ECHO (European Commission)
The Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department of the European Commission (ECHO), formerly known as the European Community Humanitarian Aid Office, is the European Commission's department for overseas humanitarian aid and civil protection.
In 2007 it provided €768 million for emergency relief, a number that rose to €930 million in 2009. The EU institutions alone were collectively the second largest donor of official humanitarian aid in 2009 (14.3% of the global total humanitarian aid). The European Union as a whole (European Commission + Member States) is the world's biggest donor of humanitarian aid, providing over 50% of the total humanitarian aid in 2009.
For its humanitarian interventions, ECHO does not implement assistance programmes itself; but funds operations through a wide range of around 200 partners (NGOs, UN Agencies, International organisations such as the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement).
Read more about ECHO (European Commission): Background, Mandate and Principles, Legislation, Budget, Strategy, Reform, European Parliament Report
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“The moralist and the revolutionary are constantly undermining one another. Marx exploded a hundred tons of dynamite beneath the moralist position, and we are still living in the echo of that tremendous crash. But already, somewhere or other, the sappers are at work and fresh dynamite is being tamped in place to blow Marx at the moon. Then Marx, or somebody like him, will come back with yet more dynamite, and so the process continues, to an end we cannot foresee.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)