Description

This chapter of GHA Report 2009 explores the extent to which humanitarian assistance is used to address short-term or enduring needs and the
part it plays in sustainable poverty reduction and development assistance. It raises
questions about the type of aid architecture that is needed to address the cycles of
crisis, vulnerability and poverty that dominate many people’s lives.
Humanitarian assistance is traditionally distinguished from development assistance
by being short-term, life-saving and exceptional, rather than longer-term, poverty reducing
and promoting sustainability. Much attention and time is given to trying
to ‘fill the gap’ or identifying how people ‘move’ from humanitarian to development
modes. But the reality for many people is a lifetime of extreme vulnerability and
constant insecurity. While this manifests itself in periodic acute crises it also
forces people into choices that reduce their resilience to future disasters,
creating a downward spiral of increasing, and often inter-generational, poverty
and vulnerability.