The capacity to respond to others' disasters: deployable civilian teams, humanitarian funding at speed and the logistics of arriving first with help that works.
The Capability Development Index tracks the events that move a capability — operational use, technical breakthroughs, procurement decisions and the industrial base behind them — and places each on the record with the date it happened.
Recent developments cover the current period. Historical developments are the inflection points that produced Humanitarian Assistance & Response Abroad as it stands today.
The Geneva Conventions of 1949 provided the legal foundation from which the mandate of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement stems. This treaty basis underpins the movement's standing to act in crises, and the IFRC grew into the world's largest humanitarian network, comprising 192 national societies.