Humanitarian Action: Global, Regional and Domestic Legal Responses

Abstract

Humanitarian assistance occurs when local or regional crises prompt international action to alleviate human suffering. In contrast to development aid, humanitarian aid is defined by its short-term focus and the immediacy of intervention. Given its crisis management character, humanitarian assistance presents a pressing challenge for international law because the provision of assistance operates under circumstances which depart from common state-centric understandings of how inter- national politics and international law usually work.

To be sure, in the context of humanitarian emergencies processes of inter-state negotiation and consensus-building are dramatically limited by the urgency of the need to assist populations vulnerable to the consequences of natural disaster or armed conflict. Humanitarian Action: Global, Regional and Domestic Legal Responses directly responds to this pressing challenge by providing the first in-depth exploration of legal problems posed by contemporary humanitarian practice. Through two points of departure – one which explores the law and politics of humanitarian action, and the second which explores normative frameworks – this book provides legal professionals, scholars and policy-makers with a unique multidisciplinary resource that will help inform the theory and practice of humanitarian assistance.

Keywords: Humanitarian Action, International Humanitarian Law, Public International Law, International Law, Politics, International Relations

JEL Classification: K33,