“Global Governance in the field of humanitarian assistance, UN coordination in complex emergencies since the end of the Cold War: Modes of operation and Need for Reform” Serious problems facing the civil-military humanitarian ‘Operation Provide Comfort’ in Northern Iraq in 1991 and 1992 were a main reason for the decision of the UN General Assembly to establish new UN structures for the coordination of international humanitarian assistance in complex emergencies and natural disasters in December 1991. The GA assigned extensive administrative, financial and political tasks to these structures which are composed of the ‘Emergency Relief Coordinator (ERC)’, the ‘Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA)’, renamed as ‘Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)’ in 1998, the ‘Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC)’, and the 1998 established ‘Executive Committee for Humanitarian Assistance (ECHA)’. The main operational humanitarian organisations at the international level are UN agencies (UNHCR, UNICEF, WFP, UNDP), NGOs and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Although the UN coordination structures have been reformed several times during the last twenty years, they are still not capable to fulfil their tasks defined by the GA. The key questions of the dissertation are: - What are the functions and instruments of humanitarian UN coordination structures in complex emergencies? - Why can they only partly fulfil their tasks even though they have been reformed several times by the GA since 1991? - What conclusions can be drawn for a reform agenda that aims to establish effective international humanitarian coordination structures in complex emergencies? To specify the modes of operation and impact of UN humanitarian coordination structures the dissertation is analysing - the power resources of donor states, private humanitarian organisations and relevant stakeholders in UN humanitarian coordination structures; - the degree of institutionalisation of UN humanitarian coordination structures; - and their scope and impact on international humanitarian assistance in complex emergencies. The power resources are measured by using the following indicators: financial resources; operational capabilities; sanctions and enforcement instruments; legal status; and discursive power/campaign capabilities. The degree of institutionalisation of UN humanitarian coordination structures is measured by the following indicators: relevance of participating stakeholders; degree of successful integration of new players; precision of formal rules and norms; binding force of these rules and norms; and the quality of sanctions and enforcement instruments, of complementary division of work, of operational implementation and of financial coordination. The scope and impact of these structures are measured by comparing humanitarian assistance which is provided inside and outside the humanitarian UN coordination structures, and by analysing the degree of instrumentalisation (politisation, securitisation and militarisation) of humanitarian assistance and UN coordination structures. As a result of these analyses it is possible to specify the governance-form of the UN coordination structures along the three modes of non-hierarchical, hierarchical and competitive governance. The data collection is based on the analysis of primary literature (resolutions of the GA and the UN Security Council, reports on ‘Strengthening of the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance’ of the UN Secretary-General, publications of OCHA and UNHCR) and secondary resources. Four case studies are illustrating the strengths and weaknesses of different types of UN humanitarian coordination structures at the country level and the growing tendency of instrumentalisation of humanitarian assistance in ‘integrated’ UN-Missions. The ‚lead agency’-type of humanitarian coordination was used in Ex-Yugoslavia (1991-1995) and Kosovo (1999). In the African Great Lakes Region/Rwanda (1994-1998), several regional and national ‘Humanitarian UN-Coordinators’ and ‘Humanitarian Coordinators/Resident Coordinators’ were established. The fourth type of coordination is represented by the ‘Deputy Representative of the Secretary-General’, the deputy leader of an ‘integrated’ UN-Mission who also holds the HC/RC-function. This is illustrated by case studies on Sudan (2003-2011) and Afghanistan (2002-2011).