Acknowledgements Foreword Overview: Promoting Freedom, Security and Opportunity Chapter 1: Promoting Democratic Governance Chapter 2: Driving Economic Growth Chapter 3: Improving People's Health Chapter 4: Mitigating and Managing Conflict Chapter 5: Providing Humanitarian Aid Chapter 6: The Full Measure of Foreign Aid Tuesday, 07-Jan-2003 08:51:22 EST

Jump to Chapter 5 Sections:
>> Humanitarian aid in the 1990's >> New humanitarian actors >> Innovations, failures and the crisis in humanitarian aid >> Evolving practices and future changes >> Looking ahead >> Background paper >> References

Initiated in 1989, Operation Lifeline Sudan was the first UN access agreement negotiated with both a government and a rebel movement to ensure lifesaving assistance in the midst of a war. Negotiated access agreements have become a basic model for delivering aid in conflict settings, and have been used in countries such as Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. In a variation on the theme, the United Nations has also negotiated "days of tranquility" and "humanitarian cease-fires" to deliver lifesaving aid.

In Bosnia, eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), and northern Iraq logistics operations reached new heights. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees described its humanitarian operations in Bosnia as unprecedented in "scale, scope and complexity." They included the Sarajevo airlift, the longest running humanitarian airlift ever-surpassing even the 1948-49 airlift in Berlin. Civilian-military collaboration allowed for impressive new logistical feats as well as new security models. The idea of safe havens was born, where protection and assistance are provided within a war-affected country.

Despite (and perhaps partly because of) these innovations, by the mid-1990s humanitarian aid was widely considered to be in a state of conceptual crisis. As political analyst William DeMars has observed, "In the modern history of humanitarian action dating from civilian relief during the Second World War, never before has the legitimacy of the enterprise been so profoundly and publicly challenged, while at the same time never have the services of humanitarian organizations been more in demand." Why?

Possible negative effects of assistance