A growing area of
concern for the international aid community is how best to monitor
and deliver emergency humanitarian assistance, mitigate disasters,
and make a transition towards sustainable development assistance. In
this regard the practitioner is constrained by a lack of a widely
accepted set of definitions and concepts that can readily be applied
to policy formulation, program design and implementation.
This document identifies and develops a set of terms and concepts commonly used in monitoring and analysis of violent conflict, especially in relation to humanitarian relief and sustainable development.
Some of the terms and concepts attributed to authors cited in the text are not necessarily direct quotes. While maintaining the substantive content of a given definition, grammatical and stylistic alterations have been made for the sake of clarity or brevity. The present authors have also given their own definitions of concepts where appropriate. For some terms for which there is no generally agreed-upon definition, we have provided multiple definitions.