As outlined in the course lesson, the United Nations (UN) has played an active role in protecting and serving the global community in a variety of areas that include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development, and upholding international laws. In this discussion, you will consider the role of humanitarian aid.

The UN is well-known for providing humanitarian aid such as food, water, medical supplies, personnel, resources, and necessities after disasters, such as terrorist attacks, that occur in war-torn areas of the globe. Do you believe that the humanitarian aid provided by the UN is enough? Do you believe that other NATO nations should be required to provide humanitarian aid after a terrorist attack? Why, or why not?

ANSWER THE ABOVE QUESTION AND THEN REPLY TO MY CLASSMATE’S RESPONSE TO THE ABOVE QUESTION AND EXPLAIN WHY YOU AGREE? (A MINIMUM OF 150 WORDS EACH)

                                            CLASSMATE’S POST

While pondering on the question regarding whether the UN provides enough humanitarian aid, made me realize the only thing I know about the UN is what everyone else knows. It provides global humanitarian aid such as food, housing, water, medical, and financial assistance to protect lives, relieve, and lessen distress while preserving and respecting the dignity of others especially, during man-made and naturals (GHA, n.d).  After researching information about the UN, my appreciation and understanding has changed because of its complexities.  According to the

United Nations of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

(OCHA) (n.d.) and the Global Humanitarian Assistance Organization (GHA) (n.d) this is not all .

The United Nations (UN) Secretariat entity is known for bringing all parties together for providing rational and comprehensible humanitarian aid response to countries in an emergency is known as the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Seybolt (2009) stated how simple this process appears as well as complicated and difficult.  The UN system of providing aid should be perceived as a coordinating, directing, ensuring aide in routed to its proper destination.  Global leaders participating in the UN’s mission all understand what they are to do to promote this task.  Financial assistance by all UN members maintains a steady flow for monetary needs, however, other needs such as individual, medical, teaching, and training to survive in today’s society and environmental situations are important.  A discovery I made during my research, is that the UN accepts denotations from any and every entity who wishes to denote to their cause.  The perception is that all monies and aid is allocated to the central fund and system, however, this is not the case.  Because these country leaders while supporting the greater good, also understand they have other responsibilities and duties to their government and political realm (Herbert, 2015).  This facet allows them and other donors to designate their funding and aid to specific entities and locations without questions (Burnett & Walker, 2015).  This causes distrust and lack of anonymity among the varying governments and donors which supports the greater good or bad. The vast majority of these contributions are not trackable.  This situation causes the speculation that the UN is not doing their job and could do more.  The question is not are they doing enough, but for continual growth and development in the good and bad on-goings in our world what else can be done by NATO and UN members to ensure their mission continues. 

Reference:

Burnett, M. & Walker, P. (2015). 94 Foreign Aff. 130. Regime Change for

Humanitarian Aid. How to Make Relief More Accountable.

heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals

Global Humanitarian Assistance Organization (GHA), (n.d). Global Humanitarian

               globalhumanitarianassistance.org/data-guides/defining-humanitarian-aid

Herbert, S. (2015). Influencing laws and guidelines on humanitarian

assistance (GSDRC Helpdesk Research Report 1236). Birmingham, UK:

GSDRC, University of Birmingham

Seybolt, T. (2009). Harmonizing the Humanitarian Aid Network: Adaptive Change

in a Complex System, International Studies Quarterly, Volume 53, Issue 4,

December 2009, Pages 1027–1050,

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-

2478.2009.00567.x

United Nations of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

(OCHA) (n.d.)

https://www.unocha.org/about-ocha/history-ocha