The Humanitarian Angle:
Mapping the Dimensions of GDRC's Work

	Hari Srinivas
	Explainer Series E-229.

Humanitarian concerns are not confined to emergencies alone, but cut across the wider spectrum of development and governance. They influence how communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from crises, whether caused by natural hazards, conflict, or systemic vulnerabilities. By framing humanitarian concerns in this way, they are understood not just as immediate responses to crises, but as long-term considerations that shape resilience, equity, and justice in society.

In keeping with GDRC's "outside-looking-in" approach ¹, humanitarian issues are not treated as a separate programme but as an essential dimension woven into each of the 15 thematic areas. This cross-cutting perspective highlights how humanitarian principles - protection, resilience, inclusion, and accountability - can enrich ongoing work in environment, governance, civil society, and beyond.

In doing so, it underscores the value of integrating humanitarian thinking into policy, practice, and knowledge systems that ultimately strengthen both crisis response and sustainable development.

GDRC Programme	Humanitarian Dimensions
Environmental Decision-Making	The issues covered in the Environmental Decision-Making programme highlights two key issues - (1) the broader and intrinsic links between environmental management and disaster risk reduction, and (2) specifically, the importance of crisis-informed policies - by integrating disaster risk reduction, early warning systems, and responses to climate-induced displacement.s
Sustainable Development	The Sustainable Development programme emphasizes human security and resilience in crises, ensuring access to essential everyday needs such as food, health, and shelter during and after shocks and conflicts.
Oceans, Coasts and Small Islands	The theme of the Oceans, Coasts and Small Islands programme helps us understand the humanitarian challenges arising from our interactions and proximity to oceans - coastal areas, small islands and the broader oceans itself. These can includes overfishing and declining fish stocks, marine pollution, especially plastics, coral reef degradation and biodiversity loss, coastal erosion and habitat destruction, and sea level rise
Urban Environmental Management	The Urban Environmental Management programme focuses on urban lifestyles and production/consumption patterns that increases the disaster risks we face. It looks at the various themes that determine urban humanitarian risks and responses such as food security, energy use, water management, waste management et al.
Urban Governance	The Urban Governance programme focuses on a number of themes that highlights the importance of the quality of life of urban residents, which in the longer term reduces the risks that they face. The programmes' outputs also lead to the need for strengthening city-level emergency preparedness through better governance systems covering contingency planning, public safety measures, and rapid coordination during crises.
Urban Heritage and Conservation	The Urban Heritage and Conservation programme looks at the importance of heritage conservation from the social, economic and environmental perspectives, and illustrates the need for safeguarding cultural assets during crises, including post-disaster reconstruction and protection in conflict situations.
NGOs and the Civil Society	The work of the NGOs and Civil Society programme highlights the critical role that NGOs play in humanitarian aid. With their deep understanding of local conditions, and close links to local communities - NGOs are ideally placed to faclitate relief delivery, accountability, and long-term recovery efforts.
Gender and Development	From a humanitarian perspective, the Gender and Development programme's work underscores the need for protection of women, girls, and other vulnerable groups in humanitarian settings. Understanding their particular vulnerabilities and needs helps us design better policies that can better protect such groups during disasters and conflicts.
Microfinance	The Microfinance programme highlights the pivotal role that appropriately designed financial services play to assist vulnerable low-income households improve their living conditions. The humanitarian angle that microfinance emphasizes is to provide effected/displaced populations through cash transfers, micro-insurance, and financial inclusion mechanisms that enable their resilience in crises.
Informal Sector	With more than 50-80% of economic activities in developing countries operating informally, the sector presents unique challenges to ensure that informal workers are protected from disaster/conflict challenges. The Informal Sector programme emphasize the livelihood coping strategies that informal workers adopt during and after crises.
Technology Management	The Technology Management programme highlights the importance of technology solutions and innovations for humanitarian needs, particularly those that are environmentally friendly. These can include low-cost shelters, access to clean water, and renewable energy solutions.
Sustainable Business	GDRC's Sustainable Business programme emphasizes the need for businesses to be sustainable - guided by governance, educational and technology systems - resulting in cost savings, increased market share and reduced risks for businesses. Embedded within these broader sustainable goals are humanitarian supply chains, the role of corporate social responsibility in disaster relief, and business partnerships for recovery.
ICTs for Development	ICTs, while representing the cutting edge of technology innovation, also play an important role in broad-based development, particularly in developing countries. The implications of the ICTs programme from a humanitarian perspective is, for example, the use of crisis mapping, refugee mobile services, and digital tools for aid coordination.
Knowledge Management	Knowledge Management is the systematic leveraging of information and expertise to improve organizational and operational innovation, responsiveness, productivity and competency. Outputs of GDRC's Knowledge Management programme help us understand and facilitate the capturing and sharing of humanitarian lessons learned through structured knowledge platforms.
Information Design	Information Design is the practice of collating, packaging and displaying information to communicate and meet the needs of the user, for intended purposes. From the humanitarian perspective, the GDRC Information Design programme illustrates the importance of "designing" information by creating clear communication tools for crises, including visual, multilingual, and accessible information resources.

By integrating humanitarian concerns into each programme, GDRC underscores that relief and development are two sides of the same coin. Building resilience before crises strike, responding effectively when they do, and supporting recovery afterwards are shared responsibilities that link all of GDRC's themes. This mapping is therefore not an endpoint, but a reminder to continually view humanitarian challenges as interconnected with broader development priorities.