ReliefWeb (RW) is a humanitarian information portal founded in 1996. , it hosts more than one million humanitarian situation reports, press releases, evaluations, guidelines, assessments, maps and infographics. The portal is an independent source of information, designed specifically to assist the international humanitarian community in effective delivery of emergency assistance or ''relief''. It provides information as humanitarian crises unfold, while emphasizing the coverage of "forgotten emergencies" at the same time.

Origin and development

ReliefWeb was founded in October 1996 and is administered by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The project began under the

US Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs o ...

, Bureau of International Organization Affairs, which had noticed during the Rwanda crisis how poorly critical operational information was shared between

NGOs A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

, UN Agencies and Governments. In 1995, the Department's Senior Policy Adviser on Disaster Management led a series of discussions at UN HQ in

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

and

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, as well as a conference on the project at the

in which both ReliefWeb as a product and the internet in general were touted as fresh tools for the humanitarian community. Its official launch was also the launch of the UN's first disaster website. Recognizing how critical the availability of reliable and timely information in time of humanitarian emergencies is, the

United Nations General Assembly The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA or GA; , AGNU or AG) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), serving as its main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ. Currently in its Seventy-ninth session of th ...

endorsed the creation of ReliefWeb and encouraged humanitarian information exchange through ReliefWeb by all governments, relief agencies and

non-governmental organizations A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

in Resolution 51/194 on 10 February 1997. The General Assembly reiterated the importance of information sharing in emergencies and of taking advantage of OCHA's emergency information services such as ReliefWeb in Resolution 57/153 on 3 March 2003. ReliefWeb maintains offices in three different time zones to update the website around the clock:

Bangkok Bangkok, officially known in Thai language, Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estim ...

(

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

Nairobi Nairobi is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Kenya. The city lies in the south-central part of Kenya, at an elevation of . The name is derived from the Maasai language, Maasai phrase , which translates to 'place of cool waters', a ...

(

Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...

) and

(United States). Prior to 2011, the three offices were located in Geneva (Switzerland), Kobe (Japan), and New York (United States). The closing of the Geneva and Kobe offices were due to the higher costs associated with these locations. ReliefWeb has seen steady growth in usage. In 2017, 6,8 million people visited ReliefWeb. In the same year, the website published more than 57,000 reports and maps, 39,500 jobs in the humanitarian sector, and 2,600 training opportunities. A first major re-design effort was started in 2002 and completed in 2005, which focused on implementing a more user-centric information architecture. In April 2011, ReliefWeb launched a new web platform based on

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

technology to offer a powerful search/filter engine and delivery system. In 2012, ReliefWeb began to expand its focus to become the one-stop shop for critical information on global crises and disasters. In November 2012, ReliefWeb revamped the home page, the "About Us" section and the Blog and introduced "Labs", a place to explore new and emerging opportunities and tools to improve information delivery to humanitarian workers.

Services

ReliefWeb disseminates humanitarian information by updating its website around the clock. In addition, ReliefWeb has a subscription service that reached more than 168,500 subscribers in 2010, allowing those who have low bandwidth Internet connections to receive information reliably. ReliefWeb posts maps and documents daily from over 5,000 sources from the UN system,

Governments A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a m ...

, Inter-governmental organizations, NGOs,

academia An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

and think-tanks. All documents posted on the site are classified and archived, allowing advanced searching of documents from past emergency responses. The

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

contains more than one million maps and documents dating back to 1981. ReliefWeb is also a major repository of humanitarian job postings and training announcements. In 2017, 1,605 organizations posted 39,336 job announcements on ReliefWeb. The job and training sources include Academic and Research Institutions, NGOs, International Organizations, Governments,

Red Cross The organized International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is a Humanitarianism, humanitarian movement with approximately 16million volunteering, volunteers, members, and staff worldwide. It was founded to protect human life and health, to ...

/ Red Crescent Movement and the Media. In 2016, ReliefWeb launched apps for humanitarians, which enable more targeted personalised information search, with the aim to speed up the delivery of important information. The apps were decommissioned in 2018.

Awards

ReliefWeb has won the following awards: * Certificate of Superior Achievement in International Emergency Management (January 1999) from the

United States Government The Federal Government of the United States of America (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the Federation#Federal governments, national government of the United States. The U.S. federal government is composed of three distinct ...

. * UN21 awards (March 2004) for "knowledge management" and "improvements to the working environment." * Web4Dev Award (2006) from the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...

for excellence in Web design and best use of the Web as a tool to support development activities. * Special Achievement in GIS (2010) award for OCHA at the 20th Annual ESRI International User Conference, in recognition of outstanding work with GIS technology.

References

External links

* {{authority control Organizations established by the United Nations Organizations established in 1996 Internet properties established in 1996 Humanitarian aid American news websites Web portals