title: Tackling the global challenge: humanitarian catastrophes.
abstract: "Humanitarian catastrophes," conflicts and calamities generating both widespread human suffering and destructive events, require a wide range of emergency resources. This paper answers a number of questions that humanitarian catastrophes generate: Why and how do the most-developed countries-those with the resources, capabilities, and willingness to help-intervene in specific types of disasters? What ethical and legal guidelines shape our interventions? How well do we achieve our goals? It then suggests a number of changes to improve humanitarian responses, including better NGO-government cooperation, increased research on the best disaster response methods, clarification of the criteria and roles for humanitarian (military) interventions, and development of post-2015 Millennium Development Goals with more accurate progress measures.
authors.affiliation: University of Arizona, Department of Emergency Medicine, Tuscon, Arizona.
authors.forename: Kenneth V
authors.initials: KV
authors.lastname: Iserson
mesh_terms: D000533:Altruism; D054597:Disaster Medicine / Q000941:ethics / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D004189:Disaster Planning; D004190:Disasters; D063365:Genocide; D014943:Global Health; D006801:Humans; D058873:Pandemics; D012036:Refugees; D012945:Social Values; D014857:Warfare