Austrialian Defense Experience with Non-Government Organizations in Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Operations

R experience suggests that h umanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations are a growth industry for military forces. In the last 12 months alone, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has provided emergency aid to victims of the Pakistan earthquake; the Indian Ocean tsunami; the Nias, Indonesia earthquake (in which nine AOF personnel died in a helicopter crash); and Cyclone Larry, a category 5 tropical cyclone that tore across the north Q ueensland coastline of Australia in early 2006. Figures from the World Health Organization's Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters show that from 1990 to 2003 there was a 180% increase in the number of people affected by natural disasters: 255 million people in 2003 up from 90 million in 1990.1 Between 1990 and 2000 in Asia alone there were 215 so-called "non-complex" relief operations (floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc., where host nations were the primary responders).2 Operation Shaddock, fo r