This Review aims to set out ‘good practice’ in the counting and identification of
individuals requiring humanitarian assistance.
The author does not seek to address the issue of general needs and resources
assessment in any depth. Guidance is based on the assumption that certain needs
have been identified. The Review deals with the task of establishing the most
appropriate means of determining how many people may be in need, and identifying
who they are. Full, formal registration of a beneficiary population has, over recent
years increasingly been considered to yield the most reliable set of quantitative and
qualitative data on which to base planning and delivery of the different types of
protection and assistance which make up a humanitarian assistance programme.
However, in light of the rapid onset of many of today’s ‘emergencies’, the size,
expense and often controversial nature of registration exercises, this Review argues
that, given such constraints, total population registration is but one option for the
establishment of reliable figures for the effective delivery of assistance. As the title
suggests, this is therefore not just, nor even principally, a guide to registration.
