ReliefWeb: Leading the Humanitarian Webspace

ReliefWeb is the world's leading webspace on humanitarian emergencies and disasters. As an independent vehicle of information, designed specifically to assist the international humanitarian community in effective delivery of emergency assistance, the site provides timely, reliable and relevant information from more than 2,900 sources as events unfold around the globe.  It also provides a wide range of professional services and resources to humanitarian workers such as vacancy ads, training opportunities, selection of policy documents and contact listings. 

ReliefWeb guarantees access around the clock to time-critical reports, maps, vacancies and training opportunities, as well as financial contributions and links to other key partners and country profiles, for decision-makers at headquarters and field levels. To ensure the provision of 24 hour coverage, the ReliefWeb project is operated from three duty stations with teams in New York, Geneva and Kobe, and one person units in Panama and Nairobi through UNV support in cooperation with OCHA’s Regional structures/IRIN.. 

In the past five years the use of ReliefWeb has grown from about 25,000 “page views” per average weekday to about 125,000. In the last five years, documents posting has grown almost 100%, vacancy postings by 400% and both map production and map postings by 300 %. The number of subscribers to ReliefWeb’s email alert services has grown from about 45,000 in 2003 to about 132,000 subscribers today. Sources sharing information on ReliefWeb has grown steadily from 2000 some five years ago to 2900 in 2007. ReliefWeb is highly visible on the web, and is one of the most visited sites on the internet today on issues of humanitarian relief. 

Some of the resources available through ReliefWeb are:

• Latest Updates.  Documents posted on emergencies and natural disasters within the past 72 hours
• Countries, Emergencies and Natural Disasters. Humanitarian response information on crises around the world organized by region.
• Appeals and Funding  Funding requirements and donor contribution for complex emergencies and natural disasters .
• Map Centre. Reference and thematic maps concerning current and past humanitarian emergencies and natural disasters, by source, keyword, emergency or country
• Vacancies Jobs and volunteer openings in the global humanitarian community .
• Contact Directory Contact information for UN relief agencies and NGOs .
• Policy and Issues A library of humanitarian, human rights and development reference documents .
• Training. A selection of training courses and materials available to humanitarian relief organizations and staff

HIGHLIGHTS

• ReliefWeb has regularly enhanced its services over the past 12 years, most recently with the completion of a major redesign 2003-2005 improving site features for an improved service to users to get quicker to the information they were looking for.  
  
  In 2006, an independent evaluation of the project was conducted which resulted in a set of recommendations  
  
  
• 2006 ReliefWeb Evaluation