Kevin M. Cahill

A companion volume to Emergency Relief Operations, this book is a primer on designing, building, funding, and managing humanitarian action programs. Drawing their experience in such groups as Medecins sans Frontières, the World Health Organization, and the International Red Cross, the contributors explore the political, legal, ethical, cultural, and logistical aspects of effective relief work--from funding and team building to working with local NGOs.

The suppression of war has been the primary objective of the United Nations for almost fifty years, and stopping a war before it starts is easier than ending a war already underway. History, however, has shown that military interventions and economic sanctions often do more harm than good. In Preventive Diplomacy, Nobel prize winners, top officials, and revered thinkers tackle these issues and explore the process of conflict prevention from humanitarian, economic, and political perspectives. This cross-disciplinary reader on global politics demonstrates that when new insights and methodologies on public health are applied to the handling of international disasters, the change in policy perspective is intriguing--even hopeful.

Natural and human-made disasters are increasing around the world. Hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, and resultant famine, floods, and armed conflicts are constant reminders of the frailty of our human race. Global warming may cause whole island states to be submerged as the oceans rise. In the past these acute and recurring crises have been met by the international community responding to UN and media appeals. The economic collapse of nations is now a reality; some of those most affected had been traditional, generous donors to disaster relief operations. It is unlikely-probably impossible-that they will be able to continue to contribute overseas when their own domestic needs are unmet. A recent New York Times front page report suggested that one of the few domestic issues to have bipartisan support was to cut the foreign aid budget. This book analyzes the global economic forecast and the United Nations pattern of philanthropy, provides a case study of how one nation with a tradition of giving will cope in the face of a marked reduction in flexible funds, and then provides thoughtful chapters on new approaches to disaster preparedness and disaster response. Among the contributors are the Director of UNESCO, the UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Assistance, the Secretary General's Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, and fresh suggestions from three well-known global entrepreneurs. All royalties from this book go to the training of humanitarian workers.

For more than fifty years, Dr. Cahill has been helping to heal the world, as a leading specialist in tropical medicine and as a driving force in humanitarian assistance and relief efforts around the globe. In this revised and expanded edition, he chronicles extraordinary achievements of compassion and commitment. Bringing together a rich selection of writings, he crafts a fascinating memoir of a life devoted to others. The book includes front-line reports from places under siege Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Nicaragua, Gaza, and Ireland; there are also visionary essays from the origins of the AIDS.