ReliefWeb was founded in October 1996 and is administered by the
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The project began under the
US Department of State,
Bureau of International Organization Affairs, which had noticed during the
Rwanda crisis how poorly critical operational information was shared between
NGOs,
UN Agencies and Governments. In 1995, the Department's Senior Policy Adviser on
Disaster Management led a series of discussions at
UN HQ in
Geneva and
New York City, as well as a conference on the project at the
US Department of State in which both ReliefWeb as a product and the internet in general were touted as fresh tools for the humanitarian community. Its official launch was also the launch of the
UN's first disaster website. Recognizing how critical the availability of reliable and timely information in time of humanitarian emergencies is, the
United Nations General Assembly endorsed the creation of ReliefWeb and encouraged humanitarian information exchange through ReliefWeb by all governments, relief agencies and
non-governmental organizations in Resolution 51/194 on 10 February 1997. The
General Assembly reiterated the importance of information sharing in emergencies and of taking advantage of
OCHA's emergency information services such as ReliefWeb in Resolution 57/153 on 3 March 2003. ReliefWeb maintains offices in three different time zones to update the website around the clock:
Bangkok (
Thailand),
Nairobi (
Kenya) and
New York City (United States). Prior to 2011, the three offices were located in Geneva (Switzerland), Kobe (Japan), and New York (United States). The closing of the Geneva and Kobe offices were due to the higher costs associated with these locations. ReliefWeb has seen steady growth in usage. In 2017, 6,8 million people visited ReliefWeb. In the same year, the website published more than 57,000 reports and maps, 39,500 jobs in the humanitarian sector, and 2,600 training opportunities. A first major re-design effort was started in 2002 and completed in 2005, which focused on implementing a more user-centric information architecture. In April 2011, ReliefWeb launched a new web platform based on
open-source technology to offer a powerful
search/filter engine and delivery system. In 2012, ReliefWeb began to expand its focus to become the one-stop shop for critical information on global crises and disasters. In November 2012, ReliefWeb revamped the home page, the "About Us" section and the Blog and introduced "Labs", a place to explore new and emerging opportunities and tools to improve information delivery to humanitarian workers. ==Services==