International Relations *

Below are links to databases and electronic resources that support the study of international humanitarian aid, disaster relief, and related areas of research.

MULTIDISCIPLINARY DATABASES

Databases that offer multidisciplinary coverage of international disaster relief and humanitarian aid literature from scholarly and non-scholarly sources.

• Credo Reference -- comprehensive collection of highly-specialized dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks across all subject areas. Good place to go for succinct definitions, explanations, and analysis of concepts, theories, or topics.
• Google Scholar -- the scholarly part of the Google empire. To set up Google Scholar with access to full-text journals and databases, go here.
• JSTOR -- a multidisciplinary archive of scholarly journal articles covering most major disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Useful for identifying historical research on a topic.
• Policy Commons -- platform for objective, fact-based research from the world’s leading policy experts, nonpartisan think tanks, and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. The database provides advanced searching across millions of pages of books, articles, working papers, reports, policy briefs, data sets, tables, charts, media, case studies, and statistical publications, including archived reports from more than 200 defunct think tanks. Coverage is international in scope.
• ProQuest Multiple -- comprehensive, multidisciplinary database of newspaper, magazine, and scholarly journal articles updated daily. Content is more focused and manageable in locating relevant research than Google Scholar.

SPECIALIZED RESEARCH RESOURCES

Key Databases

• Columbia International Affairs Online [CIAO] -- provides the full text of a wide range of scholarship books, working papers from universities and research institutes, occasional papers series from NGOs, foundation-funded research projects, and proceedings from conferences.
• Environment Index -- provides access to articles from domestic and international journals, books and conference papers covering applicable areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, natural resources, marine and freshwater science, geography, pollution and waste management, environmental technology, environmental law, public policy, social impacts, urban planning, and more. Good place to find research concerning environmental disasters.
• Humanitarian Library -- an open-source, community-moderated information portal where global humanitarian aid knowledge is posted on a continuous basis. Most resources are published by non-governmental and non-profit organizations. There is a search engine to enter terms or you can search by sector and issues [e.g., armed conflict] disaster type [e.g., disease outbreak], resource type [e.g., case study], location, language, or by publisher.
• IREON [International Relations and Area Studies Gateway] -- International RElations and area studies ONline is a free gateway to research in the fields of international relations and regional and area studies. IREON contains more than 5 million references covering topics, such as, foreign and security policy, business administration, economics and business practice, international cooperation and development policy, European politics and transatlantic relations, regional and country studies worldwide, foreign cultural policy, energy, and climate and the environment. NOTE: Your browser may post a security warning when clicking on the site, but this is only due to an unfamiliar domain designation [de] and not a true security risk to your computer.
• Public Affairs Information Services [PAIS] -- indexes selective subjects and bibliographic access to periodicals, books, hearings, reports, gray literature, government publications, Internet resources, and other publications from 120 countries. Includes historical coverage from 1915 to the present.
• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts -- provides indexing of the international journal literature in political science and its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration and policy. Over 1,700 titles are monitored for coverage and, of these, 67% are published outside of the United States.

Related Research Resources

• Aid Worker Security Database – a global compilation of reports from 1997 to the present on major security incidents involving deliberate acts of violence affecting aid workers. Incident data is collected both from public sources, through systematic media filtering using a data scraper tool and from information provided directly to the project by aid organizations and operational security entities. Incident reports are cross-checked and verified with the relevant agencies on an annual basis via our verification project. The latest, unverified incidents are provided on the online database with the qualification that the numbers are provisional and may change. The project also maintains agreements with a number of regional and field-level security consortiums for direct information sharing and verification of incidents.
• ALNAP Humanitarian Evaluation, Learning and Performance (HELP) Library – a multi-facited portal developed by ALNAP (Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action) that provides access to online resources covering, among other things,  after action and learning reviews, journal articles, audio-visual materials, factsheets and summaries, blogs, data visualizations, evaluation reports, and some books.
• Development Initiatives – a global organization harnessing the power of data and evidence to end poverty, reduce inequality and increase resilience. The site provides search portals to the publications such as research reports, briefing papers, fact sheets, discussion papers, and audio-visual resources as well as to approximately 58 detailed datasets. Coverage is international in scope but focuses on Africa. Organization has recently ceased operations but the resources remain accessible.
• Europa: Gateway to the European Union -- provides up-to-date coverage of European Union affairs and essential information on European integration. Users can consult all legislation currently in force or under discussion, access the websites of each of the EU institutions, and find out about the policies administered by the European Union under the powers devolved to it by the Treaties. Source for researching the European Union's role in disaster relief and humanitarian aid.
• Global Database of Humanitarian Organisations – a compendium of organizations that provide aid in humanitarian crises. The database provides basic organizational and operational information and includes international non-governmental organizations (grouped by federation), national NGOs that deliver aid within their own borders, UN humanitarian agencies, and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. All the organizations in the database have responded to humanitarian needs in at least one emergency context, individually or in partnership with other organizations, even if their stated mission is not strictly humanitarian. Not included are NGOs devoted to development, human rights, or political causes, or that do not work in emergency settings.
• Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery – site that documents the efforts of a multi-donor partnership established in 2006 in partnership with the World Bank that supports low and middle-income countries to understand, manage, and reduce their risks from natural hazards and climate change. Specifically, the organization provides financial support for technical assistance and expertise and invests in new analytics, innovative solutions, and tools to generate and share global knowledge that can create outcomes and impact to help improve disaster risk management and climate change adaptation operations and policies.
• Humanitarian Practise Network – a forum for those working in or on the humanitarian sector to share and disseminate information, analysis and experience. Publications and articles are written by and for practitioners that focuses on new initiatives and good practice in humanitarian policy and practice and distilling, documenting and disseminating these developments across the sector. HPN is managed by the Humanitarian Policy Group, an independent global think tank on humanitarian and development policy.
• International Charter Space and Major Disasters – a worldwide collaboration, through which satellite data are made available for the benefit of disaster management. By combining Earth observation assets from different space agencies, the Charter allows resources and expertise to be coordinated for rapid response to major disaster situations; thereby helping civil protection authorities and the international humanitarian community. Detailed maps can be accessed from the Library tab and searched by keyword or by satellite name, disaster type, or country or region.
• The New Humanitarian -- founded  in 1995 by the United Nations, in the wake of the Rwandan genocide, this is an independent, non-profit news organization with global coverage of topics related to emerging and protracted conflicts and climate change impacts, from refugee issues and migrant movements to disease outbreaks. There are also reports that cover policy and practice, from local groups to international actors, from the particular needs of women and girls to the neglected viewpoints of marginalized minorities, the use of technology and data, and the financing of aid work.
• PubMed@USC -- comprehensive open access search engine for archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine. Also covers non-communicable diseases, public health nutrition, and much more. Currently contains more than seven million full-text records, spanning several centuries of biomedical and life science research (late 1700s to present). This is an excellent source for researching the health effects of natural disasters and health-related humanitarian aid. This version of PubMed is customized for USC users to find the full-text of articles.
• United Nations Agency Resources
  • Food and Agriculture Organization -- emergencies and resilience page concerning the delivery of urgent agricultural assistance in relation to helping people anticipate and prepare for crises, respond quickly to crises, and reduce risks and address vulnerabilities to obtaining access to food during a disaster.
  • International Fund for Agricultural Development -- agency exclusively dedicated to transforming agriculture, rural economies and food systems, including building resilience and responding to economic shocks, conflict, and other crises.
  • Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission -- promotes international cooperation in marine sciences to improve management of the ocean, coasts and marine resources that includes focus on effective warning systems and preparedness for tsunamis and other ocean-related hazards and building resilience to climate change and contributing to its mitigation.
  • United Nations Environment Programme/Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Joint Environment Unit -- responds to the environmental dimensions of emergencies by pairing the UN Environment’s environmental expertise with the OCHA-coordinated humanitarian networks. By coordinating international efforts and mobilizing partners, the Unit assists countries affected by disasters and crisis and works to enhance the environmental sustainability of humanitarian action.
  • Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS -- provides the strategic direction, advocacy, coordination and technical support needed to catalyse and connect leadership from governments, the private sector and communities to deliver life-saving HIV services.
  • United Nations Capital Development Fund -- assists developing countries in the development of their economies by supplementing existing sources of capital assistance by means of grants, loans and guarantees, focusing in particular on the least developed among the developing countries in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the realization of the Doha Programme of Action for the least developed countries, 2022–2030.
  • United Nations Children's Fund [UNICEF] -- emergencies page of resources and activities in support of the agency's work in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, to defend their rights, and to help them fulfill their potential from early childhood through adolescence.
  • United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees -- emergency resource page that provides information about the organization’s efforts to assist people who are displaced worldwide due to conflict, persecution, or other humanitarian crises. Includes information about on-going humanitarian emergencies in multiple countries, working to keep people safe while they are on the move and displaced from their homes.
  • United Nations International Organization for Migration – this agency sponsors the Global Crisis Response Platform that provides crisis response and country-specific crisis response plans concerning the evolving needs and aspirations of those impacted by, or at risk of, crisis and displacement. The Platform is regularly updated as crises evolve and new situations emerge. The site also documents development-orientated activities addressing the drivers and longer-term impacts of crisis and displacement as well as supporting preparedness and disaster risk reduction in fragile areas.
  • United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs -- established in 1991, this is the primary agency within the United Nations charged with strengthening international responses to complex emergencies and natural disasters. The agency supports ReliefWeb, a source of time-critical humanitarian information on global crises and disasters that includes reports, maps, infographics, and videos from trusted sources, as well as jobs and training programs for humanitarians and the Global Map of Official Development Aid that documents where humanitarian aid funds are from, where they are going, and progress on appeals.
  • United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction -- provides leadership and support to accelerate global efforts in disaster risk reduction to achieve inclusive sustainable development and the goal of the Sendai Framework, and to advance concerted implementation of disaster risk reduction, sustainable development and climate change adaptation. Site Includes access to the UN Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction, which is the flagship report of the United Nations on worldwide efforts to reduce disaster risk.
  • United Nations Population Fund -- emergencies site to information about humanitarian emergencies with a focus on sexual and reproductive health created by conflicts, natural disasters, and public health crises. Includes data sources as well as country profiles of relief aid.
  • World Food Programme -- humanitarian organization a presence in over 120 countries and territories devoted to saving lives in emergencies and using food assistance to build a pathway to peace, stability and prosperity, for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change. Site includes annual report examining food aid flows worldwide, such as, data on food aid deliveries, by purpose, commodity, supply mode, world region of purchase, recipient country and world region, and donor country.
  • World Health Organization -- emergencies page that provides access to agency activities, reports, news, and events that are working on the health-related aspects of disasters and human emergencies, including access to detailed emergency situation reports describing the latest emergency situations throughout the world and a list of health emergencies of the disease outbreaks, environmental disasters, and other humanitarian crises in which WHO has played or is still playing an essential role in protecting health.
• United Nations Cluster Cooperatives
  • Global Education Cluster – supports country-level cooperative clusters and working groups by providing direct and remote field support, developing guidance, building evidence, strengthening capacities and advocating for the continued prioritization of education.
  • Global Emergency Telecommunications Cluster – a global network of organizations that work together to provide shared communications services in humanitarian emergencies.
  • Global Food Security Cluster – focuses on enhancing cooperation and partnerships by working directly with its partners and stakeholders that include NGOs, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, UN organizations, governments, and donors.
  • Global Health Cluster – exists to relieve suffering and save lives in humanitarian emergencies, while advancing the well-being and dignity of affected populations. Currently there are thirty-one Health Clusters/Sectors, of which two are regional coordination mechanisms.
  • Global Logistics Cluster – a dynamic knowledge platform based on manuals, trainings, and guidance from humanitarian organizations, academia, and the private sector that also provides up to date information about the latest crises.
  • Global Nutrition Cluster – aims to strengthen the technical and coordination capacities for nutrition in countries so that countries can forecast nutrition trends and prepare for, respond to, and recover from, shocks during humanitarian emergencies.
  • Global Protection Cluster – works on four specialized areas of responsibility: gender-based violence, child protection, mine action, and housing, land, and property.
  • Global Shelter Cluster – enables better coordination among actors that provide shelter to those in need, including local and national governments, to help people in need receive support faster and the right kind of support.
  • Global Water, Sanitation, and& Hygiene Cluster – supports the strengthening the system-wide preparedness and coordination of response capacity in humanitarian crises and providing clear leadership and accountability.
• World Bank Open Knowledge Repository – this is the World Bank’s official open access repository for its research outputs and statistical knowledge products. Site includes World Bank Group Annual Reports and Independent Evaluation Studies, all World Development Reports plus recent WDR background papers, Policy Research Working Papers that disseminate findings of work in progress in order to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues, and Economic and Sector Work analytical reports prepared by Bank staff. Source to search for the World Bank’s role in humanitarian and disaster relief.

GROUP PERSPECTIVE

Databases that offer the opportunity to understand and contemplate the implications of disaster relief and humanitarian aid as understood by specific segments of the population.

• AgeLine -- focuses exclusively on issues of aging and the population of people aged 50 years and older from individual, national, and global perspectives. Contents cover the social, psychological, economic, policy, and health care aspects of aging derived from journal articles, books and chapters, research reports, and dissertations. Good source for researching how older people are impacted by disasters and benefit from humanitarian aid.
• Child Development and Adolescent Studies -- provides citations to current and historical social and behavioral sciences literature related to growth and development of children through the age of 21, including from scholarly journals, technical reports, books, book chapters, and theses and dissertations. Key database for locating studies about the potential impact of disaster and humanitarian aid on the lives of children.
• Ethnic NewsWatch -- includes current and archival coverage of newspapers, magazines and journals from ethnic and minority presses. Very important database for gaining an understanding of disaster and humanitarian aid from the perspective of underrepresented groups, minorities, and indigenous cultures.
• Family and Society Studies Worldwide -- covers research, policy, and practice literature in family science, human development, child and family welfare, civil and legal rights, and social welfare from a wide range of publications in the social sciences. Includes research about the relationship and impact of disaster relief and humanitarian aid on families.
• Women’s Studies International -- an interdisciplinary database that covers issues in women's studies including feminist theory and history and the areas of sociology, history, political science and economy, public policy, international relations, arts and humanities, business and education. Important database for locating studies about the role of women in supporting humanitarian aid efforts worldwide, how aid impacts the lives of women, as well as the ways in which women and girls are impacted by disasters.

DATA AND STATISTICS--COMPREHENSIVE

• Google Dataset Search -- facilitates searching approximately 25 million datasets provided by government, public, and private groups. Users can filter results based on the type of data desired [e.g., images or text]. Data availability is based on the original source being formatted using schema.org standards, an open discovery standard for data on the web.
• National Statistical Offices -- a directory of country-specific statistical agencies maintained and updated by the United Nations Statistics Division. Also included is a list of countries and organizations which includes a brief history of the country's statistical system, legal basis, the statistical program and much more.
• UNData -- searchable statistical database provided by the United Nations Statistics Division that provides access to current statistics. The database covers a number of different areas such as employment, industry, and trade. A single interface facilitates the creation of customizable tables and the use of various filters and search options to sort and locate specific statistical information.

DATA AND STATISTICS--SPECIALIZED

Disaster Relief

• EM-DAT International Disaster Database -- contains open access data on the occurrence and impacts of over 26,000 mass disasters worldwide from 1900 to the present day. The database is compiled from various sources, including United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations, reinsurance companies, research institutes, and press agencies. The database classifies disasters into two groups of hazards: natural and technological. The natural group is further classified up to four additional levels following the IRDR Peril Classification and Hazard Glossary. The technological group comprises three main types: transport, industrial, and miscellaneous accidents.
• European Emergency Disaster Response Information System – a database that lists annual contributions made by the Member States' Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the European Commission's Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations for the delivery of humanitarian assistance to people affected by natural or man-made disasters worldwide. It also provides information on how much each EU Member State contributes to a disaster response operation and to which area. Data from 2012 to the present is accessible to the public by clicking on the ECHO on the IATI standard files link.
• Measuring the State of Disaster Philanthropy – this organization compiles grants data from direct reporting of grants data by foundations, IRS Forms 990 and 990-PF, foundation websites, and other public sources to create a mapping platform that captures the myriad disaster-related activities that donors have supported from 2011 to the present. The map is designed to provide users with a scan of activity that is happening in the field of disaster-related philanthropy and humanitarian aid. The data set is updated at least monthly.
• ReliefWeb -- a humanitarian information service provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that monitors and collects information from more than 4,000 key sources, including humanitarian agencies at the international and local levels, governments, think-tanks and research institutions, and the media. Key content  is organized by themes, disaster type, vulnerable groups, and content format and includes the latest reports, maps, and infographics from trusted sources. There is a glossary of humanitarian terms, which provides a focus on common usage and understanding of terms within a humanitarian context, particularly as relating to natural disasters, complex emergencies, and disaster risk reduction. These keywords are useful when searching the USC Library’s databases for information about disasters and disaster relief.
• SIGMA Explorer – platform that visualizes data from the annual sigma reports on natural catastrophes and man-made disasters (catastrophe database), world insurance markets (world insurance database), and macroeconomic resilience indicators measured using ten indicators that reveal a country's economic resilience to natural and man-made catastrophes. In the case of the catastrophe database, only a subset of the individual catastrophes is shown, i.e., the twenty largest events for each year by the number of victims, by insured losses, or by total losses (excluding events from the United States).

Humanitarian Aid

• ACAPS Humanitarian Access Overview – since 2020, this organization has provided an annual Humanitarian Access Overview through an interactive portal and providing a snapshot of the most challenging contexts for humanitarian access around the world. Site includes access to a repository of data points on the status of the information environment in countries with ongoing humanitarian crises, a composite indicator that measures the severity of humanitarian crises against a common scale at the global level, and information about humanitarian access at the global and sub-national levels. Also includes Afghanistan Core Dataset, Yemen Core Dataset, key indicators of the Ukraine crisis, and dataset on political, economic and humanitarian events related to the ongoing conflict in Yemen.
• AidData.org – housed at William & Mary's Global Research Institute, this site currently encompasses multilateral and bilateral foreign aid donor projects. It contains information from traditional aid sources such as the OECD's Creditor Reporting System (CRS) as well as donors not captured by the CRS and activities that do not fit the OECD definition of Official Development Assistance. AidData augments existing data by publishing more complete project descriptions and more detailed aid project purpose codes. In particular, AidData is dedicated to collecting project-level data from all multilateral donors and non-DAC bilateral donors (NDBs) to provide a more complete picture of development finance flows and activities. Includes a separate and robust Global Chinese Development Finance data and analysis.
• Development Assistance for Health Database – includes estimates for 1990-2020, which are based on project databases, financial statements, annual reports, IRS 990s, and correspondence with agencies. The database enables comprehensive analysis of trends in international disbursements of grants and loans for health projects in low and middle-income countries from key agencies.  The data are disaggregated by source of funds, channel of funding, country and geographic region, health focus areas, and program areas. Latest release in 2021 has incorporated estimates for COVID.
• EU Aid Explorer – the website displays the gross Official Development Assistance (ODA) disbursements for the projects funded by the European Commission, the European Investment Bank, the EU Trust Funds, and the EU Member states as of 2007. This dataset can be explored from an aggregate perspective per Donor (e.g. European Commission, any particular EU Member state), Recipient (e.g. countries or regions receiving development/humanitarian support), Sector of activity (e.g. agriculture, energy) and Channel of delivery (e.g. recipient country government, UN) or their combination.
• International Aid Transparency Initiative Data – a global initiative to improve the transparency of development and humanitarian resources and their results for addressing poverty and crises by providing access to several data portal tools data covering more than one million development and humanitarian activities across the world. The data covers finances, locations, sectors, results and more. The data has been published to IATI by more than 1,500 organizations, including donor governments, development finance institutions and UN agencies, non-governmental organizations, foundations and private sector organizations.
• OECD Data Explorer--Development Assistance -- official open access source of reliable, comparable, and complete statistics on official development assistance intended to inform users about what is being spent on aid overseas. that includes high-level overviews to granular perspectives to help answer the question, “Who is spending what, where, and when?”
• United Nations iLibrary -- direct link in the iLibrary to World Humanitarian Data and Trends, an annual report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs that presents global and country-level data and trend analysis about humanitarian crises and assistance. Its purpose is to consolidate this information and present it in an accessible way in order to support humanitarian policy decisions and provide context for operational decisions.

Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.