‘Resilience’ is topping the list of new buzzwords in international cooperation rhetoric lately. Many policy makers, including from the European Commission, are using it abundantly. Thus the policy proposal entitled ‘The EU Approach to Resilience: Learning from Food Security Crisis’ the EU launched last week is an important document because it frames the term. Up to now, EU humanitarian aid and development cooperation actors used the word – which has its origin in material sciences, psychology and ecology – without any conceptual underpinning and orientation on how to translate it into practice.