World Humanitarian Summit

23-24 May, Istanbul

The first World Humanitarian Summit comes at a critical time. Governments, United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch, will convene in Istanbul on May 23-24, 2016 to discuss how to halt the pernicious assault on international human rights and humanitarian law and to improve protection for people in need. They will address the funding and structure of humanitarian aid. The stakes are high. Conflicts are raging across the globe, causing grave humanitarian crises, and more people are displaced than any time since World War Two. Over the coming weeks, Human Rights Watch will publish a series of articles addressing different challenges facing the summit, complementing the past work, found below, we have done on these issues.