Design for Humanity Initiative
Exploring the intersection of design and humanitarian action for human dignity
At a time of heightened and prolonged global calamity, humanitarian actors persistently strive to design sustainable relief and recovery operations that restore dignity and foster resilience of affected populations. Similarly, a growing community of designers from diverse disciplines - ranging from the built environment and emergency architecture to product and graphic design - endeavor to contribute their skills for social change and humanitarian action.
The Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) at Fordham University and the UN Migration Agency (IOM), will explore the intersection of design and humanitarian action by launching the Design for Humanity Initiative.
Through bridging their areas of expertise, both humanitarian and design professionals can more effectively design dignified and durable solutions that tackle today’s most pressing humanitarian challenges. Whether ensuring more dignified shelters and settlements for displaced persons, designing more inclusive and resilient urban ecosystems or employing art and design as a vehicle for advocacy - the possible synergies between design and humanitarian action are endless.
Objectives
Through events, research, publications, and collaborative projects, the multi-year Design for Humanity Initiative aims to explore how designers and humanitarians can collaboratively drive humanitarian response in a more dignified, inclusive, and sustainable direction.
Key objectives of the Design for Humanity Initiative will include:
- Facilitating dialogue among design and humanitarian practitioners as well as representatives of crisis-affected populations, the donor community, and governments
- Deepening understanding about current complex humanitarian challenges; humanitarian principles and ethics; and possibilities for design innovation;
- Highlighting potential impact and relevant critiques of a range of piloted and pioneered design projects for humanitarian response;
- Forging future collaboration, project implementation, and partnership opportunities; and
- Disseminating lessons learned to a wide audience of designers and humanitarians.
Design for Humanity Summit
The Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs and the UN Migration Agency (IOM) hosted the Design for Humanity Summit on June 21, 2019 at Fordham University in New York City.
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS • ISSUE 1
Designing for Displacement
From Emergency Response to Mobility Systems and Belonging
Where humanitarian practice, design, research and lived experience meet. We invite grounded ideas, cases, studies, visual arguments, dialogues and critical resources that help the field understand what responsible design means in displacement contexts.
Designing for Displacement: From Emergency Response to Mobility Systems and Belonging
Displacement is not a single event or a shelter category. It is shaped by routes and waiting, registration and legal status,
housing and services, climate and public health, data and representation, memory and the possibility of belonging.
The inaugural issue of the Design for Humanity Journal invites research, field practice, visual inquiry and adaptable design methods that can help understand and improve these systems.
From the Design for Humanity Initiative to the Journal
The Design for Humanity Initiative was launched in 2018 by Fordham University’s Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to bring humanitarian practice and design into a shared ethical and operational conversation. Its founding proposition was direct: human-centred design should be treated as a public right for people affected by crisis.
The first Design for Humanity Summit convened more than 350 participants and 40 innovators from humanitarian, design, academic, public and private-sector communities. The 2019 Summit, Design in the Time of Displacement, sharpened the agenda around two linked questions: how to move from camps to communities, and how to move from data to stories that protect rights, amplify voice and preserve memory. Dialogues, exhibitions and 12 workshops tested ideas with practitioners and designers, while the D4H Yearbooks documented the work and advanced four enduring pillars:
- Provoke Change
- Foster Dignity
- Promote Inclusion and Curate Memory
Casa Azul translated these principles into a design playbook. Developed by IIHA, IOM and TAMassociation, it proposed a flexible system of spaces for information, services, culture, rest, learning and integration along Venezuelan migration routes. The project was featured in Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum’s Designing Peace exhibition in 2022–2023. Its adaptable logic also informed a 2022 agreement to establish a Punto Azul information and support space for migrants in Montevideo.
Why the Design for Humanity Journal
The Design for Humanity Journal carries this work forward as a biannual, digital-first and open-access publication. It is neither a conventional academic journal nor a project magazine. It brings together scholarship, operational learning, design artefacts, visual evidence, community knowledge and critical debate, using the review route most appropriate to each format.
The Journal treats design as more than the appearance of a product or space. It examines the systems, institutions, infrastructures, interfaces, narratives and power relations through which humanitarian action is organised. Visual material and design artefacts are treated as forms of evidence rather than illustration. Successful projects are welcome, but so are failure analyses, contested decisions, unintended consequences and methods that did not transfer as expected.
The Journal is global in scope and multilingual in orientation. It gives particular attention to knowledge produced by crisis-affected communities, refugee- and migrant-led organisations, local practitioners and contributors from regions that remain under-represented in English-language publishing, while remaining open to relevant work from every region and discipline.
Issue #1: Designing for Displacement
Issue #1 asks what changes when displacement is understood as a designed system rather than a sequence of isolated emergency outputs. It focuses on the physical, service, informational and governance choices that shape protection, access, habitability, agency and long-term integration.
- Arrival, access and urban incorporation. Registration, legal identity, mobility, service access, livelihoods and belonging as a connected urban journey rather than a collection of separate programmes.
- Routes, waiting and temporal infrastructures. Distributed support along journeys: safe rest, information, referral, protection, low-signature services and continuity of care across changing locations.
- Planned relocation, retreat and mobility justice. Consent, land and tenure, livelihood continuity, cultural attachment, grievance systems, rights safeguards and the possibility of return or revision.
- From emergency shelter to dwelling. The conditions that turn a shelter input into a viable home: habitability, secure tenure, incremental improvement, affordability, services and access to work.
- Shared urban commons and host-community systems. Infrastructure and services that create visible fairness and shared benefit for displaced and host populations, including schools, markets, transport, public space, water and care.
- Civilian protection and infrastructure in cities at war. Risk-aware routes, distributed services, adaptive reuse, low- signature spaces, resilient civic infrastructure and information design that does not expose communities.
- Habitability under climate and public-health stress. Heat, flooding, indoor air quality, disability access, WASH failure and other conditions inside shelters and settlements that shape health, safety and dignity.
- GIS, remote sensing and information design without harm. Data minimisation, aggregation, redaction, tiered access and safe publication when maps, dashboards and imagery may expose people, routes or services.
- Co-design under constraint and community control. Participation that changes decisions: documented trade-offs, decision rights, local knowledge, participatory budgeting and evidence of what communities were able to alter.
- Measuring dignity, agency, memory and belonging. Credible and practical ways to assess privacy, control, safety, cultural continuity, time, access and belonging beyond the number of items delivered or structures built.
Rights, safeguarding and responsible AI
Authors remain responsible for permissions, consent, accuracy, conflicts of interest and the safe handling of sensitive information. Material that could expose people, routes, services or locations must be minimised, aggregated, redacted or withheld as appropriate. Submission is subject to the Journal’s full publication disclaimer, ethics, safeguarding, data- responsibility and rights policies. Responsible use of AI-assisted tools is permitted. Authors must disclose substantive use; verify all outputs, citations and translations; and retain full responsibility for the submitted work. Confidential, personal, protection-sensitive or otherwise restricted material must not be entered into public AI systems. AI systems cannot be credited as authors, and synthetic media must not be presented as documentary evidence of real people, places or events.
Who should contribute
The Journal welcomes proposals from humanitarian and development practitioners; academic and independent researchers; architects, urbanists, designers and technologists; local and national public authorities; refugee- and migrant-led organisations; civil-society and community groups; artists and visual storytellers; students and emerging professionals; and people with lived experience of displacement. Co-authored and cross-sector contributions are particularly encouraged.
Contribution formats
Research & Innovation. Original research, evaluation, methods or conceptual advances; normally 3,000–6,000 words.
Case Study / Field Report. Implemented work with context, decisions, outcomes, trade-offs and operational learning; normally 1,500–3,500 words.
Design Showcase / Visual Essay. Spatial, visual or material evidence with a concise analytical narrative, permissions and full captions.
Dialogue / Interview. Structured cross-sector or community conversations with a clear editorial question and practice takeaways.
Emerging Voices. Shorter work by students, early-career contributors and under-represented authors, with developmental editing where feasible.
Reviews & Resources. Critical reviews of tools, repositories, books, exhibitions, datasets and platforms relevant to humanitarian design.
Editorial approach
All submissions receive editorial review for relevance, clarity, evidence, ethics and contribution value. Selected field, case and visual pieces may receive moderated community-informed commentary. Research articles may undergo external double-blind review where methodological scrutiny or academic positioning warrants it. The review route will match the format rather than forcing every contribution into the same model.
Minimum editorial standardsEvery substantial contribution should include:
- a clear statement of what is new, learned, tested or transferable;
- appropriate to the chosen format and an honest account of limitations;
- at least one explicit trade-off or unintended effect where relevant;
- a concise field-application box explaining what others could adapt or change;
- an ethics and safeguarding note covering consent, representation, safety and data sensitivity;
- and a replicable artefact, such as a checklist, workflow, diagram, protocol, decision log or measurement tool, where appropriate.
Language and access
The primary publication language at launch is English. Multilingual abstracts are encouraged, particularly in Spanish, French and Arabic where feasible. The Journal is open access and charges no submission or publication fee. Plain- language summaries, accurate captions, alt text and accessible visual presentation are treated as core editorial requirements.
Provisional submission pathway
Stage |
Provisional Timing |
|---|---|
|
Call for Contributions opens |
September 10, 2026 |
|
Proposal / Abstract Deadline |
October 31, 2026 |
|
Full Contribution Deadline |
January 15, 2026 |
|
Issue 1 Publication |
May 30, 2027 |
Contact
Inquire: [email protected]
Email subject: D4H Journal Issue #1
Submit: [email protected]
Design for Humanity Journal
Call for Contributions - Issue #1
Designing for Displacement: From Emergency Response to Mobility Systems and
Belonging
The Call for Contributions will go live on September 10, 2026.