Humanitarianism is a uniform act of kindness toward all human beings without any distinction based on nationality, tribe, gender, age, religion or any other similar factors. In this territory, all human beings are equal and are treated equally.
Many countries have been involved in the evolution of this concept including Great Britain, the United States, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal, Brazil, Spain and France. In general, conflicts and calamities that cause widespread human suffering and destructive events are referred to as "humanitarian catastrophes."
These kinds of events could either present as acute and chronic or as cyclical disasters, and could require a wide range of emergency resources to address the issue. Most of the time, the most developed countries get involved in the case of acute and chronic crisis in order to assist in addressing the situation.
Acute crisis could include: cataclysmic natural events, potential pandemics and human-caused horrors, such as wars or genocide. Chronic crisis on the other hand could include: water insecurity, food insecurity, debilitating /life-threatening endemic diseases and refugees/internally misplaced individuals.
The main reasons for any intervention in chronic crisis include altruistic and highly political motives, which focuses on the United Nations' eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). All the UN member states, along with more than 23 international organizations, are working toward these MDGs by the end of 2015.
However, large amount of funds are needed to support the effort, which are generally provided by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Ideally, there should be ethical/legal standards in place to guide the responses and to uniformly address "when and why to intervene" in these events and "how to do it."
In terms of the ethical aspects of the disaster research, based on the guidelines of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, such research should undergo the same rigorous ethical measures that are applicable to all other studies, including: the necessity of securing informed consent from the subjects, assessment of study’s risk-benefit ratio, and subject confidentiality.
As for legal aspects of any potential intervention, local laws generally govern the situation and apply depending on the location of the disaster. With all the measures that are currently present for the humanitarian disasters, we are not yet at our optimal standpoint, and we can benefit some improvements in this area.
Involvement of the U.S. Department of Defense in civilian assistance is another aspect that has been witnessed a few times in the past for humanitarian disasters. These projects are often vast, yet their security and values need to be more defined with crystal-clear goals stated along with implementation strategies and measures of effectiveness.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Policy Development and Studies Branch has a number of small grants that are provided to the right applicants in a specific program designed to help in the knowledge development in this area.
The name of the program is "Humanitarian Research and Innovation Grant Programme," and the grants are allocated on an annual basis to the selected applicants. The application period for 2014 has been closed and the submitted applications are now being considered for 2015.
