Guidelines and Codes of Conduct

Aimed at humanitarian assistance stakeholders working on the front lines of aid delivery, Preventing Corruption in Humanitarian Operations: A Handbook of Good Practices is a practical guide to help eliminate corruption in day-to-day operations and deliver more aid to those who need it most. The Handbook, produced by Transparency International, offers a catalogue of best practice tools for preventing and identifying corruption in humanitarian operations, including ways to track resources, confront extortion and detect aid diversion.

Hours after the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, both the U.S. military and American and international NGO community were en route to the island country with urgently needed food, water and medical supplies. The crisis in Haiti serves as an example of how disaster relief missions often bring military and NGOs actors together. To improve cooperation with NGOs working in humanitarian relief operations and to establish “social, economic, and political domestic order in the short-term, and in the longer term… conditions for a sustainable peace,” the Department of Defense published the Guide to Nongovernmental Organizations for the Military: A primer for the military about private, voluntary, and nongovernmental organizations operating in humanitarian emergencies globally (Guide) in July 2009.  

An online toolkit was launched on Nov. 10, 2009 to help United Kingdom trustees protect their charities from harm and abuse. Produced by the UK Charity Commission, the first chapter from the Compliance Toolkit: Protecting charities from harm provides information about relevant terrorism laws, identifies risks from terrorism or other financial crimes and encourages best practices of self monitoring for charities.  The remaining sections will be released in 2010 and 2011.  

As warfare moves away from the battlefield and armed forces of nation-states and is often conducted in densely populated cities and regions by organized armed groups, including terrorist organizations, the line between combatants and civilians has become increasingly blurred. To address the pertinent distinction, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) released Interpretive Guidance on June 2, 2009 that clarifies the meaning of "direct participation in hostilities."