Between human needs and policy limits : towards an Islamic approach to enhancing UN humanitarian crisis response policy frameworks

This thesis "Between Human Needs and Policy Limits: Towards an Islamic Approach to Enhancing UN Humanitarian Crisis Response Frameworks" is presented to the Oatar Faculty of Islamic Studies, Hamad Bin Khalifa University by Ajarat Moyosore Bada, MPH, BS under the supervision of Dr. Jasser Auda of the same university and Dr. Maria Kristiansen of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

The thesis is benchmarked against the state of humanitarian crises in the world today; from the Ebola epidemic in West Africa to the myriad of natural disasters in Southeast Asia, the civil war in Syria, and the seemingly never ending war on terror that have the economies of the West continuously on the offensive. The global crisis is worsened by the burden of the huge population growth, climate change, the global food and energy crises and accounts of gross human rights violation. The world is in a state of crises that is unprecedented in history. This thesis burdens itself with this reality. Thus, it sets out to evaluate the frameworks guiding the global humanitarian crises response particularly in the area of psychosocial support. In this age of global policy making it is imperative that we question the fundamental premises of policies of multi-national and largely secular organizations like the United Nations. Can these policies truly reflect the diversity, in this case religious, of the global population?