Humanitarian Challenges and Intervention
Subtitle: World Politics and the Dilemmas of Help (Dilemmas in World Politics)
Edition: New Ed edition
Publisher: Westview Pr (Short Disc)
Published: January 1997
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 239
ISBN-13: 9780813328447
Subjects: Aid & relief programmes; International Relations; World politics; Politics - Current Events; Disaster Relief Services; Human Rights And Foreign Policy; Social Services & Welfare; Politics / Current Events; War victims; Politics/International Relations; 1989-; International relief; Services for
First sentence: By nightfall on June 24,1859, the corpses of more than 40,000 Austrian and French soldiers lay scattered on a battlefield near the Italian village of Solferino.
Description: There are two distinct contemporary challenges to the relief of war-induced human suffering: one that occurs within the institutions that make up the international humanitarian system, the other in war zones. Varied interests, resources, and organizational structures within institutions hamper the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian operations.

At the same time - on the ground - ethical, legal, and operational challenges and dilemmas continually arise that require humanitarian actors to choose a course of action with associated necessary evils.

Humanitarian Challenges and Intervention shows how institutional concerns - combined with the domestic context of armed conflicts - often yield policies that do not serve the immediate requirements of victims for relief, stabilization, and community reconstruction. Based on case studies of the post-Cold War experience in Central America, northern Iraq, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda, the authors make recommendations for a more effective and efficient humanitarian system.