The Master of Arts in Humanitarian Assistance (MAHA) is a one-year joint degree offered by the Friedman School and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. The program is geared toward mid-career professionals who have significant field experience in humanitarian assistance. The program offers an academic setting where professionals can develop their knowledge and skills in the areas of nutrition, food policy, and economic, political and social development as they relate to humanitarian action in complex emergencies and other disasters. Practitioners study, read about, reflect on, and write about humanitarian theories, programs, and policies.
The mission of the MAHA program is to provide an academic setting for humanitarian practitioners seeking to develop their knowledge and skills in the areas of nutrition, food policy, and economic, political and social analysis. The one-year program provides an opportunity for practitioners to study, read, reflect and write about current issues and trends of in humanitarian theories, programs and policies as they relate to famines, complex emergencies and other disasters..
Major shifts have occurred in the field of disaster interventions over the past several years. Humanitarian assistance constituted a web of responses that change and evolve over time, in complex socio-economic and political situations. The emergencies in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Haiti, Kosovo, Rwanda, Somalia, and Sudan have posed major challenges to development and relief theory and approaches. There is growing appreciation of humanitarian assistance as an independent field rather than an appendage to development studies, and a growing need for innovative analysis and research on new models for effective humanitarian assistance.