Ban Ki-moon, the current Secretary-General of the United Nations, called on the world to reflect on its approach to humanitarian work, to re-evaluate priorities and standard operations, and to agree on future steps to improve the international response to crises. The culmination of such reflection will be the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), to be held in Istanbul in May 2016.
In the lead-up to the WHS there have been extensive consultations carried out on various topics in different geographical regions. Discussions have been conducted online with individuals and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to ensure that the conversation is rooted in thorough consultation. Research is being conducted and reports written as the humanitarian community prepares for the first such summit in the history of the field, aiming to fundamentally shape the global response to humanitarian crises.
As this process is being carried out, the world is seeing major emergencies, called “level 3 emergencies” in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and South Sudan. These emergencies require adequate responses by humanitarian organizations in-country, but also by the governments and populations of countries that refugees are flocking to. These are just the major crises; there are many more all over the globe, bringing with them suffering that humanitarian workers seek to address.
Six weeks ago, as European countries struggled to come to a consensus on refugee quotas, I began my master’s degree in humanitarian action in Warsaw, Poland. As the world seeks to improve the humanitarian field, a professionalized workforce will be key to that process, and I hope to be one of the many products.
I will be studying humanitarian aid as the global community does the same; the aim of this blog and my studies are to better understand the issues that are present in the humanitarian sector, how they are being addressed and what more might be done. This will be an active process of applying humanitarian principles to observed events; I hope that by the time I receive my master’s in Humanitarian Action, this blog will have enriched my (and a few readers’) understanding of the sector and its potential.
To that end I welcome engaged discussion, including questions regarding content, requests for future content, and comments on my reflections and conclusions. I hope that this blog proves a useful educational tool in inspecting the constantly changing organism that is humanitarian action.
Many thanks for reading,
-SB
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