History of humanitarian aid

The humanitarianism we know today is the result of decades of crises, mistakes, and reforms. This section traces the moments that have transformed the sector, from the origins of the Red Cross and international humanitarian law, through the First World War and the Second World War, to the humanitarian system reforms of the late 20th and early 21st centuries and the major humanitarian funding crisis of 2025.

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How was the international humanitarian system born and how did it grow?

Today's humanitarian action is the result of a long historical process. Throughout it, an organised system with international legal backing was built to reduce human suffering, founded on the altruism of specific individuals and the political will of certain governments.

Tracing this journey helps to understand why the humanitarian system was the way it was at the beginning of the 21st century. To do so, we start in antiquity, moving through the 19th century, analysing the growth of humanitarian action during the great conflicts of the 20th century, and pausing at the turning point represented by the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

The origins of humanitarian action: from antiquity to the 19th century

There are very few records of organised humanitarian assistance before the 19th century, but the earliest initiatives focused on assisting people of the same nationality and were driven by religious or local motivations.
19th-century colonial humanitarian assistance did not stem from a rights-based approach, but from an interest in maintaining social order and political power.
In 1859, Henry Dunant witnessed the Battle of Solferino and inspired the creation of the Red Cross with a simple question: would it be possible to form permanent relief societies in times of peace?
In 1863 the ICRC was born, and in 1864 the first Geneva Conventions were signed, giving rise to International Humanitarian Law.

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History of humanitarian action in the 20th century

The First World War exposed the enormous humanitarian needs of the civilian population, until then ignored by a system focused on assistance to combatants.
After 1945, the United Nations was created, along with its main humanitarian agencies (UNICEF, WHO, UNHCR, and WFP) and numerous NGOs.
The Cold War limited the expansion of the system, but the Biafra war (1967) demonstrated the capacity of NGOs to intervene where the ICRC and the United Nations could not. MSF was born out of that conflict.
In the 1990s, the end of the Cold War opened a new era of expansion and professionalisation of the humanitarian system.

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The 1994 Rwandan genocide and the birth of modern humanitarianism

In one hundred days, between 500,000 and 800,000 people were killed in a genocide that received no coherent response from the international community. The subsequent humanitarian crisis in Goma exceeded the capacity of the system.
The joint evaluation of the response revealed critical failures in coordination, early warning, and accountability, catalysing far-reaching reforms.
From that process came the Red Cross and NGO Code of Conduct, the Sphere Project, ALNAP, the Core Humanitarian Standard, and the transformation of the UN's DHA into OCHA.
The crisis reopened unresolved debates about the principle of neutrality that remain open today.

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How has the humanitarian system attempted to reform itself in the 21st century?

Humanitarian system reform and major humanitarian crises

With the turn of the century, milestones in humanitarian action continued to unfold. In 2003, the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (the origin of today’s Core Humanitarian Standard) was launched. Crises in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Indian Ocean tsunami, and Darfur (Sudan) presented new challenges for humanitarian principles. The 2005 humanitarian reform aimed to improve financing, coordination, and the response capacity of humanitarian actors, leading to the implementation of the cluster approach and the establishment of the Central Emergency Response Fund, among other developments.

The following years witnessed the 2010 earthquake in Haiti (and the subsequent cholera outbreak that caused 10,000 deaths), the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2013-2016, the onset of other massive humanitarian crises such as those in Syria, South Sudan, Yemen, Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza (among many others) a new humanitarian reform initiative originating from the significant World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, the consolidation of cash transfers as an intervention modality, and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

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If every major humanitarian crisis of the 20th and 21st century has exposed the same weaknesses in the system, why have the reforms that followed each one failed to address them?

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Many things have changed since Solferino...

There are no longer wars between battalions of soldiers fighting in the open as in Solferino. Whereas in the past 90% of conflict deaths were military, today an estimated 90% are civilian deaths..

Not only has the nature of conflict changed, but the importance of climate change, disaster risk reduction, security management, mental health, the potential of digital tools, gender equality or the link between humanitarian action, peace and development have come to the fore, changing how the complexity of crises is addressed.

The amount of funds allocated to humanitarian action per capita has increased by more than 15% per year since 1995, doubling every decade since 1990, and taking up an increasing share of Official Development Assistance. Nevertheless, they remain insufficient to meet humanitarian needs, which have grown even faster, both in impact and duration, with crises lasting much longer than before.

For all these reasons, the humanitarian system continues to evolve and adapt to new times, overcoming challenges and renewing itself to be more effective, efficient and transparent.

2025: From the dismantling of USAID to the Humanitarian Reset

At the beginning of 2025, the new U.S. administration temporarily paused all USAID-funded projects (responsible for about 40% of global public humanitarian funding). This first move was apparently cushioned by waivers for key humanitarian emergency response projects. However, just days later, the new administration continued to issue orders to finalize most of the projects funded by this agency, as well as to temporarily or permanently suspend the contracts of most of its staff.

The dismantling of USAID meant that plans to simplify and streamline the humanitarian system were forced to accelerate. The worst predictions had come true, causing the humanitarian system to be in the biggest funding crisis in its history by the start of the second quarter of 2025. While virtually all humanitarian organizations were trying to adapt to the new situation and rethink how they could continue to ensure humanitarian assistance in the most vulnerable contexts, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator (ERC) launched a new reform of the sector: the Humanitarian Reset.

Within the framework of the Humanitarian Reset, the global humanitarian architecture mobilised to carry out an exercise in operational prioritisation and reimagination of the way the new humanitarian system works. This process has unfolded under enormous financial pressure and under the attentive and critical gaze of those who do not believe that the apparent framing of the reset will produce the change in leadership and strategic direction that the humanitarian system needs.