Reliefweb

@pipeworx/reliefweb

UN OCHA's humanitarian information service — situation reports, needs assessments, appeals and analyses from ~4,000 humanitarian organisations, plus the curated disaster register with GLIDE numbers.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1683+ live data sources.

Tools

• reliefweb_reports(query?, country?, disaster_type?, source?, theme?, format?, from_date?, to_date?, include_body?, limit?, offset?)
• reliefweb_disasters(query?, country?, status?, disaster_type?, include_description?, limit?, offset?)
• reliefweb_report(report_id, max_body_chars?) — one report in full.

Auth

BYO only, and the credential is not shaped like a key.

The API is free and charges nothing. What it requires, since 1 November 2025, is a pre-approved appname query parameter on every call. An arbitrary string is refused with 403 AccessDeniedHttpException. Verified live 2026-09-17: appname=pipeworx, appname=reliefweb, appname=test all 403 on v2; v1 additionally answers 410 (decommissioned).

Request one at https://apidoc.reliefweb.int/parameters#appname. ReliefWeb reviews the request and emails the approved string, which must combine your organisation name, your purpose and random characters. Pass it as _apiKey.

Pipeworx holds no approved appname. When one arrives it is PLATFORM_RELIEFWEB_APPNAME; add platformKeyEnv to the pack manifest in the same change that lands the value, never before — declaring it first routes humanitarian questions to a tool that can only refuse.

ReliefWeb rate-limits by appname, so a shared one is a shared bucket.

Data sources

• POST https://api.reliefweb.int/v2/reports?appname=…
• POST https://api.reliefweb.int/v2/disasters?appname=…
• Field tables: https://apidoc.reliefweb.int/fields-tables

Things worth knowing:

• v1 is gone. It answers 410 telling you to use v2. Anything written against api.reliefweb.int/v1 is dead.
• The public site's RSS feeds are not a workaround: reliefweb.int/updates/rss.xml answers 202 with a zero-byte body from server egress, browser UA or not.
• Filters take one {field, value} or an {operator, conditions[]} group — a bare array of filters is rejected.
• Date filters go on date.original (publication) as {from, to} with full ISO timestamps, not bare dates.
• Taxonomy fields (source, country, theme, format, disaster_type) come back as arrays of objects; the pack flattens them to names.
• Report bodies are long. reliefweb_reports omits them unless you ask; reliefweb_report is the one that returns full text.

Verified

2026-09-17 — refusal paths only, by design. Both the no-key refusal and the upstream 403-on-unapproved-appname path were exercised live and both say "requires an API key". Query paths cannot be verified until an appname is approved.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "reliefweb": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/reliefweb/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/reliefweb/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1683+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/reliefweb_reports \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"country":"Sudan","format":"Situation Report","limit":10}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/reliefweb_reports. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "reliefweb": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-reliefweb"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-reliefweb

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Reliefweb data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT