Biståndets tre ansikten

Sammanfattning: The purpose of humanitarian aid is to save lives, relieve suffering and maintain human dignity for people affected by armed conflicts, natural disasters or other crisis situations. Since crises and conflicts today are diverse and complex to manage, humanitarian aid, as well as international politics in general, are faced with new challenges. On a global level humanitarian aid has increased in volume, and the number of aid actors has grown whilst other actors such as militaries recently have entered the humanitarian sphere. This largely affects the interaction between aid actors and nature of humanitarian aid as a whole. The purpose of this study is to show how current principles and praxis of humanitarian aid are represented in three aid doctrines that I have formulated. The arguments and values of the three doctrines have been elucidated by a reconstruction. The contents of the doctrines are analyzed using a number of dimensions that on a fundamental level are comprised of superior values and value-systems, and that on an operative level include actors and concrete working methods.