The Henry J. Leir Research Program in Humanitarian Studies
The nature of crises affecting people in extremis is changing. Conflict remains an important source of vulnerability, but other hazards and risks are gaining prominence. Complex, multi-causal crises will become more common. Aid programming will also become increasingly complex.
Over the next three years we will pursue three critical lines of applied research. We will seek to understand the role of empirical evidence in driving humanitarian assistance programming. We will continue to research how institutions evolve and adapt and how to promote better accountability and professional competency in the humanitarian field. Lastly, we will research the way key global processes such as climate change and globalization affect community risk and vulnerability, and the subsequent consequences this has for the evolving humanitarian system.
Active Research
Given the high levels of professionalism that humanitarian workers demand of themselves and each other and given the increasing investment in capacity building and standard setting across the sector, is the time now right to create an internationally recognized humanitarian profession? The ultimate goal of the ACAPS project is more effective, efficient, and appropriate humanitarian responses to crises. The aim is to achieve this by promoting better-informed and more evidence-driven responses, specifically by supporting a process of coordinated needs assessment which is timely, coherent, and appropriate to context, with results that are accessible and relevant to decision makers. The Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (LEGS) have been developed as a set of international standards and guidelines for the assessment, design, implementation, and evaluation of livestock interventions to assist people affected by humanitarian crises. The overall goal of LEGS is to improve the quality of livestock-related programming in humanitarian crises and to have an impact on the livelihoods of people affected by such crises.
Previous Research
Recent Publications
Humanitarian aid is largely guided by anecdotes rather than evidence. Currently, the humanitarian system shows significant weaknesses in data collection, analysis and response in all stages of a crisis or emergency. As a result, the present humanitarian system is much less evidence-driven than it should be and than it would like to be. This study, commissioned by the UK’s Enhancing Learning and Research for Humanitarian Assistance project (ELRHA) and carried out by the Feinstein International Center in collaboration with RedR, comes after a decade in which the humanitarian enterprise has sought to develop global standards, codes and representative bodies, and amid increasing momentum for creating a global system for professional development, accreditation and association. The study explores the nature of professionalism today and sets out key recommendations which, if implemented, could increase accountability, raise the quality and consistency of humanitarian service, open up the profession to talented new recruits, and raise the status of the humanitarian service provider to a level on a par with other professional groups. A significant proportion of humanitarian assistance is now delivered by NGOs which have in effect become federated trans-national organizations, alliances of members from different countries, all seeking to provide assistance in times of crisis. This report describes research carried out to better understand how these transnational bodies organize their membership, deliver and accountability systems in times of crisis. Using existing international databases that track disaster occurrence and humanitarian costs, this research attempts to improve understanding of how climate change may affect international humanitarian spending. Is there enough money, is it going to the right people in the right places in the most efficient way? In recent years and for a variety of reasons, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has been buffeted by an array of forces. In one sense, the pressures are similar to those experienced by other federations, perhaps accentuated by the fact that the IFRC is one of the earliest and developed into the largest such federated, or federal, institutions. Like other federations, the IFRC is struggling with a set of generic problems. This study provides international NGOs with a rudimentary framework for strategic planning in the light of the likely challenges of ambiguity and change awaiting them during the next decade. It examines a series of hazard domains – environment, urbanization, migration, and HIV/AIDS – within which NGOs can exercise at least a modicum of control. It identifies other variables well beyond the capacity of NGOs to manage, including combinations of crises that cut across these individual domains and, more broadly still, civilization-changing events.