Blog

In 2020, the sheer volume of information published on ReliefWeb relating to the Covid-19 pandemic prompted us to address half-yearly analytics but we missed out on doing so last year. With the increase in content due to the war in Ukraine, however, we decided to take another look at the user numbers and they are indeed impressive - up 12 percent on 2021 to almost 11 million for the first half of...

This month, OCHA launches an upgraded version of the HumanitarianResponse.info (HR.info) platform, branded as ReliefWeb Response (RW Response), within ReliefWeb Labs. Labs projects explore new and emerging opportunities to improve information delivery to humanitarians.

RW Response will focus on aggregating operational content from existing platforms and will provide an authoritative source of...

We’re growing one gram at a time!

You can now follow us on Instagram and Telegram to receive updates on the latest humanitarian situations and content.

With more than 120,000 followers on Twitter, 105,000 on Facebook and 26,000 on LinkedIn, we figured it was time to join other social media networks.

There is no shortage of content to feed these pages. Last year, our reports teams processed...

Last year proved to be yet another record for ReliefWeb - our user numbers jumped by 26 percent from 2020 to just over 19 million. To put that into perspective - the total number of users in 2014 was a “mere” 4.9 million! So, thanks to the humanitarian community for making our website the “go-to” platform for all things disaster- and aid-related.

The Philippines overtook the USA (2.3 million) as...

At ReliefWeb, we are deeply grateful for the global visitors who use our website everyday to access lifesaving, current information about humanitarian emergencies.

We are updating our technology to Drupal 9 in light of Drupal 7's decommissioning later this year. As such, by the end of March we will also be changing our log-in system exclusively to Humanitarian ID (HID), an authentication service...

This month, ReliefWeb officially turns 25 - of course, the lead-up to the launch of a data-driven website in 1996 was way more complicated, but also much easier in many respects, than a similar venture in today’s tech world. But once the idea had percolated, and seed funding had been secured, it was achieved in a mere nine months.

The motivation behind ReliefWeb’s inception was the huge numbers of...

On the 25th anniversary of ReliefWeb, I am proud that I was part of the design team back in 1996. Thinking back on those days, I am amazed by how much has changed in the past quarter-century. In 1996, something called electronic mail and the World Wide Web were just starting to be used in the work environment. Humanitarian information products, such as SitReps, appeals, maps, and assessments,...

ReliefWeb is now 25 years old. In a series of posts, we’ll be looking back over those years from the perspective of some of the people who helped make it what it is today. Craig Duncan, one of the first people to work on the project, remembers how it developed from a list of links – and how it found its name. Inevitably there are some technical details involved!

The ReliefWeb project had a few...

Dear Job Poster,

Since your organization is new to us, we need to verify that its purpose and activities are in line with ReliefWeb’s mandate. Once the job form is submitted, kindly provide us with a copy of your annual report and any relevant information about your projects and donors at jobs@reliefweb.int

It is important that you indicate your job ID and/or the link to your advertisement(s) in...

In challenging times and despite rising needs, the humanitarian system continues to save and transform lives. Strong leadership by the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators plays a crucial part in this.

Humanitarian leaders must act quickly and impartially while keeping a focus on the big picture, the external environment, the future and organizational change. In particular, the...

It’s been a while since we checked in with our users so I wanted to let you know what ReliefWeb has been up to in the past four months. We are pleased to report that user numbers are still rising. From the first quarter of last year to the same period in 2021, the number of users increased by almost 30 percent, to just over five million. In that same period, mobile use increased by almost 39...

After the “annus horribilis” that was 2020, everyone at ReliefWeb would like to wish all our users a brighter, healthier and happier 2021!

Last year was notably positive in one aspect, however: our user numbers topped a record-breaking 15 million! The 2019 figure of 10.8 million was in itself a record, so every COVID-19 cloud has a silver lining indeed.

On another positive note, this year marks our...

We don’t usually report back on ReliefWeb’s six-month performance indicators, but then again, these are not normal times. Thanks to the flood of information surrounding COVID-19 and the number of sources producing reports, analyses, infographics, manuals and guidelines, we have been inundated over the first six months of the year, with June proving to be the busiest time in terms of volume, even...

When we launched the new responsive ReliefWeb site in February, it was after extensive research and user surveys, backed up by analytics data detailing our users’ preferences and priorities.

For us, the substantial increase in mobile use warranted a tailored response - hence we set out to make ReliefWeb as flexible and speedy for mobile users as possible, while not forgetting desktop and tablet...

On 7 May 2020, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs launched a revised COVID-19 Global Humanitarian Response Plan to include another nine vulnerable countries - Benin, Djibouti, Liberia, Mozambique, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, Togo and Zimbabwe - and calling for US$6.7 billion. So far it has raised almost $1 billion. The original GHRP, released on 25 March 2020,...

COVID-19 Topic Page

When the World Health Organization pronounced COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11 2020, there were more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people had lost their lives.

At time of writing, those numbers had topped 1,350,000 cases in 184 countries, with almost 75,000 deaths. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which manages ReliefWeb, launched...

Since ReliefWeb launched its new responsive site, we have received feedback from many of our users, especially about usability and navigation. We truly value your input, which we can apply to continue improving the site to meet your needs.

While we review that feedback and continue working on better ways to present and deliver the critical humanitarian information to our global users, we would...

In 2010, when work started on ReliefWeb’s last major redesign, there weren't many visitors on mobile phones. Indeed, there were fewer than 60,000 users on mobile, just over 1%. Nine years later, more than five million visitors to the site used only mobile devices, almost half the total.

To serve the growing number of mobile visitors, m.reliefweb.int was launched in 2013, a stripped-down,...

In 2019, ReliefWeb continued to break its own records, topping the 10 million mark for the first time, with 10.8 million visitors. In a year characterized by extraordinary natural disasters – ranging from Cyclones Idai and Kenneth affecting millions of people in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe in the first quarter of the year, to Hurricane Dorian hitting the Bahamas in August, extremes of drought...

It is a commonplace that there is an abundance of information available about humanitarian situations; the key issue is not how much information we have at our disposal but how we present it in the most user-friendly manner, so that our audience can tap into it quickly and easily.

The selection filters and advanced search on ReliefWeb have improved over the years, allowing users to quickly narrow...