaster development communities. In discussing this, the book will evaluate the approaches used by each community to reduce the adverse effects of climate change. One area that offers some promise for bringing together these communities is through the concept of resilience. This term is increasingly used in each community to describe a pr

It is increasingly widely recognised that humanitarian assistance is broadly understood in two distinct ways: one is to see it as a part of foreign policy, which is the customary position of donating states; the other is to see it as independent of governments and a matter of relieving suffering without distinction and is embodied in the Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross/ Red Crescent family. The present authors argue that any intervention is necessarily a political event and they support this contention with an examination of assistance in Sudan in general and Darfur in particular. In describing the way in which donating states concentrated on the settlement between Khartoum and south Sudan to the detriment of intervention in Darfur in time to forestall massive human slaughter, the authors are pointing to political failure. They also maintain that the consequence of not recognising and examining the political nature of humanitarian assistance is to reduce people affected by emergencies of all kinds to the status of victim, which deprives them of the ability to be the principal agents of their own recovery.

Over the last decade humanitarian interventions have increased significantly. Parallel to this increase in humanitarian assistance has been the growth of evaluation of humanitarian action. This article describes the results of a global evaluation of emergency assistance from 1992 to 1999. It was undertaken by DANIDA utilizing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) methodology for humanitarian evaluation. The evaluation reports that lie behind this summary article are based on case studies in Afghanistan, Angola, the Caucasus, the Great Lakes, Sudan and the Former Yugoslavia. In addition detailed analysis was provided of the international response system, focusing on the United Nations family of humanitarian actors and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as well as leading international non-governmental organizations. These reports were summarized in an overall synthesis report, which is used to draw out the conclusions contained in this article. The conclusions note the significant level of change that has occurred, especially the debate about the disaster continuum and the emerging problem of internally displaced people. The article also notes the impact of the overall evaluation exercise on the reformulation of Danish humanitarian assistance.

Seit den neunziger Jahren hat der Umfang bzw. die Anzahl von internationalen Aktionen der humanitären Hilfe stark zugenommen. Die immer komplexeren Kombinationen von Naturkatastrophen und politischen Krisen erfordern neue Konzepte, um Maßnahmen der Katastrophenhilfe, des Wiederaufbaus und der langfristigen Entwicklungshilfe aufeinander abzustimmen. Welche besonderen Probleme dabei zu berücksichtigen und welche Fehler zu vermeiden sind, will der Autor anhand der humanitären Hilfsaktionen zeigen, die von verschiedenen Akteuren während der Dürreperiode in Kenia zwischen 1992 und 1994 durchgeführt wurden. Dieses Fallbeispiel veranschaulicht einige eklatante Fehler, die insbesondere in der mangelnden Geberkoordination bzw. der großen Konkurrenz unter den verschiedenen Hilfsorganisationen lag. (DÜI-Spl)