ABSTRACT
The world of humanitarian NGOs is vast today. Many of them are transnational with budgets as large as major corporations or small states. They represent a huge range of interests and approaches and do the vast majority of the operating work of the international humanitarian system. In this chapter we will describe the global growth of the NGO phenomena and provide taxonomy for understanding the main groupings. A few of the larger NGOs will be described in detail to illustrate this taxonomy and we will also describe the key NGO coordinating bodies. Finally, the chapter will review the very real advances NGOs have led in improving the professionalism and quality of humanitarian assistance.
