This report is part of a series of three case studies on humanitarian assistance operations undertaken by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), between 2007 and 2009, in response to various significant emergency situations in the Middle East, Africa, and Central America and the Caribbean. These case studies were undertaken within the framework of a comparative analysis project regarding the efficacy, efficiency and impact of the many humanitarian aid instruments and modalities of Spanish Development Cooperation. The aim of the case studies is twofold: on the one hand, to make up for a lack of specific research on AECID’s direct intervention, which, albeit an unusual humanitarian assistance mechanism, has been repeatedly resorted to by Spanish Development Cooperation in its responses to natural disaster- and armed conflict-related emergency situations. On the other hand, the study of the implementation of different humanitarian instruments, through these three case studies, will contribute to build a framework of action for AECID’s global humanitarian action strategy.