Latest publications from the Humanitarian Practice Network (HPN)
Humanitarian Exchange Magazine
The current new-look edition of Humanitarian Exchange Magazine is dedicated to the theme of accountability in humanitarian action.
This edition, coedited with ALNAP’s John Mitchell and Paul Knox-Clarke, is dedicated to accountability in humanitarian action. In their overview article our coeditors reflect on the underlying rationales – both moral and practical – we use to justify our commitments to improving accountability, and whether our understanding of accountability has changed in the decade since the ‘accountability revolution’ last featured in Humanitarian Exchange.
Good Practice Review : Cash transfer programming in emergencies
HPN’s Good Practice Review on ‘Cash transfer programming in emergencies’ is now available in both French and Spanish.
Network Paper 70: Applying conflict sensitivity in emergency response: Current practice and ways forward
Also online is HPN’s newly published Network Paper 70. ‘Applying conflict sensitivity in emergency response: Current practice and ways forward’ explores how aid agencies operate in dangerous environments to minimize risk.
How can emergency response be delivered in a more conflict-sensitive manner? To what extent should this be a priority for the sector? What practical tools and approaches have aid agencies used to better understand their contexts of intervention and minimize conflict risks?
As these issues become increasingly prominent in regions of the world as diverse as the Horn of Africa, Afghanistan and Libya, Network Paper 70 offers insights to these pressing questions.
Network Paper 71: System failure? Revisiting the problems of timely response to crises in the Horn of Africa
Humanitarian response in pastoral areas in the Horn of Africa has consistently been late. This is striking for two reasons: first, because food security crises in the pastoral areas of the Horn are so regular; and second, because droughts in pastoral areas are the slowest-onset crises imaginable. (A true drought is usually the result of more than two successive rain failures.) So, why is response least timely precisely where we have a) most warning and b) the most practice? These questions have been asked for more than 30 years.
This Network Paper examines how one project tried to ask the same questions again, its successes and failures and its attempt at a fresh explanation of the fact that so many apparently simple problems have proved so intractable. It also sets out three ideas for moving forward.
