Skip to main content

Aims and scope

Aims and scope

The Journal of International Humanitarian Action is an open access peer-reviewed journal for researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and anyone moved to understand contemporary challenges, reflect critically on practices, and engage at humanitarian action’s leading edge.

We welcome original academic and/or practice-informed contributions not only from scholars of international humanitarian law or practitioners of global nonprofit management, but also from myriad other areas spanning the social sciences and humanities and beyond.

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

  • humanitarian ethics
  • humanitarian protection
  • application of international humanitarian law (IHL)
  • humanitarian programming, monitoring, and evaluation
  • education and training of humanitarian aid workers
  • the Humanitarian-Development-Security Nexus
  • governance, organization, and evolution of humanitarian systems 
  • best practices and knowledge-sharing in humanitarian action
  • politics of humanitarian aid
  • humanitarian technology
  • psychosocial elements of humanitarian action

The journal regularly publishes special collections that can be proposed by guest editors and discuss in detail pressing questions of humanitarian action. Given the diversity of our readership, the editors seek submissions that transcend disciplinary and sectional divisions and promote rigorous and inclusive discourse around the challenges, problems, and practices of humanitarian action.

Affiliated with

Annual Journal Metrics

  • Speed 2021
    172 days to first decision for all manuscripts (median)
    324 days to final disposition "accept" (mean average)

    Usage 2021
    198,474 downloads

    Speed Jan-Nov2022*
    156 days to first decision for all manuscripts (median)
    399 days to final disposition "accept" (mean average)

    Usage Jan-Nov2022*
    233,370 downloads

    *December 22 data will be added as soon as they become available