Understanding the complex nature of international humanitarian action—particularly following natural disasters or armed conflicts—has been the mission of this unique series. This book explores the cutting-edge concerns that will affect how assistance is offered in the future.

Featuring twelve original essays by leading practitioners, policymakers, and scholars, the book is a state of the field report on problems, threats, and opportunities facing relief efforts in today’s world.

With contributions from such authorities as Bernard Kouchner, founder of Doctors Without Borders, Charles McCormick, CEO of Save the Children, and physicians, military leaders, field workers, and others, the essays
confront the most critical issues facing the delivery of effective relief.

The issues include military and civilian cooperation in large-scale disasters, with special attention to the growth of private armies. How traditional nongovernmental organizations and faith-based agencies adapt to new
challenges is also explored. Ways to strengthen security for humanitarian workers, refugees, and internally displaced persons and those in transition after wars are also considered.

Bringing together diplomatic, military, medical, legal, political, religious, and ethical perspectives from experiences in Darfur, West Africa, Iraq, Pakistan, and other areas, the essays offer an authoritative inventory of where humanitarian relief has been, and how it must change to save lives and communities in peril.

In taking the pulse of humanitarian assistance, Dr. Cahill and his
impressive array of authors detect a steady heartbeat behind the
battered and bruised exterior of current relief operations.
Shrinking humanitarian space, the frustrations of inadequate
protection, the rarity of social justice, the challenges of
building local capacity and the need to move from first aid to
recovery all amount to a call for action. This book addresses these
issues with clinical clarity, and responds with a clear moral voice.
CPR in print.

We are living in agonizingly complicated times, when a volunteer doctor
from Kansas may find herself repairing the broken bodies of an ethnic
conflict on a continent far away. She may one day look up to see a child
whose bones she mended a year ago now standing before her, machete in hand,
threatening murder. Whether they work for organizations like the Red Cross,
for United Nations agencies or for their governments, the world-over
humanitarians now find themselves in great confusion. This is an enormous,
soul-searching moment in history, brilliantly clarified and focused by The
Pulse of Humanitarian Assistance.