The Humanitarian Archive

This archive contains material relating to food security and famines, their effects and work carried out to tackle them from the 1970s onwards, including in Uganda and Sudan in the 1980s to 1990s (in the Jonathan Falla collection), and in Ethiopia and Eritrea in the 1980s-1990s (in the Roger Briottet collection). 

The archive contains an extensive amount of material relating to the planning and organisation of responses to emergencies and natural disasters, including earthquakes, flooding and drought, and the guidelines and procedures used in humanitarian work.

This includes a large amount of grey literature: guidelines, training and reports on providing humanitarian aid primarily held in the Ron Ockwell papers, produced and provided by organisations such as UNICEF, WHO, WFP, ICRC from the 1970s-2000s.

The archive also holds material relating to medical care carried out in humanitarian settings, to treat injuries, control the spread of communicable diseases, and provide primary healthcare.

This includes archives relating to medical care provided in conflict, including on British doctors who were sent to provide medical aid in Vietnam during the Vietnam war in the 1960s (in the British Medical Team collection), or in Sarajevo, Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo
during the breakdown of Yugoslavia and ensuing conflict, and in Rwanda and Sierra Leone in the 1990s (in the Tony Redmond collection).

The Tony Redmond collection also covers medical aid provided in the aftermath of natural disasters, including the 1988 Armenian earthquake, the 1990 Manjil–Rudbar earthquake in Iran, the 1995 Cabo Verde volcanic eruptions, and the 1997 Montserrat volcanic eruption. This collection also contains information on the standardisation of medical humanitarian work from the 1980s onwards and the development of the Emergency Medical Team system in the 2000s.

The Humanitarian Archive holds several collections relating to the provision of aid to refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs), covering the construction and management of camps and settlements, providing healthcare and distributing supplies in these situations, and the people who lived in them. 

This includes an extensive amount of material on refugee camps on two borders of Thailand, for refugees from Myanmar from one side, and those from Cambodia on the other, from the 1980s onwards. This includes an extensive series of photographs of the Thailand/Myanmar camps in The Border Consortium visual collection from the 1980s-2000s and archives relating to healthcare and the political situation in the Thailand/Cambodia camps in the 1980s in the Rudi Coninx papers. 

While most collections in this archive date from the 1970s onwards, it also holds some material relating to activism and fundraising for humanitarian causes in the early to mid-20th century. This includes memorabilia and ephemera from the United Nations' 1960 World Refugee Year initiative (in the World Refugee Year collection), as well as photographs and correspondence relating to peace protests, fundraising and awareness raising in the UK in the mid-20th century (part of the Elizabeth Wilson collection). 

The archive also contains many photographs taken of humanitarian work and its settings, including of humanitarian work carried out in India, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Kenya and China in the mid-20th century (in the Elizabeth Wilson collection), photographs of aid work across Sudan, Nepal and Burma [Myanmar] in the 1980s-1990s (held in the Jonathan Falla collection), and of the Thailand/Myanmar camps from the 1980s-2000s (in The Border Consortium visual collection).

The archive is home to a growing collection of recorded oral testimonies taken from key humanitarian actors, created in collaboration with the Developing Humanitarian Medicine and Researching the Impact of Attacks on Healthcare projects. 

Related subject pages

• Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre Collections
• Christian Brethren Archive
• History of Medicine Collections
• History of Science and Technology Collections
• Maps, Travel and Discovery Collections
• Methodist Archives and Research Collections
• Military, Colonial and International History Collections
• Social and Political History Collections

Further information

To find out more about the Humanitarian Archive, please contact Flora Chatt, Humanitarian Archivist.

Useful links

• The Developing Humanitarian Medicine project
• The Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI)
• The Researching the Impact of Attacks on Healthcare website