In the humanitarian world, there are the disasters you see coming, and the ones you don't.

We didn't foresee the massive 2010 earthquake in Haiti... the devastating floods in Pakistan... the earthquake and tsunami in Japan... or the conflicts sweeping the Arab world.

But the current drought and famine in...

When a massive earthquake struck Haiti a year ago, it was immediately apparent to the world that the loss of life and the suffering would be enormous, and that humanitarian intervention would be significant and long-term.

Such a natural calamity was relatively easy to identify and "diagnose". Deaths and...

I remember the sick feeling in my stomach as I read the e-mail from our medical coordinator in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

"We are facing a massive case of community rape in Walikale Health Zone. [...] We expect that in total the number is about 250 women raped in...

I walked the grounds of the main hospital in downtown Port-au-Prince, surrounded by ghosts -- images and sounds rushing...

Here in Port-au-Prince, it is hard to imagine what it will take to rebuild what was wiped out in seconds. 
The once-bustling port city is a shadow of its former self. The National Palace, which once sat expansive and regal amid its tropical gardens, is collapsed at its center. Chapels...

When I wrote this, it was 72 hours after the earthquake hit and I'm on the ground with our International Medical Corps team. We are set up in a mobile hospital in the parking lot of a collapsed hospital across from the Presidential Palace.

It is important for people in...

Ten dollars.

It's not a large sum of money. In this country, 10 bucks doesn't really buy that much -- maybe a decent glass of wine, a previously viewed DVD, a couple cans of tennis balls.

In the humanitarian world we go to great lengths to describe in simple terms...

I noticed her the moment I walked into our health clinic on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria. Eleven-year-old "Fatma," so pretty, but pale and reed-thin, her hair pulled back in a barrette, rings under her downcast eyes. I can only imagine what horrors have unfolded before her eyes.
Fatma...