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The purpose of this paper is to present a brief overview of the field of humanitarian logistics and supply chain management and outline the scope of the new Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management (JHLSCM). It further aims to highlight the variety of humanitarian logistics research and summarize the articles in the inaugural issue.

Results from an e‐mail survey with editorial board members are presented. The survey is used to further shape the scope of JHLSCM.

The journal draws on a variety of research streams in humanitarian logistics. This is seen as its richness but also as a challenge.

Humanitarian logistics is an emerging field. There is still a lack of good empirical research and research with rigor as well as relevance. More research needs to be done in developing countries and by researchers from these.

Even though there has been collaboration between humanitarian and commercial organizations, there is also a need to establish humanitarian‐academic partnerships to improve training, education, as well as research – which should ultimately manifest itself in an improvement of practice.

Humanitarian logistics research needs to rediscover its aim to serve beneficiaries.

This paper is an introduction to the inaugural issue of a new journal, JHLSCM.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges of humanitarian logisticians with respect to different types of disasters, phases of disaster relief and the type of humanitarian organization. A conceptual model is constructed that serves as a basis to identify these challenges.

The paper is based on a country as a case, namely Ghana. Structured and unstructured data are collected in a workshop with humanitarian logisticians, and complemented with presentations of humanitarian logisticians, as they perceive their challenges. Disaster statistics and country profiles are used as secondary data.

The paper shows that some disasters defy a categorization between natural and man‐made causes. Challenges of humanitarian logisticians depend not only on the disaster at hand, but also on the local presence of their organization. The most emphasized challenge is the coordination of logistical activities. Challenges can be managed better if attributing them to different stakeholder environments.

Applying stakeholder theory to logistics, this paper provides a greater understanding for the challenges of humanitarian logisticians.

A stakeholder categorization of the challenges of humanitarian logisticians helps to find potential collaboration partners as well as to mitigate these challenges.

Humanitarian logistics is a rather new field in logistics literature. What is more, there is a lack of empirical cases in the field. This paper proposes a conceptual model based on an actual empirical case.