Displaying items by tag: Vulnerable groups

This edition of Humanitarian Exchange features articles on the response to the earthquake in Pakistan on 8 October 2005, documenting practical lessons and key issues from a range of agency, institutional and staff perspectives. The focus is on the response, capacity and viewpoint of local and national actors, and how these intersected with those of the international community. An article by the Pakistan government’s Federal Relief Commission explores the key lessons of the disaster for the government agency charged with leading the overall response. As this and other articles highlight, humanitarian actors relied heavily on the capacity of the Pakistan…

This edition of Humanitarian Exchange features articles on the response to the earthquake in Pakistan on 8 October 2005, documenting practical lessons and key issues from a range of agency, institutional and staff perspectives. The focus is on the response, capacity and viewpoint of local and national actors, and how these intersected with those of the international community. An article by the Pakistan government’s Federal Relief Commission explores the key lessons of the disaster for the government agency charged with leading the overall response. As this and other articles highlight, humanitarian actors relied heavily on the capacity of the Pakistan…

Niger has suffered from chronic malnutrition, rooted in structural vulnerabilities, for several decades. A series of environmental and economic shocks has further exacerbated these vulnerabilities, resulting in high levels of acute malnutrition among children under five. Elevated levels of mortality, particularly among children, are also evident. During 2005, the under-five mortality rate was 4.1 per 10,000 per day, and the crude mortality rate was 1.5 per 10,000 per day. In two regions of the country, under-five mortality rates were above the emergency threshold of two per 10,000 per day. Based on the findings of a recent evaluation, and using UNICEF’s…

Although natural disasters do not distinguish between genders, they do have a different impact on men and on women. The 8 October earthquake that rocked the northern areas of Pakistan and Azad Kashmir was no exception. The earthquake affected women physically, mentally and socially. Confronted with such a large tragedy, in which 87,000 people were killed and 3.5 million made homeless, the government and other agencies failed to specifically address the needs of women, who faced an increase in violence, had limited access to aid and had special unmet needs relating to pregnancy and nursing infants. Marie Stopes Society (MSS)…

The international humanitarian community faced an unprecedented challenge in responding to the shelter needs created by the 8 October earthquake. The scale of the task was huge, with half a million homes in northern Pakistan damaged or destroyed. With winter approaching, aid had to be delivered quickly, and in difficult, mountainous conditions. Meeting these challenges required creative solutions and, especially, a high degree of reliance on local knowledge and ingenuity. Drawing on initial field evaluations of Catholic Relief Services (CRS)’s self-help shelter programme, this article explores one approach to maximising local ingenuity to meet priority shelter needs. The approach was…

The long-running conflict in northern Uganda between the government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is often considered one of Africa’s forgotten humanitarian catastrophes. During the past two years, the profile of the war has been raised, both politically – especially with the involvement of the International Criminal Court – and in humanitarian terms, with a (long overdue) increase in presence and commitment from the international community. Yet one aspect of the crisis continues to escape discussion and attention. One hears talk of ‘rights’, ‘the law’ and ‘justice’ in relation to the situation of internally displaced people in the north,…

The crisis in Niger in 2005 was characterised by slow decision-making and a lack of complementarity between humanitarian and development actors, as agencies debated whether short-term emergency interventions or long-term structural responses were most appropriate. This article describes the nature of the crisis, and argues that, if similar crises are to be prevented in the future, humanitarian and developmental agencies need to harmonise the way they work together to prevent, mitigate and reduce the risks faced by chronically vulnerable populations. Profile of the crisis The food crisis in Niger primarily affected people living in the country’s transitional zone. Food production…

  This edition of Humanitarian Exchange features articles on how the humanitarian system can more effectively address and respond to chronic vulnerability, with a focus on Malawi and Niger. Chronic vulnerability refers to an enduring susceptibility to the effects of external shocks on life and livelihoods – a shock that is not acute or transient, but constant and cyclical. In Southern Africa and the Sahel, this vulnerability is shaped by an admixture of problems, including food insecurity, HIV/AIDS, climatic variability, weak governance systems and unremitting poverty. Combined, these factors mean that many households and individuals live permanently on the edge…

The ‘new variant famine’ (NVF) hypothesis was first published in The Lancet in 2003: Our hypothesis is that the generalised HIV/AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa, first, helps to explain why many households are facing food shortage, and second, explains the grim trajectory of limited recovery. Four factors are new: 1. Household-level labour shortages due to adult morbidity and mortality, and the related increase in numbers of dependants. 2. Loss of assets and skills due to adult mortality. 3. The burden of care for sick adults and children orphaned by AIDS. 4. The vicious interactions between malnutrition and HIV. The NVF…

In 2001–2002, Southern Africa experienced its worst food crisis since 1992. Most assessments have understood this crisis to be as much a crisis of livelihoods, or of development in general, as a simple food shock. In the decade leading up to the crisis, increasing vulnerability to the changing political and socio-economic environment was not adequately understood or addressed. This meant that a modest external threat, such as erratic rainfall, was all that was required to trigger widespread suffering. Numerous studies have since revealed the complexity of the crisis, which is now recognised as having both acute and chronic dimensions. In…