The international community is struggling to find answers to the most complex, intransigent, and inter-regional humanitarian disasters we’ve faced since the second world war. The magnitude of these crises threaten the existence of our current democratic world order; an order that has brought the greatest economic and political progress in human history. These issues and the impacts of displaced persons are making news in the Olympics, foreign politics, and the US presidential election.
The last several weeks have seen a number of major public events and conferencesintended to help the international humanitarian response and development community to come to grips with the worst global humanitarian situation in nearly one hundred years. For example, despite the valiant efforts of UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul failed to receive the high level political attention of western leaders leaving many to feel that the multiple crises involving refugees and internally displaced people (IDP) were not adequately addressed with commitments of resources, political will and global leadership. President Obama has recommitted his administration to address this challenge at his final UN General Assembly meeting this fall.
As we prepare for the September 2016 UN General Assembly and World Bank/IMF meetings, and other multilateral summits on refugees and resettlement issues, we must be looking for concrete solutions to address these disasters and dismantle the threats. What can we learn from the various global meetings and advocacy discussions to date? Do we need to change critical approaches to humanitarian response, or to stabilisation programs or long-term development planning in developing nations? Do we need wholesale reform of our global development institutions? Why have world leaders been unable to effectively implement the global diplomatic, political and security engagements that would have prevented these crises from happening in the first place?
Participation in many of these events and forums has led me and my team at Crown Agents USA to ask ourselves these questions and formulate principles for humanitarian action. These principles are a roadmap toward specific, concrete goals that achieve relief and solutions for those impacted by these crises. We call them “Key Principles for Humanitarian Action”.
Content on this page is paid for and provided by Crown Agents, a sponsor of the Guardian Global Development Professionals Network.
