ABSTRACT
The Rwanda genocide of 1994 added to the conversation and sparked profound humanitarian soul searching. Reports like the 1996 Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda triggered major changes and in the years that followed several initiatives were born. The United Nations weighed in a few years later in a humanitarian response review that started by saying, “the perception that humanitarian response does not always meet the basic requirements of affected populations in a timely fashion and that the response provided can vary considerably from crisis to crisis'. At the other end of the conversation, there are those who think there is no such thing as a universal definition of need, that standards are externally imposed and not culturally relevant. They propose more flexibility and freedom to be creative in meeting changing conditions on the ground and aim for a more customized response.
