Humanitarian Exchange articles tagged:Water & Sanitation

Fragility, conflict and processes of state transformation can be challenging contexts for basic service provision by humanitarian agencies. Globally, practitioners are becoming more concerned with understanding the impact of service delivery on conflict, fragility and state-building – for example through the application of the ‘Do No Harm’ framework or forms of conflict analysis. Policymakers and donors increasingly ask whether service delivery programmes can do more to help build peace and the capacity of the state in the longer term. However, while many contributions are asserted, there is little rigorous evaluation to test the impact of service delivery on peace-building and…

In November 2011, fighting in Blue Nile State in Sudan led to the flight of some 25,000 refugees to Maban County, in Upper Nile State in South Sudan, where they were settled in two refugee camps, first at Doro and then, from December, at Jamam. More continued to arrive over the subsequent months. Six months later, in May 2012, a second wave of 35,000 refugees arrived, in very bad condition with some dying of dehydration from their journey. After an initial period in transit camps en route, most of this second wave was moved to Jamam camp; new camps were…

In recent decades the drylands of the Horn of Africa have become one of the most disaster-prone regions in the world. Drought in particular affects more people, more frequently than any other disaster. Drought periods were not always so disastrous but, combined with the region’s underlying economic, social and environmental vulnerability, the impacts upon dryland inhabitants are extreme. Despite calls for greater investment in preparedness, early response and long-term resiliencebuilding, the 2011 drought crisis in the region illustrates how this has not yet been translated into reality. It is an intuitive belief that investment in early response and resilience-building in…

On 10 January 2010 Oxfam GB’s global humanitarian team spent the day reviewing our current approaches to humanitarian response in urban areas. We concluded that the most significant challenge we could possibly face would be a major earthquake in a densely populated urban area. We felt we needed to boost our capacity and understanding of what sort of assistance might be needed in preparation for such an event. Less than 48 hours later the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, eventually leaving up to 220,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless. Within hours Oxfam’s team in Haiti was responding despite massive personal loss, and…

Zimbabweis facing an extraordinary and multidimensional crisis. An estimated three million Zimbabweans have crossed the Limpopo river into South Africa as a matter of survival; more than three-quarters of the remaining population of nine million face serious food shortages; maternal mortality has tripled since the mid-1990s; a cholera epidemic has infected over 90,000 people, killing over 4,000; one in five adults are HIV positive, and one person dies every four minutes from AIDS; 94% of the population is officially unemployed; and thousands were beaten and intimidated by government security and paramilitary forces during last year’s elections. Political instability and mismanagement…

In many of the zones where humanitarian response is needed, plasmodium falciparum – the deadly form of malaria – is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Almost a third of the one million malaria deaths annually occur in emergency settings, among people made vulnerable by lack of food, shelter or adequate health care. Although the disease has been eradicated in the West, it still threatens 40% of the world’s people, the vast majority of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa is thought to lose as much as $12 billion every year as a result of the costs associated with treatment…

Vietnam’s Mekong Delta area suffers from annual flooding, which is typically slow-onset, and inundates large areas. Floodwaters stay for up to two months before slowly receding. The Vietnamese government’s disaster-management strategy for the areas has been to live with these floods. Residential clusters have been developed near highways and river dykes, and families living in low-lying villages are being relocated to these areas. However, many of these residential clusters lack important water and sanitation (watsan) facilities. To address these needs, Oxfam GB and the Dong Thap Province People’s Committee implemented a watsan public health promotion project in Dong Thap Province…

The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s longest-running conflicts. It is characterised by political instability, violence, intense international attention and media scrutiny and unprecedented amounts of aid. The occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) has become exceptionally aid dependent, receiving around $1 billion a year, or on average $315 per capita. But despite this, conflict and occupation, particularly in the last few years, have severely constrained Palestinian development, to the point where some social indicators in the OPT are comparable to parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, there is widespread agreement amongst assistance providers that, in the current conditions of…

The prevailing protection discourse amongst humanitarian agencies focuses on appeals to the responsibilities and obligations of belligerents and occupying powers under International Humanitarian Law (IHL). However, most aid workers know that rhetoric rarely intersects with reality on the ground. States – including nations traditionally held to be the guarantors of the principles underpinning IHL – flagrantly violate it, and agencies’ attempts to link power with responsibility are frequently and deliberately thwarted. While agencies must continue the struggle to change this status quo, field-level strategies must meanwhile provide protection in spite of it. This article examines the protection challenges Oxfam faced…

Developing a Common Humanitarian Action Plan Guinea Bissau, a former Portuguese colony, became independent in 1973, and went through political and economic transformation. It has had a multiparty system since 1996. The last legislative and presidential elections were held in 1994, with the first municipal elections held in 1997. With its estimated 1.1 million people, a population growth of 2.1% and a GNP of US$220/habitant, the country is characterised by an illiteracy rate of 68%, infant mortality (below 5) rate of 240/1,000 and a life expectancy of 43.5 years. The country is also faced with rapid urbanisation, limited access to water/sanitation…