USS Blue Ridge Sailors load supplies for possible earthquake/tsunami relief assistance to Japan.

Humanitarian aid is material or logistical assistance provided for humanitarian purposes, typically in response to humanitarian crises including natural disaster and man-made disaster. The primary objective of humanitarian aid is to save lives, alleviate suffering, and maintain human dignity. It may therefore be distinguished from development aid, which seeks to address the underlying socioeconomic factors which may have led to a crisis or emergency.

According to The Overseas Development Institute, a London-based research establishment, whose findings were released in April 2009 in the paper 'Providing aid in insecure environments:2009 Update', the most lethal year in the history of humanitarianism was 2008, in which 122 aid workers were murdered and 260 assaulted. Those countries deemed least safe were Somalia and Afghanistan.