Yes, the claims made are always a bit funny; to use value chain terminology: each of the actors claims to be the value driver for all of the value added. I am sure that if you add up all the ‘beneficiaries’ (a word that I thoroughly dislike, by the way) claimed to have been assisted by all aid organisations, you would end up with an assisted population the size of a much larger country.

I think you make a couple of very astute observations here in one short sentence:
- Whether you are a 2PL/3PL provider or working in 1PL is a matter of perspective: the US Navy might be a 2PL provider from the point of view of WFP, but is working 1PL from its own perspective.
- 2PL/3PL providers can very well be aid organisations. A good example is how WFP is ‘provider of last resort’ in the logistics cluster, and hence can be a 3PL provider for other aid organisations — and actually already often is, even without getting into the ‘last resort’ situation. This is something that I will write about in more detail in the next article in the series.
- The whole supply chain is part of the value chain and serves to add ‘value’ to our activities, i.e. enable better aid to the people who need it. This comes back to what I wrote before about systems thinking, and is something that we sadly lose track of at times.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by BiteTheDust: RT @Michael_Keizer: New post: Why third-party logistics is part of the future of global health and aid http://bit.ly/aERxAC #humlog…