Civil wars, genocides, natural disasters and other emergencies multiplied in the 1990s, and not just in the South, but in the Balkans and the former Soviet bloc. This book is about how to respond to the fundamental difficulties thrown up by these humanitarian crises. It brings together thinkers from many of the leading emergency relief and development agencies as they try to learn from their own experiences and develop a shared understanding of how to act more effectively in future. What kind of aid, in particular, should be brought in when the situation on the ground mixes up emergency relief with the longer-term process of development?

One response, of course, is to get the specialist agencies of both kinds to work more closely together. But this approach, although necessary, is not enough. The situations encountered in the field demand a new understanding of what such crises actually are. Repeated emergency interventions and the suspension of long-term development projects have become so frequent that they compel us to look again at the whole conception of international aid. Prolonged periods of instability and crisis have often become part of the development process. It may be necessary, therefore, to end the increasingly artificial distinction between disaster relief and development aid.

This book includes many different voices and embodies an open-ended debate about the whole diverse process of international aid. The experiences and lessons it contains are critically relevant to all those playing a part in, or wishing to understand, the practice and dilemmas of humanitarian aid today. They include those running solidarity groups, NGO field staff, national aid agencies, political leaders and public servants. Civil wars, genocides, natural disasters and other emergencies multiplied in the 1990s in the South, and in the Balkans and the former Soviet bloc. This book examines how to respond to the difficulties thrown up by these humanitarian crises, and what kind of aid should be brought in.