Displaying items by tag: Emergency interventions

Strengthening Policy and Practice: meeting the challenges of working in complex environments is designed to draw on the experience and practice of participants, working in development, humanitarian aid or peacebuilding to influence internal policies and programmatic approaches. The course will identify how organisations can strive to balance their organisational mandate with the demands of working in complex and rapidly changing political contexts. Course aims The course will enable participants to contribute to developing constructive organisational and programmatic policies that will guide practical responses in the development, humanitarian and peacebuilding fields. It will draw on the experience of participants and tutors…

When the 2010 Haiti earthquake struck, text messages sent by trapped survivors became crucial catalysts for aid delivery. When the 2009 Gaza conflict broke out, cell phones were the only medium of communication left largely unaffected by bombings. Landline wires and web servers are often the first to fail during a natural disaster, but cell phone towers are typically more reliable, built to withstand extreme weather events and harsh climate conditions. This method of  communication can therefore play a pivotal role in coordinating aid distribution when crisis hits – conveying information to communities, and even mitigating conflict by providing updates…

The earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 was the most destructive ever to hit the island. Over 215,000 people were killed and more than 1.3 million displaced from their homes. With the destruction of the seaport, the immediate focus of the international aid response was the Toussaint Louverture International Airport (MTPP) in the centre of the capital, Port au Prince. The world responded immediately with a massive airlift. US Air Force Special Tactics Team members from the 1st Special Operations Wing re-established tower control services a mere 18 minutes after arriving at the airport, and immediately began receiving humanitarian…

The scale and scope of the humanitarian crisis in South Central Somalia challenges the humanitarian system’s capacity to deliver assistance. More than two decades of conflict, combined with cyclical, slow- and fast-onset disasters, have displaced millions of Somalis. In the absence of a central government, the few basic services available are mostly provided by humanitarian aid organisations (mainly through local staff and partners) and food crises are recurrent. Many of the lessons from this crisis can also be applied to other complex emergencies where the humanitarian response capacity has been overstretched, and where security and access constraints make it difficult…

Moyale District in northern Kenya is a sparsely populated area. Livestock account for 70% of household income, and 67% of the population live below the poverty line. Droughts have eroded household assets and further reduced the coping mechanisms available to the pastoralist residents of Moyale. Yet a recent survey revealed that severe acute and global acute malnutrition rates in Moyale are much lower than in the neighbouring areas of Marsabit and north-west Wajir, where similar conditions prevail. Why has Moyale fared better? This article argues that Concern’s approach to working in the district was key to improving both malnutrition rates…

Droughts in arid areas are caused by failed rains and exacerbated by the strategies affected people use to counter the depletion of resources and weakened coping mechanisms. A VSF consortium programme is focusing on the approaches and practices communities use to support dialogue and negotiation as a prerequisite for creating disaster-resilient communities. Such practices include reciprocal resource agreements, which are a common feature in pastoralist customary traditions. Reciprocal resource agreements govern the use of shared resources: resources that are under the custody of one community, but are also open to a neighbouring community in times of drought. These agreements are…

The Horn of Africa is synonymous with drought and famine, and the region returned to the media spotlight in 2011 as a result of a region-wide La Niña drought. There was, however, much less mention of the fact that Ethiopia has recorded double-digit economic growth rates in recent years and is the third fastest-growing economy in Sub-Saharan Africa. The country has also made important efforts to address chronic food insecurity through the launch in 2005 of the Food Security Programme, the largest social protection programme in sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa. This article highlights positive developments in the management…

The Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia was set up in 2005 by the government as part of a strategy to address chronic food insecurity. The PSNP provides cash or food to people who have predictable food needs in a way that  enables them to improve their own livelihoods – and therefore become more resilient to the effects of shocks in the future. However, there are times when a shock results in transitory food insecurity, the scale of which is beyond the mainstream PSNP to address. This requires additional temporary support. In this event extra funding comes from the…

Humanitarian organisations in the Horn of Africa are increasingly using cash and voucher transfers, particularly in areas of insecurity where access problems have led to a rethink of traditional ways of delivering aid. An estimated four million people in the region are now receiving assistance via cash or voucher programmes from a wide range of national and international NGOs, UN agencies and other humanitarian actors. The sheer scale of the response and the number of agencies involved has brought coordination to the forefront of the discussion around cash transfer programming in the region. While technical coordination groups in the region…

Why is the response to drought almost always too little too late? Evaluations find the same failures and make the same recommendations again and again, and the response to the Horn crisis is no exception. The draft Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) evaluation classified it as ‘a qualified success’, and highlights the general failure of preventive action from late 2010. Much the same was said in evaluations from the Sahel in 2005 and 2010, and in Kenya in 2005/6 and 2008/9. Whilst humanitarian response is improving in many areas, drought is not one of them. Paradoxically, we are better at responding…