Contact person

For further information please contact:
Dunja Brede
Tel: +49 61 96 79-1606
Fax: +49 61 96 79-801606
Email: dunja.brede@giz.de

Emergency aid and reconstruction

Conditions affecting development cooperation have changed dramatically in recent years. Large-scale natural disasters such as the tsunami in South-East Asia in 2004 or the earthquake in Pakistan in 2006 require new responses from development cooperation, as do climate change and many countries’ increasing vulnerability to environmental risks. New strategies are also required in response to long-lasting conflicts which are increasingly spilling over national borders and affecting entire regions, such as West Africa or the Great Lakes.

Germany’s growing engagement in complex conflict or post-conflict situations such as Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo has focused public attention more strongly on these issues and further underlined the need for appropriate development cooperation policies.

That is why GIZ created the instrument of ‘development-oriented emergency and transitional aid’, which allows assistance to be provided to the people affected as quickly as possible, while the initial foundations are laid at an early stage for sustainable post-crisis development. In order to respond appropriately to the numerous challenges arising in the context of crises, conflicts and disasters, a multisectoral approach is required which systematically implements development-oriented emergency and transitional aid and its range of services.

Images on transitional and emergency aid

Alongside its ‘classical’ technical cooperation activities, GIZ has been active in this field for many years, working on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), as well as other federal ministries and international clients. Over the years, it has implemented numerous projects worldwide in the fields of emergency aid and refugee relief, food security and reconstruction. It has a wealth of technical, specialist and logistical expertise, enabling it to implement programmes and projects in development-oriented emergency and transitional aid successfully.