Kashish Ahuja | 2201105 IIITG

Importance of humanitarian aid can be directly estimated by seeing its primary objectives, which includes saving lives and maintains human dignity. Humanitarian aid can come as an early response in the first phase, focusing on providing assistances and helps the communities to rebuild in the wake of disaster. Humanitarian aid is very important because it provides shelter during crisis, supports food security and nutrition. Along with this, it also play an important role in protecting human rights and maintain the global health. Description of these points are mentioned below.

Humanitarian aid provides shelter to communities that are affected by the crisis, because when conflict hit the population, often a large number of people lose their livelihoods. According to United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), shelter is “a vital survival mechanism in times of crisis or development”. It is essential to “restore personal security, self- sufficiency and dignity.” Humanitarian aid not only provides temporary shelter to people affected by crisis, but it also provides labour, assistance and essentials needed for the society to rebuild their lives and livelihoods.

Humanitarian aid also plays a very crucial role in providing food assistance to the famine affected population to help them to recover and rebuild. Many NGOs and government organisations run humanitarian projects to check food security and improve nutritional outcomes for children under poverty. 

Organizations like World Food programme (WFP) focus on meeting nutritional needs during crisis. WFP along with NGO and UN agencies, support nutritional interventions, policies and programmes that include school meals.

Humanitarian aid has a vital importance as it protects women and children and provide subsidiary facilities needed to rebuild these groups. Crisis and conflicts affect everyone, but certain groups are more vulnerable. Women and children face more difficulties during displacement. In crisis settings, more than 70% of women’s face gender based discriminations. Many humanitarian organizations along with NGO prioritize the most vulnerable women and girls to ensure they get all the resources that they need. Children pay the highest price of humanitarian crisis. In conflicts, children may be killed or injured due to attack on schools and hospitals by armed forces. Today, nearly 50 million children have been displaced from their home due to violence, conflicts, poverty or natural disasters.

Humanitarian aid's importance in today’s world can also be viewed by taking international human rights law into consideration. All the human right matters, but humanitarian aid protect life, food, sanitation, shelter and education. The sole purpose of humanitarian activities and assistance is the relief and prevention of sufferings caused by a crisis. This means the response must not be influenced by political or military or social objectives. The most important idea behind humanitarian assistance is that every human can leave with dignity.