Editorial No. 13

After special issues on the Sahel, Resilience and the Environment, the 13th issue of Humanitarian Aid on the Move returns to its initial format, with a number of different topics and contributions from external authors who are close to Groupe URD. Their analysis, like ours, is rooted in operational reality and explores less common terrain. Arnaud Dandoy’s article on the security management methods used by humanitarian organizations, which he has studied in connection with our Haiti Observatory, and Laurent Saillard’s article on the application of humanitarian principles in Afghanistan, which he has been following for a number of years, recall discussions that we have facilitated in Chad, Mali and Somalia and which need to be explored further, questioning things that are taken for granted in the dominant narrative. An experience sharing article looks at the experience of MSF in prisons (Jean-Marc Biquet) while another on the quality of aid focuses specifically on the quality of medical equipment projects (Barbara Comte and Cathy Blanc Gonnet). Finally, François Grünewald analyses the challenges for aid in the particularly complex Malian context.
All these articles are based on continuous to-ing and fro-ing between field experiences and attempts to share knowledge, and are therefore in keeping with the main objective of this review: to facilitate learning and the sharing of lessons drawn from experience. This objective is consistent with what our readers are looking for; a survey conducted during the first quarter of 2014 showed that they want information and analysis from action research in the humanitarian sector and are particularly interested in new trends and the quality of aid.