Humanitarian aid: what you need to know

‘Humanitarian aid’ or ‘humanitarian assistance’ is emergency help for people in some of the world’s most desperate situations. Typically, beneficiaries are facing crises like violent conflict, natural disasters or economic turmoil – or many of these threats simultaneously.

COVID-19 has compounded the urgency. In 2025, an estimated 305 million people are expected to need humanitarian aid such as food, clean water, shelter, medicine, medical care, and protection.

The countries in greatest need include Sudan (30.4 million people), Afghanistan (23 million), the Democratic Republic of Congo (20 million), Myanmar, Syria (16.6 million), and Yemen. Providing humanitarian assistance to the world’s most vulnerable people is projected to cost over $45.48 billion USD, with only 17.7% of that funding secured as of mid-August 2025.

Humanitarian aid is not about creating long-term development in stable communities. Rather, it helps save lives in the here and now – no matter where people live and what they are facing. It aligns with the universal ‘humanitarian imperative’: we all have “the right to receive aid and the right to offer it”.

This article explores the realities of humanitarian assistance. You’ll learn why it’s important and why the need is increasing. We’ll explain what Canada is doing to respond, and how you can help. You’ll learn how humanitarian aid makes a difference, not just for people suffering today, but for their futures.

1. What is humanitarian aid?

Humanitarian aid – or humanitarian assistance – is emergency help for people facing life-threatening crises. This article explores aid for people in countries facing threats like war, natural disasters, economic crises, and devastating emergencies like the 2020 explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. In 2025, an estimated 305 million people are expected to need humanitarian aid like food, clean water, shelter, medicine, and protection.

Humanitarian assistance takes many forms. It may consist of material help like emergency food and water, shelter, and medical help. Logistical help includes things like rebuilding bombed water sources, transporting people to safety from flood zones and other support. Newer approaches include cash-based assistance like ‘cash for work’, so people can meet their needs more quickly and efficiently while contributing to local economies.

2. Who needs humanitarian aid?

Humanitarian aid is most likely to be required by people in places rocked by natural and man-made emergencies. Threats can include violent conflict, extreme natural hazards, and economic and political turmoil.

Women and children – girls in particular – are disproportionately affected by humanitarian disasters. For them, malnutrition, child marriage and labour in dangerous jobs are all likely to increase in emergency contexts. Targeted humanitarian assistance is critical, for the most vulnerable people in a society.

Emergencies in Canada vs. around the world

Factors like government and economic stability (or lack thereof) can make a big difference to the likelihood and severity of emergencies facing populations. So can factors like the degree and quality of infrastructure in a country.

Picture floodwaters rising in your community here in Canada, for instance – something that happens every year in some provinces. They might take over your home and business location, leaving you nowhere to sleep and no way to earn money. For weeks or months, you might sleep on the floor of the local arena, with hundreds of other people.

Canada’s stable society and economy – as well as our geographic location and the lack of complicating factors like war – would greatly reduce the threat of a crisis here. Here in Canada, humanitarian assistance is forthcoming when we need it. We would rapidly receive the basic essentials and some help getting back on our feet.

Now picture living in Afghanistan, or the Democratic Republic of Congo. Violent conflict may be a constant threat where you live. To compound the danger, imagine a drought shriveling your crops – and the soaring cost of food wiping out your savings. Your children are gaunt, listless, and in desperate need of medical care.

What if the people in your community have run out of things to share? What if the sounds of conflict are coming closer? What if most of your neighbours have packed up and left, walking for days or weeks to seek humanitarian assistance? You would very likely do the same – even if it means leaving your home and livelihood.

In emergencies like these, people’s own governments are either unable or unwilling to meet their most immediate needs: clean water, food, shelter, medication and protection. And people of all ages are at risk of illness and death if humanitarian assistance doesn’t come quickly.

What’s causing humanitarian crises nowadays?

Here are some of the global trends prompting the need for humanitarian assistance in 2025, according to the latest Global Humanitarian Overview:

COVID-19 has left lasting impacts, contributing to a global debt crisis and deepening inequality. Many countries are now spending more on debt servicing than on health or education, with 48 developing nations allocating more to interest payments than to essential public services. Political conflicts are more intense and violent, with civilians bearing the brunt. For the ninth consecutive year, over 90% of casualties from explosive weapons in populated areas were civilians

This has devastated families and local economies, pushing more people into extreme poverty. Hunger is soaring, with conflict remaining the primary driver of acute food insecurity. The UN and partners are requesting over $47 billion USD to assist nearly 190 million people across 72 countries. Food security needs have surged, especially in regions like Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, and Myanmar. Climate change is worsening situations for families in around the world. The past 10 years were the hottest on record. They increased severe and frequent weather events as well as natural hazards. Climate change increased the need for humanitarian aid, particularly in regions where families were already vulnerable.

3. What’s the difference between ‘humanitarian aid’ and ‘humanitarian assistance’?

For the purposes of this article, we will alternate between both. Nowadays, however, many people prefer the term ‘humanitarian assistance’ to the more old-fashioned ‘humanitarian aid.’ The former better reflects the resourcefulness people show in emergency situations.

‘Humanitarian aid’ can imply that people are helpless without the help of wealthier countries. As with the term ‘first aid’, we picture people too weak, sick, injured or vulnerable to be partners in their care and recovery. In reality, however, surviving crises like civil conflict and natural disasters requires formidable strength and endurance on the part of those affected.

In an emergency situation, people and communities take countless actions to protect and care for their families. They are not idle recipients of ‘aid’ from countries like Canada. Rather, we are ‘assisting’ them in their efforts to provide for their families in the short-term – and start the process of rebuilding.

One way World Vision does this is through our cash and voucher-based programs. We meet families’ urgent needs in the short term. But from there, we help parents and caregivers get back on their feet, providing for their families while restoring their communities.

Not only does this approach help restore dignity to families who’ve lost everything, as they make their own choices about purchases. It helps contribute to what is often a battered local economy.

4. Does humanitarian assistance make a difference?

Humanitarian assistance not only saves lives – it rebuilds futures. Here are five essential benefits of humanitarian aid.

Humanitarian assistance protects childhoods by:

• responding to the essential needs of families with children to raise, protecting children’s futures and helping keep parents alive to care for them.
• giving families alternatives to marrying their daughters as children, a decision which affects a child for the rest of her life.
• keeping parents and caregivers alive to provide, so children don’t need to assume adult roles – including taking hazardous jobs.
• rebuilding schools and providing essential education supplies for children to learn, so education can continue.
• creating ‘child-friendly spaces’ as safe places for children to gather when their communities are in chaos (this can be the time when they are most vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse).

Humanitarian assistance protects local economies by rebuilding livelihoods and also infrastructure like boreholes, roads and bridges. Families who can earn income and transport their wares to market can better provide for their children and hire other workers.

Humanitarian assistance guards against other threats including waterborne illness. Other threats include food crisis. Exposure is also a real danger for families sleeping in the open air. Humanitarian assistance helps keep communities rooted. When people can access life’s essentials near where they live – and receive help rebuilding their incomes – they’re less likely to uproot their families and travel long distances for help. Children can grow up amongst people who know and care for them, like teachers, community leaders and extended family.

Humanitarian assistance protects ‘host communities’ in other areas who might otherwise absorb an influx of displaced people. Many such communities are already struggling to meet their own needs. Supporting thousands of people from displaced communities can lead to increased tension/conflict between groups.

5. What are the challenges of providing humanitarian assistance?

Since governments bear the primary responsibility for meeting civilians’ needs, international bodies like the United Nations must negotiate humanitarian access for organizations like World Vision. Governments must consent to receiving humanitarian help – even in situations where they can’t provide for their people or are unwilling to do so.

Once granted entry, humanitarian workers often face myriad challenges.

Aid workers themselves are targeted or even killed in the line of duty. In 2024, a record 383 aid workers were killed, with an additional 308 wounded, 125 kidnapped, and 45 detained. As of mid-August 2025, 265 aid workers have already lost their lives, with violence surging in Gaza, Sudan, and 21 other countries.

Humanitarian aid corridors may be closed, or aid workers banned from an area. In places like Afghanistan and Ukraine, bureaucratic interference, infrastructure damage, and security threats have severely restricted access. Denial of aid can range from administrative delays to violent attacks on civilians seeking help.

The infrastructure required to reach vulnerable areas—roads and airport runways, for example—may be bombed, flooded, or destroyed by landslides, as seen in Afghanistan and Ukraine.

Humanitarian emergencies—even conflict or famine—may not take sufficient priority in some regions due to the world’s continued focus on COVID-19 and other global crises.

The effects of an emergency may go unnoticed for years but have the power to cause crises in the future. Examples include lack of education and inadequate child protection, especially in refugee camps or during lockdowns.

Emergencies are becoming larger, longer-lasting, and more complex. Increasingly, available humanitarian assistance funding is insufficient to meet the needs. In 2025, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) faces a funding gap of 77%, with only 23% of its $10.6 billion USD requirement met by mid-year. This shortfall has forced cuts to health, education, shelter, and protection services for over 11.6 million refugees.

6. Why can’t people’s own countries look after them?

According to the Government of Canada’s web site, the primary responsibility for providing aid in emergency situations lies with the government of the affected country. Often, people’s communities and their governments do provide a significant first response.

But the needs of communities in crisis situations can exceed their government’s capacity, readiness and willingness to respond.

That’s when the ‘humanitarian imperative’ comes into play – the fundamental humanitarian principle giving everyone “the right to receive aid and the right to offer it”.

Some groups and individuals expand on this definition, believing that providing humanitarian assistance is also a responsibility. Groups like World Vision often feel ‘called’ to this kind of work, their workers committing to travelling long distances into dangerous regions to provide aid.

7. What is Canada’s approach to humanitarian assistance?

Canada, like many wealthy nations, recognizes that people’s own governments have the first responsibility to assist them. But when the needs of populations in crisis exceed what their countries can provide, Canada steps up to help.

• Canada helps communities around the globe according to people’s most urgent needs.
• These might include safe drinking water, sanitation services, emergency health care, food and temporary shelters.
• Canada provides grants to experienced humanitarian partners (like World Vision Canada) who are responding to the crisis and support local partners already on the ground.
• These groups include the United Nations, the Red Cross Movement, Canada’s Humanitarian Coalition and other non-government organizations like World Vision Canada.
• World Vision, in turn, partners with organizations like the World Food Programme to distribute food assistance to vulnerable communities— reaching 11.9 million people in 2024, including 7 million children, across 33 countries through 194 projects.

The four humanitarian principles

Canada makes decisions about humanitarian assistance in accordance with the four humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence. Here is what each stands for:

1. Humanity – human suffering must be addressed wherever it is found, with particular attention to the most vulnerable.
2. Neutrality – humanitarian assistance must not favour any side in an armed conflict or other dispute.
3. Impartiality – humanitarian assistance must be provided solely on the basis of need, without discrimination.
4. Independence – humanitarian objectives should be separate from political, economic, military or other objectives.

8. What’s the difference between humanitarian assistance and development assistance?

Both are critical in today’s world. Here is the explanation from Canada’s Humanitarian Coalition of charities, of which World Vision is a member.

• Humanitarian assistance is designed to save lives and alleviate suffering during and in the immediate aftermath of emergencies, whereas
• Development assistance responds to ongoing structural issues, particularly systemic poverty. Such issues “may hinder economic, institutional and social development in any given society.” Development assistance also helps build capacity to ensure resilient communities and sustainable livelihoods.

It’s important to note that this siloed, ‘either-or approach’ to assistance is evolving. It’s being replaced by an approach known as the ‘humanitarian-peace-development nexus’. This is a hot topic within the humanitarian sector and maximizes the overlap between the transitions between the two forms of assistance.

World Vision’s intended approach moving forward, is to leverage humanitarian, development – and also peacebuilding – efforts toward realizing the rights of children living in fragile contexts.

Conversely, most of World Vision’s humanitarian assistance programs have some kind of development aspect. One example is ‘building back better’ when rebuilding schools, homes and community centres, so the structures hold up in the next typhoon.

More and more humanitarian programs have recognized the life-saving nature of incorporating education for children, particularly since millions of the world’s girls and boys are spending their entire childhoods in refugee camps.

9. What are some objections to humanitarian assistance?

Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of humanitarian assistance, feeling it’s the responsibility of a country’s own government to help its people. Some feel that countries have the right to manage their own crises, without outside involvement. Some people fear the possibility of relief supplies end up in the hands of the wrong parties e.g., combatants in conflict situations.

However, most people here in Canada don’t feel concerned about spending ‘too much’ on humanitarian assistance. The percentage of Canada’s budget directed to the world’s most vulnerable people is still comparably small: just 34 cents for every $100 of Gross National Income in 2023–24, which is 0.34% of GNI, slightly above the OECD average of 0.33%.

A poll commissioned by Cooperation Canada in 2025 indicated Canadians support more spending on international aid. The poll showed that 74% of respondents want Canada to either play a leading role or at least match the contributions of similar developed countries.

10. How can I help provide humanitarian assistance?

When an emergency strikes, organizations like World Vision and the Humanitarian Coalition often issue appeals to Canadians. Canadians can partner in the emergency response by making donations. Sometimes these are matched by the Canadian government, increasing the power of each donation.

Another way to help is through World Vision’s Impact Partner initiative, which runs continuously in dangerous, turbulent regions of countries like Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Honduras and South Sudan. Raw Hope stands with children who’ve experienced some of the worst that life can offer, including war, food crisis, disease and abuse.

In helping children recover, Canadians can also help them become more resilient in the face of any future emergencies. It’s a way to invest in the future of fragile regions, not simply respond with crisis hits.