Crisp, Jeff. "Humanitarian Action and Coordination", In The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations, edited by Sam Daws and Thomas G. Weiss. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Crisp, Jeff. "Humanitarian Action and Coordination", In The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations, edited by Sam Daws and Thomas G. Weiss. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

• The first modern organization providing humanitarian relief was the International Committee of the Red Cross, created in Switzerland in 1864. The Red Cross provided medical assistance on battlefields and in POW camps, gradually expanding to provide assistance during floods and earthquakes as well (480).
• The Red Cross was instrumental in relief during WWI and continued to play the dominant role in humanitarian aid in the interwar period and WWII. The League of Nations did have some responsibilities, but decided to almost entirely discharge these to the Red Cross (480-481).
• The UN created a number of humanitarian relief bodies in the decades after its founding, often with each body specialized (481). Their ability to help was limited by a preoccupation with Europe, with the UNHCR originally only having jurisdiction to deal with the refugee crisis in Europe. They also depended on private donations or grants from the US for their funding, limiting their ability to plan long-term or respond to many areas of need (482).
• In the 1960s, it became obvious that the current UN structure for humanitarian aid in Europe was insufficient, as they could not cope with the extreme humanitarian situations, including those caused by natural disaster, in Asia and Africa. In response, organizations like the WFP were established and programs expanded to the developing world (482).
• In 1974, the combination of floods and genocidal civil war in East Pakistan prompted the UN to take the lead in providing humanitarian assistance for the first time. Following this experience, the UN established a Disaster Relief Coordinator (UNDRC) to centrally organize all relief efforts (482).
• Following its creation, civil wars in Latin America and a massive drought and famine in the Sahel during the 1970s move than tripled the global number of refugees. The UNDRC found itself overstretched by these operations and transferred its responsibilities to UNDP country offices (483).
• The UNDRC was a largely failed effort to make the UN central in the distribution of humanitarian aid. Many Western countries preferred to use their own agencies to take full advantage of the publicity from doing so, and many specialized UN agencies refused to cooperate for the same reasons (483).
• During the 1970s, especially as a result of the Biafra Civil War, in which the UN refused to intervene and distributed minimal aid, NGOs became more diverse and began playing a more significant role in the distribution of aid. Doctors without Borders became popularized during this time, as did other major NGOs, who rejected control by the UN (483-484).
• The humanitarian crisis resulting from the collapse of stability in Iraq following the First Persian Gulf War entirely surprised and overwhelmed the UNHCR, demonstrate the global community its inefficiency and failures, esp. when compared to the dynamism of NGOs also involve in relief (485-486).
• This failure to operate effectively prompted the UN to create a new system of coordination, established through UNGA Resolution 46/182. The new system created an Emergency Relief Coordinator under the UN Secretary-General, who was responsible for coordinating the activities of UN agencies, the Red Cross, and NGOs operating in a country (486).
• This new system still faced many of the same drawbacks as the previous system, lacking effective staff and often being dismissed as another layer of bureaucracy by discontent subordinate bodies. In 1997, it was actually suggested that its mandate be given to the UNHCR. After this plan was blocked by UNICEF and the WFP, it was instead replaced by the  Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [UNOCHA], which managed the 15 key humanitarian organizations and promoted dialogue (489).
• The humanitarian challenges which the UN faced in the 1990s were different from those of previous decades largely because they were operating under more dangerous and difficult conditions, often in war zones. These environment were often also more complex, with criminality, insecurity, and a plurality of armed actors (487-488).
• The operations undertaken in these environment became much more of hybrids between military and humanitarian actions in response to the tenuous security environment. This process opened up many complex questions about the role of the UN and the responsibility of various actors, esp. when humanitarian and military goals conflicted (488).
• The main failure of UN humanitarian policies during the 1980s and 1990s was neglect of the situation of the internally displaced persons [IDPs], whose numbers had proliferated w/o any coordinated effort to help them. IDP policy was still planned on a country-by-country basis, despite the serious of the issue compared to refugees (490).
• The inadequacy of this 'consensus approach' to IDPs was demonstrated as the Darfur crisis unfolded in 2003, as the Sudanese government was able to manipulate agencies into adopting policies that least threatened it and allowed  for militias to continue perpetrating crimes against humanity against IDPs in the region (491).
• After the failure to effectively deal with the humanitarian needs of the IDPs and refugees produced by the conflict in Darfur, the UN reorganized its policy into a 'cluster approach' based on specific tasks for specific agencies. Now, in any humanitarian relief situations, specific agencies have set tasks to provide holistic protection and support (492).