Humanitarian aid

Humanitarian aid is material and logistic assistance to people in need. It is usually short-term help until the long-term help by government and other institutions replaces it. Among the people in need belong homeless, refugees, victims of natural disasters, wars and famines. The primary purpose of humanitarian aid is to save lives, reduce suffering and respect to human dignity. Humanitarian aid is material or logistical assistance provided for humanitarian purposes, typically in response to humanitarian crises including natural disasters and man-made disaster. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity. It may therefore be distinguished from development aid, which seeks to address the underlying socioeconomic factors which may have led to a crisis or emergency.

According to The Overseas Development Institute, a London-based research establishment, whose findings were released in April 2009 in the paper 'Providing aid in insecure environments:2009 Update', the most lethal year in the history of humanitarianism was 2008, in which 122 aid workers were murdered and 260 assaulted. Those countries deemed least safe were Somalia and Afghanistan. In 2012, Humanitarian Outcomes reports that the countries with the highest incidents were: Afghanistan, South Sudan, Syria, Pakistan and Somalia.