Research in recent years on aid effectiveness shows that significant obstacles in fragile states--insecurity, poor governance and weak implementation capacity--usually prevent aid from achieving the desired results in these environments. This study investigates the attributes and effectiveness of donor-supported programmes and projects that worked well under difficult conditions in fragile states. Presented in this study are nine development initiatives in six less developed countries Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Timor Leste and Uganda. The cases show that development initiatives, which engage local communities and local level governments, are often able to have significant impact. However, for more substantial improvements to take places, localized gains need to be scaled up either horizontally (other localities) or vertically (to higher levels). Given the advantages of working at the local level and the difficulty of working through mainstream bureaucratic agencies at higher levels in these countries, donors often prefer to create 'parallel-agencies' to reach out to larger numbers of beneficiaries. However, this may in the long run weaken the legitimacy of mainstream government institutions, and donor agencies may therefore choose to work as closely as possible with government officials from the beginning to build trust and demonstrating that new initiatives are non-threatening and help prepare the eventual mainstreaming of 'parallel agencies'."

Despite its good intentions, mismanagement and corruption plagued the UN's Oil-for-Food Program:
-More than 2,200 companies paid $1.8 billion in illegal surcharges and kickbacks to the Iraqi regime
-The UN Security Council stood by as the Iraqi regime outright smuggled about $8.4 billion of oil during the Program years in violation of UN sanctions
-The Iraqi regime steered oil contracts for political advantage by giving rights to buy oil to dozens of global political figures sympathetic to Iraq's goal to loosen or overturn the UN sanctions
-The Iraqi regime provided Benon Sevan, the UN's chief administrator of the Program, with rights to buy more than 7 million barrels of oil
-UN-related humanitarian agencies collected tens of millions of dollars for costs they never incurred, and some built factories in Iraq that weren't needed or that never worked at all
-Even UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was tainted by it
But the whole story has never been told in one place.

Eroding Local Capacity is a critical examination of the interplay between international and local actors operating in the humanitarian arena in Africa. All sides emphasise the need to build local capacity for humanitarian action, yet the results have not been substantial. Even long-term, semi-permanent emergencies have generated little local capacity to assist and protect the victims of violence, displacement and related deprivations. In some cases, whatever local capacity did exist has been overwhelmed by the international aid presence. Why is this so? What is the case for a more even division of labour between North and South in this area, and why is it so difficult to bring about?The book focuses on cases from East Africa and the Horn. It considers institutional capacity in the public and private sector, as well as legal and social norms of humanitarian action. The authors are African and Nordic scholars who worked together on the NORAD-supported project over a 3-year period. Preliminary conclusions were discussed at seminars organized by the Centre for Foreign Relations (Dar es Salaam), the School of Government at the University of the Western Cape (Cape Town), and the Chr. Michelsen Institute (Bergen).

Understanding of Operational Counter Terrorism is one serious effort to lay out a comprehensive strategy of how to deal with a whole gamut of possible terrorist incidents by using a language that any person or first responders like policemen, security personnel, firemen, paramedics, etc. can understand. This guide covers everything from bombings and hostage- taking, to NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) Terrorism, what needs to be done before, during, and after an event. This manual combines what minimally needs to be understood about Operational Counter- Terrorism by the government- level policy maker, while at the same time helping the personnel on the first responder level who are planning to cope with what must at least initially seem like an overwhelming attack. Terrorism is global and any part of this guide can easily be adapted and translated to any region, law and government in the world. This manual should make clear that the only way, to effectively deal with terrorism is to have a thorough understanding of its present-day characteristics such as who is involved and what weapons and tactics are the terrorists likely to be using. their tool boxes; what works and what is required; what new capabilities need to be developed in order to face not only today's terrorist, but also tomorrow's as well.

For more than forty-five years, Kevin Cahill has been helping to heal the world: as a leading specialist in tropical medicine and as a driving force in humanitarian assistance and relief efforts across the globe.Physician, teacher, activist, diplomat, and advocate, Cahill has touched many lives and helped right many wrongs. In this book, he chronicles extraordinary achievements of compassion and commitment. Bringing together a rich selection of writingsaessays, op-ed pieces, speeches, and other works, many out of print or hard to findahe crafts a fascinating self-portrait of a life devoted to others.The writings reflect fully the range of Cahillas passions. Reporting from places under siegeaLebanon, Somalia, Nicaragua, Libya, and IrelandaCahill writes as a physician and activist working to restore lives wounded by land mines or threatened by violence and disease. Closer to home, there are his visionary statements from the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, powerful critiques of the politics of famine and public health, and programs for new forms of humanitarian assistance to transform health and human rights.Looking back as the Bronx-born son of an Irish physician, he also touches on more personalabut no less passionateaconcerns and on the impact on his life of the worlds of pain and suffering in which he has traveled. Kevin M. Cahill, M.D., is Director of the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University and President of the Center for International Health and Cooperation in New York City. He is the author and editor of many books, including Human Security for All: A Tribute to Sergio Vieira de Mello and Technology for Humanitarian Action, both in the Fordhamseries International Humanitarian Affairs.

Bread from Stones, a highly anticipated book from historian Keith David Watenpaugh, breaks new ground in analyzing the theory and practice of modern humanitarianism. Genocide and mass violence, human trafficking, and the forced displacement of millions in the early twentieth century Eastern Mediterranean form the background for this exploration of humanitarianism's role in the history of human rights. Watenpaugh's unique and provocative examination of humanitarian thought and action from a non-Western perspective goes beyond canonical descriptions of relief work and development projects. Employing a wide range of source materials literary and artistic responses to violence, memoirs, and first-person accounts from victims, perpetrators, relief workers, and diplomats Watenpaugh argues that the international answer to the inhumanity of World War I in the Middle East laid the foundation for modern humanitarianism and the specific ways humanitarian groups and international organizations help victims of war, care for trafficked children, and aid refugees. Bread from Stones is required reading for those interested in humanitarianism and its ideological, institutional, and legal origins, as well as the evolution of the movement following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the advent of late colonialism in the Middle East.

An autobiographical account of forty years in the life of a British doctor working with victims of war and exile in Israel, Lebanon and the Occupied Territories. Runa Mackay shares her thoughts and views of political situations such as the Six-Day War, the birth of the Intifada, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and the Israeli deportation of Palestinians living in disputed territories. 'Dr Runa Mackay writes with authority and verve about her forty years' service in Israel and Lebanon. Her story is medically impressive, socially moving and politically trenchant. Her faith, courage and sustained commitment to the Palestinian cause over so many years is deeply challenging.' Revd Dr Gordon Strachan Director, Church of Scotland Centre, Tiberias 1987-1989 'Having lived in Galilee, in Lebanon and in the Occupied Territories, she bears witness for Palestinians living within that trinity - in Israel's 'Green Line', in the diaspora of exile and under occupation ... The resilience, courage, generosity and warmth of a nation living under extremes of wretchedness and confronting the greatest of odds comes through in page after page of this remarkable book.' Dr Swee Chai Ang, Author of From Beirut to Jerusalem

As interest in planning for emergencies and disasters burgeons, and educational and training programs proliferate, Principles of emergency planning and management is the first book to meet the need for a concise yet comprehensive and systematic primer on how to prepare for a disaster. Providing readers with a comprehensive, systematic, yet concise introduction to effective preparation for disasters, it provides a unified starting point encompassing the scattered and parochial literature in this nascent field of academic enquiry and practical endeavor.

The book provides a general introduction to the methods, procedures, protocols and strategies of emergency planning, with emphasis on situations in industrialized countries and the local level of organization (i.e. cities, municipalities, metropolitan areas and small regions), though with ample reference to national and international levels. Rather than concentrating on the practices of any one country or state, the author focuses on general principles. Principles of emergency planning and management is designed to be a reference source and manual from which emergency managers can extract ideas, suggestions and pro-forma methodologies to help them design and implement emergency plans. A comprehensive all-hazards approach is adopted, with frequent reference to the most important individual hazards and the planning and management needs that they create. Twelve examples of actual emergency planning and management problems are analyzed in detail.

Principles of emergency planning and management is written especially for the new generation of emergency planners and managers that is emerging as a result of intensified governmental interest in disaster preparedness. Many of them will occupy positions in government or other organizations that require emergency plans. The book will also be of value to students of disasters and hazards who have a practical interest in how disasters are planned for and managed, and to professional workers and trainees who will eventually have to participate in disaster plans. Principles of emergency planning and management is designed to be easily integrated with training courses in emergency preparedness.

"Tonight the Bhopalis are going through their Hiroshima."
-Professor Manish Mishra, a doctor on the scene from FIVE PAST MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL

One of the premier historians of our time, Dominique Lapierre is the author of such stirring classics as Is Paris Burning? and The City of Joy. Famed for uncovering the humanity in historic events, he here joins forces with acclaimed writer Javier Moro. Together they investigate and chronicle each fateful moment counting down to what happened...

FIVE PAST MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL

Union Carbide was a huge American corporation whose leaders had only the best intentions. In New York they invented a miracle insecticide. In ancient Bhopal, they formulated the lethal gas needed to produce it and built a giant plant to process it.

But at five past midnight on December 3, 1984, toxic gas leaked out of a pesticide tank. By one thirty geysers were spitting poison into the night wind. The apocalypse had begun. Banks of deadly fog filled nearby slums. Lungs burst. Corneas burned. Death would strike in seconds and no one was prepared: neither the bride at her wedding banquet nor the peasants who came to Bhopal for a better life, not the shoemaker rousing his neighbors to flee their huts or the Scottish nun risking all to rescue lost children. By night's end, over half a million Bhopalis were drowning in pain and chaos and between 16,000 and 30,000 would die in the worst industrial disaster in history.

In FIVE PAST MIDNIGHT IN BHOPAL, Lapierre and Moro weave hundreds of characters, eyewitness accounts, and adventures into one haunting human tapestry. An epic of ambition and valor, faith and hope, catastrophe and consequence, it is as spine-tingling as Titanic, as harrowing as The Perfect Storm, and as relevant as the latest headline.

Half of all royalties for this book go to the Dominique Lapierre City of Joy Indian Foundation to support humanitarian actions in Bhopal.

Michael Taylor spent 12 years of his life as director of Christian Aid, during which time he came face to face with world poverty. In this book he gives three examples of theological work which promotes historical change in favour of the poor.

Edited by the United Nations Development Programme, this collection of papers offers a new rationale and framework for international development cooperation. Its main argument is that in actual practice development cooperation has already moved beyond aid. In the name of aid (i.e. assistance to poor countries), we are today dealing with issues such as the ozone hole, global climate change, HIV, drug trafficking and financial volatility. All of these issues are not really poverty-related. Rather, they concern global housekeeping: ensuring an adequate provision of global public goods.

What impact do international economic inputs have on human rights in Third World nations? William Meyer explores the effects of direct investment by U.S. multinational corporations, economic and military aid, and MNC manufacturing plants. He examines the international political economy of human rights at both the national and the international levels. Case studies are combined with quantitative studies that use aggregate cross-national data, and theories that link MNCs to human rights are subjected to empirical testing.

As Meyer illustrates, at the national level, human rights violations are associated with U.S. MNCs in Chile, Honduras, India, Indonesia, and Mexico. MNCs have been especially guilty of violating labor rights, particularly through their reliance on sweatshops. MNCs have also been responsible for widespread pollution and environmental degradation. At a broader international level, increased investment by MNCs tends to go along with human rights improvements in the Third World as a whole. Meyer shows that there is a broad positive relationship between direct investment by MNCs and broader political rights and improved living standards. Aggregate data are also analyzed for human rights as compared to U.S. economic and military aid. Economic aid is found to be associated with improved civil-political rights and improved socioeconomic rights. Military aid, by contrast, is associated with declining levels of civil rights and with lower levels of social welfare. This book will serve as an important study for researchers, activists, and students of human rights.

* An accessible introduction for all social science students * A balanced, comprehensive and up-to-date treatment of the issues and trends * A guide to the past, present and future of foreign aid Foreign aid has undergone considerable changes over the past fifty years. Foreign Aid in a Changing World explores the changes and locates them in a context of wider economic and political developments. These are the developments affecting all countries, in North, South, East and West, and in particular, the changing relations among them. The book analyses the different reasons why some countries - both in the developing world and former communist states - seem to need assistance. It critically surveys the values-based and interests-based arguments in favour of aid and its many forms; encompasses the important non-governmental and multilateral dimensions, as well as the bilateral flows, at national and sub-national levels; and focuses particularly on the contemporary emphasis on making aid dependent on democratization and 'good government'. Peter Burnell examines the principal influences on foreign aid, what makes aid controversial, and whether it has a future. He provides an important text for all students of international relations and development studies across the social science disciplines.

This book explores the emerging phenomenon of complex humanitarian emergencies and the evolving policies of the United States in responding to these emergencies. In addition, Andrew Natsios examines the relationship of disaster response to U.S. foreign policy and national interest, and makes suggestions for improving both relief strategies and systems for designing those strategies.

To these issues Natsios brings his first-hand experience in numerous key positions. Mr. Natsios provides case study analysis from these experiences over the past five years to illustrate the arguments presented in the book, particularly regarding Somalia, Angola, Sudan, Panama, and Kuwait and Kurdistan following the Gulf War. As former president George Bush indicates in his foreword to the volume, this book will make a substantive contribution to continuing and enhancing vitally important work. Of great interest to scholars, researchers, and policy makers in the areas of contemporary American foreign policy and humanitarian activities abroad.

Unlike earthquakes and other natural catastrophes, this "new species of trouble" afflicts persons and groups in particularly disruptive ways. With clear-eyed compassion, in vivid narrative and in participants' own words, Kai Erikson describes how certain communities have faced such disasters. He shows conclusively that new attention must be paid to their experiences if people are to maintain elementary confidence not only in themselves but in society, government, and even life itself.

This handbook is the product of the experience of Oxfam UK and Ireland in its work in over 70 countries around the world. It offers an expression of Oxfam's fundamental principles: that all the people have the right to an equitable share in the world's resources, and the right to make decisions about their own development. The denial of such rights is at the heart of poverty and suffering. This reference work analyzes policy, procedure and practice in such fields as health, human rights, emergency relief, capacity-building and agricultural production.

For nearly a decade, international efforts to combat famine and food shortages around the globe have concentrated on the critical situations in sub-Saharan Africa. In the Sudan, the largest country in Africa, prolonged drought, complicated by civil strife and debilitating economic problems, has caused widespread human suffering. The Sudan illustrates the proverbial worst-case scenario in which urgent food needs have been denied, food has been used as a weapon, and outside assistance has been obstructed. The Challenges of Famine Relief focuses on the two famine emergencies in the Sudan in the 1980s the great African drought-related famine of 1984-86 and the conflict-related famine that afflicted the southern Sudan in 1988-91. Francis Deng and Larry Minear analyze the historical and political setting and the response by Sudan authorities and the international community. The book outlines four problem areas exemplified in the response to each crisis: the external nature of famine relief, the relationship between relief activities and endemic problems, the coordination of such activities, and the ambivalence of the results. The authors identify the many difficulties inherent in providing emergency relief to populations caught in circumstances of life-threatening famine. They show how such famine emergencies reflect the most extreme breakdown of social order and present the most compelling imperatives for international action. Deng and Minear also discuss how the international community, alerted by the media and mobilized by the Ethiopian famine, moved to fill the moral void left by the government and how outside organizations worked together to pressure Sudan's political authorities to be more responsive to these tragedies. Looking ahead, the authors highlight the implications for future involvement in humanitarian initiatives in a new world order. As recent developments in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union demonstrate, such humanitarian challenges of global dimensions are no longer confined to third world countries. As the international community apportions limited resources among a growing number of such challenges, more effective responses to crises such as those described in this book are imperative.

It was long assumed that the Soviet Union dictated Warsaw Pact policy in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America (known as the 'Third World' during the Cold War). Although the post-1991 opening of archives has demonstrated this to be untrue, there has still been no holistic volume examining the topic in detail. This important book fills that void and examines the agency of these states - Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania - and their international interactions during the 'discovery' of the 'Third World' from the 1950s to the 1970s. Building upon recent scholarship and working from a diverse range of new archival sources, contributors study the diplomacy of the eastern and central European communist states to reveal their myriad motivations and goals (importantly often in direct conflict with Soviet directives). This work, the first revisionist review of the role of the junior members as a whole, will be of interest to all scholars of the Cold War, whatever their geographical focus.

More fascinating and harrowing accounts of the volunteer professionals who risk their lives to help those in desperate need.

Praise for the second edition:

"Direct and evocative, this well-written book pushes readers to the edge of a world of grueling realities not known by most Americans."
-- Choice

Doctors Without Borders (aka Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) was founded in 1971 by rebellious French doctors. It is arguably the most respected humanitarian organization in the world, delivering emergency aid to victims of armed conflict, epidemics and natural disasters as well as to many others who lack reliable health care.

Dan Bortolotti follows the volunteers at the forefront of this organization and its work, who daily risk their lives to perform surgery, establish or rehabilitate hospitals and clinics, run nutrition and sanitation programs, and train local medical personnel. These volunteer professionals: Perform emergency surgery in war-torn regions of Africa, Asia and elsewhere
Treat the homeless in the streets of Europe
Honor cultural customs and understand societal differences that affect health care
Witness and report the genocidal atrocities so often missed by mainstream media

This new and revised third edition includes updates and new inside stories from recent relief operations, and it covers changes within the organization, such as its new emphasis on nutrition. There are also many new and revealing color photographs and insights gained from the author's 2009 trip to Haiti, where he found three different arms of MSF operating in dire conditions.

"Hope in Hell" is a widely acclaimed portrait of a renowned Nobel-winning humanitarian organization, revealing how Doctors Without Borders provides immediate and outstanding medical care.

While humanitarianism is unquestionably a fast-growing subject of practitioner and scholarly engagement, much discussion about it is predicated on a dangerous dichotomy between 'aid givers' and 'relief takers' that largely misrepresents the negotiated nature of the humanitarian enterprise. To highlight the tension between these relationships, this book focuses on the 'humanitarian spaces' and the dynamics of 'humanitarian diplomacy' (both 'local' and 'global') that sustain them. It gathers key voices to provide a critical analysis of international theory, geopolitics and dilemmas underpinning the negotiation of relief. Offering up-to-date examples from cases such as Kosovo and the Tsunami, or ongoing crises like Haiti, Libya, Darfur and Somalia, the contributors analyse the complexity of humanitarian diplomacy and the multiplicity of geographies and actors involved in it. By investigating the transformations that both diplomacy and humanitarianism are undergoing, the authors prompt us towards a critical and eclectic understanding of the dialectics of humanitarian space. Negotiating Relief aims to present humanitarianism not only as a relief delivery mechanism but also as a phenomenon in dialogue with both localised crises and global politics.

During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the United States and much of the developed world were rocked by three successive economic shocks, each one more severe than the one before. Real relief from these economic shocks, of course, can only come from a restored economy-with balanced strength across many sectors and regions. Safety-net programs can also help alleviate this suffering. They provide urgent financial help and, when properly designed, can assist, motivate, or nudge recipients to seek and accept new employment. When necessary, they can help recipients to learn new skills and engage in other socially preferred behaviors. That is, they can "activate" the unemployed and underemployed. Work and the Social Safety Net: Labor Activation in Europe and the United States describes how in the 1990s and early 2000s many European countries adopted policy reforms aimed at activating those recipients apparently able to work. These policy reforms were put to the test during the Great Recession and its aftermath. This volume reviews the experiences from both Europe and the United States during this period, and includes two chapters apiece on unemployment insurance, social assistance, disability, public employment services, and political economy. Work and the Social Safety Net identifies policies for activating recipients of safety-net programs while still preserving a strong social safety net-as a guide during the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and future downturns.

The media reporting of the Ethiopian Famine in 1984-5 was an iconic news event. It is widely believed to have had an unprecedented impact, challenging perceptions of Africa and mobilising public opinion and philanthropic action in a dramatic new way. The contemporary international configuration of aid, media pressure, and official policy is still directly affected and sometimes distorted by what was - - as this narrative shows - - also an inaccurate and misleading story. In popular memory, the reporting of Ethiopia and the resulting humanitarian intervention were a great success. Yet alternative interpretations give a radically different picture of misleading journalism and an aid effort which did more harm than good. Using privileged access to BBC and Government archives, Reporting Disasters ex- amines and reveals the internal factors which drove BBC news and offers a rare case study of how the media can affect public opinion and policymaking. It constructs the process that accounts for the immensity of the news event, following the response at the heart of government to the pressure of public opinion. And it shows that while the reporting and the altruistic festival that it produced triggered remarkable and identifiable changes, the on- going impact was not what the conventional account claims it to have been.