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Disasters Emergency Committee

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The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) is an umbrella group of UK charities which coordinates and launches collective appeals to raise funds to provide emergency aid and rapid relief to people caught up in disasters and humanitarian crises around the world. Since being formed in 1963, the DEC has had strong relationships with major UK broadcasters in particular the BBC and ITV, who provide airtime to broadcast emergency appeals upon its recommendation. It is a member of the global Emergency Appeals Alliance, which reports that since its first television appeal in 1966, the DEC has raised over £1.4 billion.

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110-565: The DEC is a registered charity (charity no: 1062638) with 15 charity members all with associated disaster relief capabilities such as providing clean water, humanitarian aid and medical care. The charity came to increased prominence during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine when people donated to the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. The first DEC appeal was run for victims of an earthquake in Turkey in 1966. In 2004,

220-467: A 1991 report for the OECD, tied aid can increase development aid project costs by up to 20 or 30 percent. Other conditions include opening up the country to foreign investment, even if it might not be ready to do so. There is also criticism because donors may give with one hand, through large amounts of development aid, yet take away with the other, through strict trade or migration policies, or by getting

330-439: A biomedical approach which does not always account for the alternative beliefs and practices about health and well-being in the affected regions. This problem is rarely explored as most studies conducted are done from the lens of the donor or Westernized humanitarian organization rather than the recipient country's perspective. Discovering ways of encouraging locals to embrace bio-medicinal approaches while simultaneously respecting

440-779: A country and region-wide level gender equality aid was not significant in its effect. Swain and Garikipati blame this on the relative lack of aid with gender equality as a primary motivation. In 2005, the Interagency Gender Working Group of the World Health Organization released the "So What? Report" on the effectiveness of gender mainstreaming in NGO reproductive health programs. The report found these programs effective, but had trouble finding clear gender outcomes because most programs did not measure this data. When gender outcomes were measured,

550-555: A country facing a humanitarian crisis, girls and women can have access to the appropriate aid they need. Some of the unintended effects of food aid include labor and production disincentives , changes in recipients' food consumption patterns and natural resources use patterns, distortion of social safety nets, distortion of NGO operational activities, price changes, and trade displacement. These issues arise from targeting inefficacy and poor timing of aid programs. Food aid can harm producers by driving down prices of local products, whereas

660-450: A crucial role in a timely delivery of humanitarian aid. How aid is delivered can affect the quality and quantity of aid. Often in disaster situations, international aid agencies work in hand with local agencies. There can be different arrangements on the role these agencies play, and such arrangement affects the quality of hard and soft aid delivered. Securing access to humanitarian aid in post-disasters, conflicts, and complex emergencies

770-650: A definition which indicated an "ultimate goal ... to achieve gender equality". The UN included promoting gender equality and empowering women as one of eight Millennium Development Goals for developing countries. The EU integrated women in development thinking into its aid policy starting with the Lomé Convention in 1984. In 1992 the EU's Latin American and Asian development policy first clearly said that development programs should not have detrimental effects on

880-477: A foothold for foreign corporations. The Commitment to Development Index measures the overall policies of donors and evaluates the quality of their development aid, instead of just comparing the quantity of official development assistance given. At the development level, anthropologist and researcher Jason Hickel has challenged the narrative that the rich countries of the OECD help the poor countries develop their economies and eradicate poverty. Hickel states that

990-495: A given people's culture and beliefs remains a major challenge for humanitarian aid organizations; in particular as organizations constantly enter new regions as crises occur. However, understanding how to provide aid cohesively with existing regional approaches is necessary in securing the local peoples' acceptance of the humanitarian aid's work. Aid is funded by donations from individuals, corporations, governments and other organizations. The funding and delivery of humanitarian aid

1100-480: A given situation, organizations frequently interact as competitors, which creates bottlenecks for treatment and supplies. A second limitation is how humanitarian organizations are focused on a specific disaster or epidemic, without a plan for whatever might come next; international organizations frequently enter a region, provide short term aid, and then exit without ensuring local capacity to maintain or sustain this medical care. Finally, humanitarian medical aid assumes

1210-613: A government-supported project could weaken the insurgents' position. Related findings of Beath, Christia, and Enikolopov further demonstrate that a successful community-driven development program increased support for the government in Afghanistan by exacerbating conflict in the short term, revealing an unintended consequence of the aid. Waste and corruption are hard to quantify, in part because they are often taboo subjects, but they appear to be significant in humanitarian aid. For example, it has been estimated that over $ 8.75  billion

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1320-418: A humanitarian aid organization would clash with a government's approach to the unfolding domestic conflict. In such cases, humanitarian aid organizations have sought out autonomy to extend help regardless of political or ethnic affiliation. Humanitarian medical aid as a sector possesses several limitations. First, multiple organizations often exist to solve the same problem. Rather than collaborating to address

1430-712: A literature review that NGOs headed by women were more likely to have Gender Mainstreaming programs and that women were often the heads of Gender Mainstreaming programs within organizations. By breaking down gender equality programs into two categories, gender mainstreamed programs and gender-focused programs which do not mainstream gender, Jones and Swiss found that female leaders of governmental aid organizations provided more financial support to gender mainstreamed programs and slightly more support to gender aware programs overall. Petra Debusscher of Ghent University has criticized EU aid agencies for following an "integrationist approach" to gender mainstreaming, where gender mainstreaming

1540-768: A perceived dependency syndrome associated with freely distributed food. However, poorly designed FFW programs may cause more risk of harming local production than the benefits of free food distribution. In structurally weak economies, FFW program design is not as simple as determining the appropriate wage rate. Empirical evidence from rural Ethiopia shows that higher-income households had excess labor and thus lower (not higher as expected) value of time, and therefore allocated this labor to FFW schemes in which poorer households could not afford to participate due to labor scarcity. Similarly, FFW programs in Cambodia have shown to be an additional, not alternative, source of employment and that

1650-744: A problem to be solved for women. She found that the language used represented more of a Woman in Development approach than a Gender and Development Approach. She notes that men's role in domestic violence is insufficiently brought forward, with program and policy instead targeting removing women from victimhood. Rather than discussing the role of men and women relative to each other, women are discussed as needing to "catch up with an implicit male norm". Debussher also criticized EU's development aid to Southern Africa as too narrow in its scope and too reliant on integrating women and gender into existing aid paradigms. Debusscher notes that women's organizations in

1760-709: A result. This was a result of grain food aid inflows increasing the availability of low-cost inputs to the informal distilling industry. Recent research suggests that patterns of food aid distribution may inadvertently affect the natural environment, by changing consumption patterns and by inducing locational change in grazing and other activities. A pair of studies in Northern Kenya found that food aid distribution seems to induce greater spatial concentration of livestock around distribution points, causing localized rangeland degradation, and that food aid provided as whole grain requires more cooking, and thus more fuelwood

1870-533: A small portion of their diet. Massive shipments of wheat and rice into the West African Sahel during the food crises of the mid-1970s and mid-1980s were widely believed to stimulate a shift in consumer demand from indigenous coarse grains – millet and sorghum – to western crops such as wheat . During the 2000 drought in northern Kenya , the price of changaa (a locally distilled alcohol) fell significantly and consumption seems to have increased as

1980-506: A statistically significan large increase in casualties, as compared to other municipalities who were not part of the CDD. as a result, casualties suffered by government forces from insurgent-initiated attacks increased significantly. These results are consistent with other examples of humanitarian aid exacerbating civil conflict. One explanation is that insurgents attempt to sabotage CDD programs for political reasons – successful implementation of

2090-465: A study conducted among 36 sub-saharan African countries in 2013, 27 out of these 36 countries have experienced strong and favorable effects of aid on GDP and investments. Another study showed that aid per capita supports economic growth for low income African countries such as Tanzania, Mozambique and Ethiopia, while aid per capita does not have a significant effect on the economic growth of middle income African countries such as Botswana and Morocco. Aid

2200-661: A sustained improvement in the conditions in a developing country, rather than short-term relief. The overarching term is foreign aid (or just aid ). The amount of foreign aid is measured though official development assistance (ODA). This is a category used by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to measure foreign aid. Aid may be bilateral : given from one country directly to another; or it may be multilateral : given by

2310-592: A target for armed forces, especially in countries where the ruling government has limited control outside of the capital. Accounts from Somalia in the early 1990s indicate that between 20 to 80 percent of all food aid was stolen, looted, or confiscated. In the former Yugoslavia , the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) lost up to 30 percent of the total value of aid to Serbian armed forces. On top of that 30 percent, bribes were given to Croatian forces to pass their roadblocks in order to reach Bosnia . The value of

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2420-456: A wide range of services, including but not limited to, the delivery of food, water, shelter, medical care, and protection services, and is delivered amidst challenging and often dangerous conditions, with the goal of reaching those most in need regardless of their location, political affiliation, or status. Aid workers are people who are distributed internationally to do humanitarian aid work. The total number of humanitarian aid workers around

2530-457: Is a form of results-based financing, with similar principles as performance-based contracting . Most development aid is counted as part of the official development assistance (ODA) reported by governments to the OECD. The total amount of ODA in 2018 was about $ 150 billion. For the same year, the OECD estimated that six to seven billion dollars of aid was given by ten other states, including China and India. However, these amounts include aid that

2640-532: Is a large literature on the subject. Econometric studies in the late 20th century often found the average effectiveness of aid to be minimal or even negative. Such studies have appeared on the whole to yield more affirmative results in the early 21st century, but the picture is complex and far from clear in many respects. Starting at the beginning of the UN Decade for Women in 1975, the women in development (WID) approach to international development began to inform

2750-464: Is a major concern for humanitarian actors. To win assent for interventions, aid agencies often espouse the principles of humanitarian impartiality and neutrality . However, gaining secure access often involves negotiation and the practice of humanitarian diplomacy. In the arena of negotiations, humanitarian diplomacy is ostensibly used by humanitarian actors to try to persuade decision makers and leaders to act, at all times and in all circumstances, in

2860-430: Is a secondary aspect of a project. Gender equality is often put forward as a policy goal for the organization but program staff have differing commitment and training with regards to this goal. When gender equality is a secondary aspect, development aid which has funds required to impact gender equality can be used to meet quotas of women receiving aid, without effecting the changes in gender roles that Gender Mainstreaming

2970-629: Is a type of development cooperation, wherein OECD DAC member states or multilateral institutions provide development assistance to emergent development actors, with the aim of assisting them in carrying out development projects in other developing countries. The purpose of trilateral development cooperation is to combine the strengths of both OECD DAC member states and the new development actors in delivering more effective aid to recipient countries. The OECD DAC member states and multilateral institutions participate in trilateral development cooperation with

3080-477: Is common. In recent years, a number of concerns have been raised about the mental health of aid workers. The most prevalent issue faced by humanitarian aid workers is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Adjustment to normal life again can be a problem, with feelings such as guilt being caused by the simple knowledge that international aid workers can leave a crisis zone, whilst nationals cannot. A 2015 survey conducted by The Guardian , with aid workers of

3190-485: Is consumed, stimulating local deforestation . There are different kinds of medical humanitarian aid, including: providing medical supplies and equipment; sending professionals to an affected region; and long-term training for local medical staff. Such aid emerged when international organizations stepped in to respond to the need of national governments for global support and partnership to address natural disasters, wars, and other crises that impact people's health. Often,

3300-413: Is designed to advanced gender equality. In 2019-20 OECD DAC members committed almost $ 56.5 billion to aid for gender equality, with $ 6.3 billion of that committed to programs where gender equality is a principal programmatic goal. Three main measures of gender inequality are used in calculating gender equality and testing programs for the purposes of development aid. In the 1995 Human Development Report

3410-780: Is ever-increasing and has long outstripped the financial resources available. The Central Emergency Response Fund was created at the 2005 Central Emergency Response Fund at the United Nations General Assembly. Humanitarian aid spans a wide range of activities, including providing food aid, shelter, education, healthcare or protection . The majority of aid is provided in the form of in-kind goods or assistance, with cash and vouchers constituting only 6% of total humanitarian spending. However, evidence has shown how cash transfers can be better for recipients as it gives them choice and control, they can be more cost-efficient and better for local markets and economies. It

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3520-654: Is humanitarian in character as well as purely developmental aid. The proportion of development aid within ODA was about 80%. The OECD classifies ODA development aid by sector, the main sectors being: education, health (including population policies, water supply and sanitation), government & civil society, economic infrastructure (including transport and energy), and production (including agriculture). Additionally, there are "cross-cutting" aims; for instance, environmental protection, gender equality, urban and rural development concerns. Some governments include military assistance in

3630-470: Is important to note that humanitarian aid is not only delivered through aid workers sent by bilateral, multilateral or intergovernmental organizations, such as the United Nations. Actors like the affected people themselves, civil society, local informal first-responders, civil society, the diaspora, businesses, local governments, military, local and international non-governmental organizations all play

3740-593: Is increasingly international, making it much faster, more responsive, and more effective in coping to major emergencies affecting large numbers of people (e.g. see Central Emergency Response Fund ). The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) coordinates the international humanitarian response to a crisis or emergency pursuant to Resolution 46/182 of the United Nations General Assembly . The need for aid

3850-452: Is material and logistic assistance, usually in the short-term, to people in need. Among the people in need are the homeless , refugees , and victims of natural disasters , wars, and famines. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering , and maintain human dignity . While often used interchangeably, humanitarian aid and humanitarian assistance are distinct concepts. Humanitarian aid generally refers to

3960-400: Is most beneficial to low income countries because such countries use aid received for to provide education and healthcare for citizens, which eventually improves economic growth in the long run. Some econometric studies suggest that development aid effectively reduces poverty in developing countries. Other studies have supported the view that development aid has no clear average effect on

4070-828: Is no clear consensus on the trade-offs between speed and control, especially in emergency situations when the humanitarian imperative of saving lives and alleviating suffering may conflict with the time and resources required to minimise corruption risks. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute have highlighted the need to tackle corruption with, but not limited to, the following methods: Reports of sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian response have been reported following humanitarian interventions in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone in 2002, in Central African Republic and in

4180-542: Is often made between development aid that is governmental ("official") on the one hand, and private (originating from individuals, businesses and the investments of charitable foundations , and often channeled through religious organisations and other NGOs ) on the other. Official aid may be government-to-government, or it may be channeled through intermediary bodies such as UN agencies , international financial institutions , NGOs or other contractors. NGOs thus commonly handle both official and private aid. Of aid reported to

4290-404: Is thus important for humanitarian actors, such as the United Nations, to include challenges specific to women in their humanitarian response. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee provides guidelines for humanitarian actors on how be inclusive of gender as a factor when delivering humanitarian aid. It recommends agencies to collect data disaggregated by sex and age to better understand which group of

4400-478: Is used to achieve existing policy goals, as opposed to a "transformative approach" which seeks to change policy priorities and programs fundamentally to achieve gender equality. She finds that this approach more closely follows a Women in Development model than a Gender and Development one. Debussher criticized the EU's development policy in Latin America for focusing too much attention on gender inequality as

4510-607: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation , have partnered with governmental aid organizations to provide funds for gender equality, but increasingly aid is provided through partnerships with local organizations and NGOS. Corporations also participate in providing gender equality aid through their Corporate Social Responsibility programs. Nike helped to create the Girl Effect to provide aid programs targeted towards adolescent girls. Using publicly available data Una Osili an economist at

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4620-720: The Center for Global Development is another attempt to look at broader donor country policies toward the developing world. These types of activity could be formulated and understood as a kind of development aid although commonly they are not. Output-based aid (OBA) (or results-based aid) refers to development aid strategies that link the delivery of public services in developing countries to targeted performance-related subsidies . OBA subsidies are offered in transport construction, education, water and sanitation systems, and healthcare among other sectors where positive externalities exceed cost recovery exclusively from private markets. OBA

4730-610: The DAC List of ODA Recipients which includes most countries classified by the World Bank as of low and middle income. Loans from one state to another may be counted as ODA only if their terms are substantially more favourable than market terms. The exact rules for this have varied from time to time. Less-concessional loans therefore would not be counted as ODA but might be considered as including an element of development aid. Some states provide development aid without reporting to

4840-728: The Gaza Strip , as they felt supporting the appeal would effectively mean the BBC taking a political stance on the Gaza conflict. This decision was the object of considerable controversy within the BBC as it is the only time the BBC is known to have refused such a request from the DEC; the 2009 Gaza appeal in question was screened by Channel 4 and ITV and raised £8.3m. Since then, the BBC has broadcast other DEC aid appeals for people in Gaza, without similar controversy. The DEC August 2014 Gaza appeal shown by

4950-849: The Gaza humanitarian crisis during the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip was delayed by the BBC , reportedly due to fear of supporters of Israel. In March 2022, Royal Ballet star Ivan Putrov directed Dance For Ukraine alongside Romanian ballet dancer Alina Cojocaru . The event took place at the London Coliseum on 19 March and raised £140,000 for DEC's Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. On 29 March 2022, Concert for Ukraine took place at Resorts World Arena in Birmingham and it aired on ITV . It

5060-575: The Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis found that between 2000 and 2010 $ 1.15 billion in private aid grants over $ 1 million from the United States targeted gender equality. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development provides detailed analysis of the extent of aid for gender equality. OECD member countries tag their aid programs with gender markers when a program

5170-525: The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) of the United Nations (UN) is responsible for coordination responses to emergencies. It taps to the various members of Inter-Agency Standing Committee , whose members are responsible for providing emergency relief. The four UN entities that have primary roles in delivering humanitarian aid are United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),

5280-482: The Sphere Project ". It comprises nine core standards, which are complemented by detailed guidelines and indicators. Development aid Development aid (or development cooperation ) is a type of aid given by governments and other agencies to support the economic, environmental, social, and political development of developing countries . It is distinguished from humanitarian aid by aiming at

5390-752: The United Nations Development Program introduced the Gender Development Index and Gender Empowerment Measure . The Gender Empowerment Measure is calculated based on three measures, proportion of women in national parliaments, percentage of women in economic decision making positions and female share of income. The Gender Development Index uses the Human Development Index and corrects its results in life expectancy, income, and education for gender imbalances. Due to criticisms of these two indexes

5500-752: The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP). According to the Global Humanitarian Overview of OCHA, nearly 300 million people need humanitarian assistance and protection in 2024, or 1 out of 27 people worldwide. In 2024, the estimated global humanitarian response requirements amount to approximately US$ 46.4 billion, targeting around 188 million of

5610-540: The 1980s, and the prevention of relief aid in the Tigray War of 2020–2021 by the Abiy Ahmed Ali regime of Ethiopia was again widely condemned. Humanitarian aid in conflict zones is the provision of emergency assistance and support to individuals and communities affected by armed conflict, with the aim of alleviating suffering, maintaining human dignity, and preserving life. This type of aid encompasses

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5720-525: The 1990s and 2000s. In 2017, the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) documented 139 humanitarian workers killed in intentional attacks out of the estimated global population of 569,700 workers. In every year since 2013, more than 100 humanitarian workers were killed. This is attributed to a number of factors, including the increasing number of humanitarian workers deployed, the increasingly unstable environments in which they work, and

5830-607: The BBC helped to raise £16m over two years. On the launch of its appeal in October 2017 for Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar to Bangladesh, the UK Government pledged to double public donations up to £3 million. Similarly, a pledge to match public donations up to £20 million was made by the UK Government in 2022 in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine . In 2024, an attempted DEC appeal for humanitarian aid to address

5940-577: The Democratic Republic of the Congo. 2021 reporting on a Racial Equity Index report indicated that just under two-thirds of aid workers have experienced racism and 98% of survey respondents witnessed racism. Countries or war parties that prevent humanitarian relief are generally under unanimous criticism. Such was the case for the Derg regime, preventing relief to the population of Tigray in

6050-573: The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) ran UK television appeals and telephone lines for donations following the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, which raised a record £392m in public donations, Between January and July 2010, the DEC appealed for donations following the 2010 Haiti earthquake , raising a total of £107 million. On 22 January 2009, the BBC declined a request from the DEC to screen an appeal to raise money to aid relief efforts for victims of conflict in

6160-626: The Global Development Professionals Network, revealed that 79 percent experienced mental health issues. Humanitarian aid workers belonging to United Nations organisations, PVOs / NGOs or the Red Cross / Red Crescent are among the list of protected persons under international humanitarian law that grant them immunity from attack by belligerent parties. However, attacks on humanitarian workers have occasionally occurred, and become more frequent since

6270-640: The Lendu (opposition of Hema). Humanitarian aid workers have acknowledged the threat of stolen aid and have developed strategies for minimizing the amount of theft en route. However, aid can fuel conflict even if successfully delivered to the intended population as the recipient populations often include members of rebel groups or militia groups , or aid is "taxed" by such groups. Academic research emphatically demonstrates that on average food aid promotes civil conflict. Namely, increase in US food aid leads to an increase in

6380-656: The Netherlands, NGOs including Oxfam Netherlands Organization for Development Assistance, the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries, Interchurch Organization for Development Cooperation, and Catholic Organization for Relief and Development Aid have included certain targets for their aid programs with regards to gender equality. NGOs which receive aid dollars through the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs or which partner with

6490-595: The Nigeria-Biafra civil war in the late 1960s, where the rebel leader Odumegwu Ojukwu only allowed aid to enter the region of Biafra if it was shipped on his planes. These shipments of humanitarian aid helped the rebel leader to circumvent the siege on Biafra placed by the Nigerian government. These stolen shipments of humanitarian aid caused the Biafran civil war to last years longer than it would have without

6600-562: The Norwegian government on aid projects must "demonstrate that they take women and gender equality seriously". In response to this requirement organizations like the Norwegian Christian charity Digni have initiated projects which target gender equality. Private foundations provide the majority of their gender related aid to health programs and have relatively neglected other areas of gender inequality. Foundations, such as

6710-421: The OECD using standard definitions, categories and systems. Notable examples are China and India. For 2018, the OECD estimated that, while total ODA was about $ 150 billion, an additional six to seven billion dollars of ODA-like development aid was given by ten other states. (These amounts include aid that is humanitarian in character as well as purely developmental aid.) Recognizing that ODA does not capture all

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6820-475: The OECD, about 80% is official and 20% private. Development aid is not usually understood as including remittances received from migrants working or living in diaspora —even though these form a significant amount of international transfer—as the recipients of remittances are usually individuals and families rather than formal projects and programmes. World Bank estimates for remittance flows to "developing countries" in 2016 totalled $ 422 billion, which

6930-865: The United Nations Development Program in its 2010 Human Development Report introduced the Gender Inequality Index . The Gender Inequality Index uses more metrics and attempts to show the losses from gender inequality. Even with these indexes, Ranjula Swain of the Stockholm School of Economics and Supriya Garikipati of the University of Liverpool found that, compared to the effectiveness of health, economic, and education targeted aid, foreign aid for gender equality remains understudied. Swain and Garikipati found in an analysis of Gender Equality Aid that on

7040-573: The United States food aid promoted civil conflict in recipient countries on average. An increase in United States' wheat aid increased the duration of armed civil conflicts in recipient countries, and ethnic polarization heightened this effect. However, since academic research on aid and conflict focuses on the role of aid in post-conflict settings, the aforementioned finding is difficult to contextualize. Nevertheless, research on Iraq shows that "small-scale [projects], local aid spending ... reduces conflict by creating incentives for average citizens to support

7150-534: The Western industrialised countries but some poorer countries also contribute aid. Development aid is not usually understood as including remittances received from migrants working or living in diaspora —even though these form a significant amount of international transfer—as the recipients of remittances are usually individuals and families rather than formal projects and programmes. Negative side effects of development aid can include an unbalanced appreciation of

7260-465: The aid, claim experts. The most well-known instances of aid being seized by local warlords in recent years come from Somalia , where food aid is funneled to the Shabab, a Somali militant group that controls much of Southern Somalia. Moreover, reports reveal that Somali contractors for aid agencies have formed a cartel and act as important power brokers, arming opposition groups with the profits made from

7370-494: The aimed goal of increasing aid effectiveness and efficiency, phasing out bilateral aid, transferring good practices, and capacity building. Analyses of development aid often focus on ODA, as ODA is measured systematically and appears to cover most of what people regard as development aid. However, there are some significant categories of development aid that fall outside ODA, notably: private aid, remittances, aid to less-poor countries and aid from other donor states. A distinction

7480-544: The approach to gender in development aid through the 1980s. Starting in the early 1990s Gender and Development's influence encouraged gender mainstreaming within international development aid. The World Conference on Women, 1995 promulgated gender mainstreaming on all policy levels for the United Nations . Gender Mainstreaming has been adopted by nearly all units of the UN with the UN Economic and Social Council adopting

7590-577: The big push to break the low-income poverty trap poorer countries are trapped in. From this perspective, aid serves to finance "the core inputs to development – teachers, health centers, roads, wells, medicine, to name a few". (United Nations 2004). And a view that is skeptic about the impacts of aid, supported by William Easterly, that points out that aid has not proven to work after 40 years of large investments in Africa. According to James Ferguson , these issues might be caused by deficient diagnostics of

7700-556: The development agencies. In his book The Anti-Politics Machine , Ferguson uses the example of the Thaba-Tseka project in Lesotho to illustrate how a bad diagnostic on the economic activity of the population and the desire to stay away from local politics, caused a livestock project to fail. According to Martijn Nitzsche, another problem is the way on how development projects are sometimes constructed and how they are maintained by

7810-720: The donor country to an international organisation such as the World Bank or the United Nations Agencies ( UNDP , UNICEF , UNAIDS , etc.) which then distributes it among the developing countries. The proportion is currently about 70% bilateral 30% multilateral. About 80% of the aid measured by the OECD comes from government sources as official development assistance (ODA). The remaining 20% or so comes from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations or NGOs (e.g.,  Oxfam ). Most development aid comes from

7920-465: The donor country to pooled funds administered by an international organisation such as the World Bank or a UN Agency ( UNDP , UNICEF , UNAIDS , etc.) which then uses its funds for work in developing countries. To qualify as multilateral, the funding must lose its identity as originating from a particular source. The proportion of multilateral aid in ODA was 28% in 2019. Trilateral development cooperation (also called triangular development cooperation)

8030-751: The effects of gangs on women in Latin America. USAID first established a women in development office in 1974 and in 1996 promulgated its Gender Plan of Action to further integrate gender equality into aid programs. In 2012 USAID released a Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy to guide its aid programs in making gender equality a central goal. USAID saw increased solicitations from aid programs which integrated gender equality from 1995 to 2010. As part of their increased aid provision, USAID developed PROMOTE to target gender inequality in Afghanistan with $ 216 million in aid coming directly from USAID and $ 200 million coming from other donors. Many NGOs have also incorporated gender equality into their programs. Within

8140-417: The erosion of the perception of neutrality and independence. In 2012 road travel was seen to be the most dangerous context, with kidnappings of aid workers quadrupling in the last decade, reaching more aid workers victims than any other form of attack. The humanitarian community has initiated a number of interagency initiatives to improve accountability, quality and performance in humanitarian action. Four of

8250-648: The expenditures that promote development, the OECD in 2014 started establishing a wider statistical framework called TOSSD (Total Official Support for Sustainable Development) that would count spending on "international public goods". In March 2022, TOSSD was adopted as a data source for indicator 17.3.1 of the SDGs global indicator framework to measure development support. The TOSSD data for 2020 shows more than USD 355 billion disbursed to support for sustainable development, from almost 100 provider countries and institutions. The Commitment to Development Index published annually by

8360-552: The goal of which is to ensure migrants and refugees retain access to basic goods and services and the labour market. Basic needs, including access to shelter, clean water, and child protection, are supplemented by the UN's efforts to facilitate social integration and legal regularization for displaced individuals. Since the 2010 Haiti Earthquake , the institutional and operational focus of humanitarian aid has been on leveraging technology to enhance humanitarian action, ensuring that more formal relationships are established, and improving

8470-416: The government in subtle ways." Similarly, another study also shows that aid flows can "reduce conflict because increasing aid revenues can relax government budget constraints, which can [in return] increase military spending and deter opposing groups from engaging in conflict." Thus, the impact of humanitarian aid on conflict may vary depending upon the type and mode in which aid is received, and, inter alia,

8580-586: The incidence of armed civil conflict in the recipient country. Another correlation demonstrated is food aid prolonging existing conflicts, specifically among countries with a recent history of civil conflict. However, this does not find an effect on conflict in countries without a recent history of civil conflict. Moreover, different types of international aid other than food which is easily stolen during its delivery, namely technical assistance and cash transfers, can have different effects on civil conflict. Community-driven development (CDD) programs have become one of

8690-517: The interaction between formal humanitarian organizations such as the United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and informal volunteer and technological communities known as digital humanitarians . The recent rise in Big Data , high-resolution satellite imagery and new platforms powered by advanced computing have already prompted the development of crisis mapping to help humanitarian organizations make sense of

8800-484: The interest of vulnerable people and with full respect for fundamental humanitarian principles . However, humanitarian diplomacy is also used by state actors as part of their foreign policy. The UN implements a multifaceted approach to assist migrants and refugees throughout their relocation process. This includes children's integration into the local education system, food security, and access to health services. The approach also encompasses humanitarian transportation,

8910-399: The local population. Often, projects are made with technology that is hard to understand and too difficult to repair, resulting in unavoidable failure over time. Also, in some cases the local population is not very interested in seeing the project to succeed and may revert to disassembling it to retain valuable source materials. Finally, villagers do not always maintain a project as they believe

9020-424: The local socio-economic, cultural, historical, geographical and political conditions in the recipient countries. International aid organizations identify theft by armed forces on the ground as a primary unintended consequence through which food aid and other types of humanitarian aid promote conflict. Food aid usually has to be transported across large geographic territories and during the transportation it becomes

9130-474: The longstanding UN target for an ODA/GNI ratio of 0.7% in 2020: European Union countries that are members of the Development Assistance Committee gave 0.42% of GNI (excluding the US$ 19.4 billion given by EU Institutions). Research has shown that development aid has a strong and favorable effect on economic growth and development through promoting investments in infrastructure and human capital. According to

9240-455: The most popular tools for delivering development aid. In 2012, the World Bank supported 400 CDD programs in 94 countries, valued at US$ 30 billion. Academic research scrutinizes the effect of community-driven development programs on civil conflict. The Philippines ' flagship development program KALAHI-CIDSS is concluded to have led to an increase in violent conflict in the country. After the program's initiation, some municipalities experienced

9350-530: The most vulnerable people in 69 countries. The three major drivers of humanitarian needs worldwide are conflicts, climate-related disasters, and economic factors. Food aid is a type of aid whereby food that is given to countries in urgent need of food supplies, especially if they have just experienced a natural disaster. Food aid can be provided by importing food from the donor, buying food locally, or providing cash. The welfare impacts of any food aid-induced changes in food prices are decidedly mixed, underscoring

9460-635: The most widely known initiatives are, ALNAP, the CHS Alliance , the Sphere Project and the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS). Representatives of these initiatives began meeting together on a regular basis in 2003 in order to share common issues and harmonise activities where possible. The Sphere Project handbook, Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response, which

9570-468: The notion of foreign aid , although the international community does not usually regard military aid as development aid. Development aid is widely seen as a major way to meet Sustainable Development Goal 1 (to end poverty in all its forms everywhere) for the developing nations. The OECD also lists countries by the amount of ODA they give as a percentage of their gross national income . The top 10 DAC countries in 2020 were as follows. Six countries met

9680-423: The original development workers or others in the surroundings will repair it when it fails (which is not always so). A common criticism in recent years is that rich countries have put so many conditions on aid that it has reduced aid effectiveness. In the example of tied aid , donor countries often require the recipient to purchase goods and services from the donor, even if these are cheaper elsewhere. According to

9790-423: The population is in need of what type of aid. In recent years, the United Nations have been using sex and age disaggregated data more and more, consulting with gender specialists. In the assessment phase, several UN agencies meet to compile data and work on a humanitarian response plan. Throughout the plans. women specific challenges are listed and sex and age disaggregated data are used so when they deliver aid to

9900-472: The position and role of women. Since then the EU has continued the policy of including gender equality within development aid and programs. Within the EU gender equality is increasingly introduced in programmatic ways. The bulk of the EU's aid for gender equality seeks to increase women's access to education, employment and reproductive health services. However, some areas of gender inequality are targeted according to region, such as land reform and counteracting

10010-469: The producers are not themselves beneficiaries of food aid. Unintentional harm occurs when food aid arrives or is purchased at the wrong time, when food aid distribution is not well-targeted to food-insecure households, and when the local market is relatively poorly integrated with broader national, regional and global markets. Food aid can drive down local or national food prices in at least three ways. Beyond labor disincentive effects , food aid can have

10120-502: The provision of development aid. Some academics criticized the WID approach for relying on integrating women into existing development aid paradigms instead of promulgating specific aid to encourage gender equality. The gender and development approach was created in response, to discuss international development in terms of societal gender roles and to challenge these gender roles within development policy. Women in Development predominated as

10230-585: The provision of immediate, short-term relief in crisis situations, such as food, water, shelter, and medical care. Humanitarian assistance, on the other hand, encompasses a broader range of activities, including longer-term support for recovery, rehabilitation, and capacity building. Humanitarian aid is distinct from development aid , which seeks to address underlying socioeconomic factors. Humanitarian aid can come from either local or international communities through international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). In reaching out to international communities,

10340-629: The reality that it is impossible to generate only positive intended effects from an international aid program. Food aid that is relatively inappropriate to local uses can distort consumption patterns. Food aid is usually exported from temperate climate zones and is often different than the staple crops grown in recipient countries, which usually have a tropical climate . The logic of food export inherently entails some effort to change consumers' preferences, to introduce recipients to new foods and thereby stimulate demand for foods with which recipients were previously unfamiliar or which otherwise represent only

10450-457: The recipient countries. Aid stealing is one of the prime ways in which conflict is promoted by humanitarian aid. Aid can be seized by armed groups, and even if it does reach the intended recipients, "it is difficult to exclude local members of a local militia group from being direct recipients if they are also malnourished and qualify to receive aid." Furthermore, analyzing the relationship between conflict and food aid, recent research shows that

10560-399: The recipient's currency, increasing corruption, and adverse political effects such as postponements of necessary economic and democratic reforms. There are various terms that used interchangeably with development aid in some contexts but possess different meanings in others. Official aid may be bilateral : given from one country directly to another; or it may be multilateral : given by

10670-426: The report found positive programmatic effects, but the report did not look at whether these results were from increased access to services or increasing gender equality. Even when gender equality is identified as a goal of aid, other factors will often be the primary focus of the aid. In some instances the nature of aid's gender equality component can fail to be implemented at the level of individual projects when it

10780-612: The rich countries "aren't developing poor countries; poor countries are developing rich ones." Aid effectiveness is the degree of success or failure of international aid (development aid or humanitarian aid ). Concern with aid effectiveness might be at a high level of generality (whether aid on average fulfils the main functions that aid is supposed to have), or it might be more detailed (considering relative degrees of success between different types of aid in differing circumstances). Questions of aid effectiveness have been highly contested by academics, commentators and practitioners: there

10890-435: The speed with which countries develop. Dissident economists such as Peter Bauer and Milton Friedman argued in the 1960s that aid is ineffective: "an excellent method for transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries." In economics, there are two competing positions on aid. A view pro aid, supported by Jeffrey Sachs and the United Nations, which argues that foreign aid will give

11000-524: The stolen aid" Rwandan government appropriation of food aid in the early 1990s was so problematic that aid shipments were canceled multiple times. In Zimbabwe in 2003, Human Rights Watch documented examples of residents being forced to display ZANU-PF Party membership cards before being given government food aid. In eastern Zaire , leaders of the Hema ethnic group allowed the arrival of international aid organizations only upon agreement not give aid to

11110-574: The stolen or lost provisions can exceed the value of the food aid alone since convoy vehicles and telecommunication equipment are also stolen. MSF Holland, international aid organization operating in Chad and Darfur , underscored the strategic importance of these goods, stating that these "vehicles and communications equipment have a value beyond their monetary worth for armed actors, increasing their capacity to wage war" A famous instance of humanitarian aid unintentionally helping rebel groups occurred during

11220-501: The unintended consequence of discouraging household-level production. Poor timing of aid and FFW wages that are above market rates cause negative dependency by diverting labor from local private uses, particularly if FFW obligations decrease labor on a household's own enterprises during a critical part of the production cycle. This type of disincentive impacts not only food aid recipients but also producers who sell to areas receiving food aid flows. FFW programs are often used to counter

11330-719: The vast volume and velocity of information generated during disasters. For example, crowdsourcing maps (such as OpenStreetMap ) and social media messages in Twitter were used during the 2010 Haiti Earthquake and Hurricane Sandy to trace leads of missing people, infrastructure damages and raise new alerts for emergencies. Even prior to a humanitarian crisis , gender differences exist. Women have limited access to paid work , are at risk of child marriage , and are more exposed to Gender based violence , such as rape and domestic abuse. Conflict and natural disasters exacerbate women's vulnerabilities. When delivering humanitarian aid, it

11440-430: The very poor rarely participate due to labor constraints. In addition to post-conflict settings, a large portion of aid is often directed at countries currently undergoing conflicts. However, the effectiveness of humanitarian aid, particularly food aid, in conflict-prone regions has been criticized in recent years. There have been accounts of humanitarian aid being not only inefficacious but actually fuelling conflicts in

11550-744: The world has been calculated by ALNAP , a network of agencies working in the Humanitarian System, as 210,800 in 2008. This is made up of roughly 50% from NGOs, 25% from the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement and 25% from the UN system. In 2010, it was reported that the humanitarian fieldworker population increased by approximately 6% per year over the previous 10 years. Aid workers are exposed to tough conditions and have to be flexible, resilient, and responsible in an environment that humans are not psychologically supposed to deal with, in such severe conditions that trauma

11660-400: Was far greater than total ODA. The exact nature and effects of remittance money remain contested. The International Monetary Fund has reported that private remittances may have a negative impact on economic growth, as they are often used for private consumption of individuals and families, not for economic development of the region or country. ODA only includes aid to countries which are on

11770-550: Was lost to waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. Non-governmental organizations have in recent years made great efforts to increase participation, accountability and transparency in dealing with aid, yet humanitarian assistance remains a poorly understood process to those meant to be receiving it—much greater investment needs to be made into researching and investing in relevant and effective accountability systems. However, there

11880-441: Was meant to promote. Programs can also fail to provide lasting effects, with local organizations removing gender equality aspects of programs after international aid dollars are no longer funding them. Robert C. Jones of McGill University and Liam Swiss of Memorial University argue that women leaders of governmental aid organizations and NGOs are more effective at Gender Mainstreaming than their male counterparts. They found in

11990-538: Was presented by Capital FM presenter Roman Kemp , Marvin Humes and Emma Bunton. ITV pledged people to donate to DEC's Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. Artists included Snow Patrol , Tom Odell , Ed Sheeran and Camilla Cabello and the show ran for two hours. More than £13.4 million was donated by midday the day after the concert. As of November 2024, the committee's member organisations are: Recent and archive DEC appeals. Humanitarian aid Humanitarian aid

12100-736: Was produced by a coalition of leading non-governmental humanitarian agencies, lists the following principles of humanitarian action: Another humanitarian standard used is the Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS). It was approved by the CHS Technical Advisory Group in 2014, and has since been endorsed by many humanitarian actors such as "the Boards of the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (HAP), People in Aid and

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