Displaying items by tag: Vulnerable groups

As part of their research in Kitgum in 2006, described in the preceding article, the Tufts team also sought to gain a better understanding of the physical threats facing women and girls living in or near IDP camps. The study team found that domestic violence against women was widespread in all the camps visited. The most common form of domestic violence is male heads-of-household beating wives or female domestic partners. The most common injuries women sustain from domestic violence include broken or dislocated arms and legs and cuts to the face, neck and upper body. These injuries are inflicted by…

In mid-2005, a multi-agency stratified survey of health and mortality was carried out in Acholi in Northern Uganda, a grouping of three districts (Gulu, Kitgum and Pader) heavily affected by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency. The survey, the first region-wide assessment of health conditions, was led by the World Health Organisation. Its methods were peer-reviewed, and the report it produced was unanimously judged as valid by independent evaluators. The methodology was standard, and had been used in other settings, including Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo.   Although its findings were consistent with previous studies carried out in…

By 2007, more than half the world’s population will be living in cities; as urbanisation gathers pace, this proportion will only grow. For humanitarian actors, urbanisation will increasingly shape old and new vulnerabilities and risks, and will increasingly define disasters in the future. Chronic poverty and lack of basic infrastructure – including in core humanitarian areas such as water and sanitation – often characterise how people live in urban settlements. This should not be perceived only as a developmental challenge. There is a role for humanitarian actors in responding to the needs of vulnerable and excluded urban populations. Humanitarian action…

By 2007, more than half the world’s population will be living in cities; as urbanisation gathers pace, this proportion will only grow. For humanitarian actors, urbanisation will increasingly shape old and new vulnerabilities and risks, and will increasingly define disasters in the future. Chronic poverty and lack of basic infrastructure – including in core humanitarian areas such as water and sanitation – often characterise how people live in urban settlements. This should not be perceived only as a developmental challenge. There is a role for humanitarian actors in responding to the needs of vulnerable and excluded urban populations. Humanitarian action…

My niece was sick and died last year. I looked after her because nobody else was interested… She didn’t say that she had AIDS, but I knew and she knew … My main worry is that I won’t be able to work, and then what will happen?… I tell my kids that one day we will have a problem: I will die and they need jobs. But they have stopped looking… 54-year-old Zulu seamstress from Warwick Junction’s, Berea Railway Station, Durban, South Africa   For those of us who live, spend time or work with vulnerable groups in southern Africa,…

Tropical Storm Jeanne struck Haiti on 18 and 19 September 2004, unleashing torrential rains resulting in landslides and flooding that killed 3,000 people and left many more homeless. Gonaives, the country’s third-largest city with a population of 200,000, was worst hit. Flood waters inundated the city and made the primary road to the capital, Port-au-Prince, impassable. This was without doubt a devastating disaster. But it was underpinned by a complex social, environmental and political crisis, exemplified by the controversial ousting of President Jean Bertrand Aristide the previous February.   The immediate response CARE was the largest aid organisation in Gonaives,…

Climate change is projected to increase the likelihood and severity of a wide range of extreme weather events, many of which particularly affect urban area. Given urban areas’ high population densities, often including high concentrations of vulnerable people, increasing urban disaster risk should be a key concern in discussions of the adverse impacts of climate change.  This article presents two specific examples of increasing risks due to climate change in urban environments, and illustrates how Red Cross/Red Crescent societies address these concerns. The first case is the increasing risk of heat waves, illustrated by the 2003 heat wave in Western…

With increasing urbanisation, cities in the developing world are growing both in population and area. At least a billion people worldwide live in slums. They are forced to accept dangerous and inhuman living conditions, in which any natural event is likely to become a disaster. Poor access to land, overcrowding and low-quality housing – related to a complex system of socio-political, institutional and economic processes – lie at the heart of urban disaster risk. Nevertheless, international aid organisations accord low priority to both urban issues and disaster risk reduction (RR). While the need to integrate RR within the work of…

CARE International has been a key partner of the World Food Programme (WFP) since the outbreak of Burundi’s civil war in 1993, distributing emergency food aid to refugees, returnees, internally displaced persons, female-headed households, orphans and other vulnerable people in 16 of Burundi’s 17 provinces. In 2005, CARE distributed over 31,000 tons of food to over 800,000 beneficiaries. As the security situation in the country has improved, the programme has moved from generalised emergency feeding to semi-regular ‘targeted distributions’. WFP and the government allocate food resources based on agricultural production and food security data (collected on a quarterly basis with…

Children comprise a substantial proportion of those affected by conflict, crises and disasters. The humanitarian community knows all too well their vulnerability in emergencies – in particular to infectious diseases which raise childhood morbidity and mortality. Such diseases are major killers; averting these deaths is the key health intervention, alongside securing basic needs such as water, sanitation and hygiene, food security, adequate nutrition and shelter. Recent debate has highlighted the tremendous challenges to achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals, and of applying best practice in child health interventions, while still respecting children’s rights to participate and be heard. This article…