The vast majority of the humanitarian responses are taking place outside acute emergency situations. However, few aid organizations are today able to ensure a rapid and effective assistance to populations who are affected by a major natural disaster or an armed conflict.
This page explores the reasons behind this reality.
This page explores the reasons behind this reality.
"Emergency medicine is born with the idea of its projection outside the hospital walls: not to bring injured persons to the hospital but the hospital to them" - Rony Brauman, former President of Médecins Sans Frontières [1].
Emergency humanitarian responses are based on a similar concept, taking assistance to peoples in danger who are facing the immediate threat of high morbidity / mortality risks in the very near term. These situations are usually triggered by armed conflicts, natural disasters or epidemics including acute food crises, and require emergency intervention (interventions by “default”).
Within just a few months for natural disasters, few years and sometimes decades for armed conficts, these critical situations will have moved into a post-emergency phase requiring a more dedicated response based on rehabilitation or reconstruction works (interventions "by choice").
In order to raise more attention and funds, some humanitarian players or disaster affected governments may tend to overstate a crisis situation and describe it as more urgent than it actually is[2]. As a reality, the vast majority of humanitarian responses are taking place outside of acute emergency situations.
According to some aid experts, armed conflicts cause three to five times more wounded than they do deaths, whereas natural disasters lead to more deaths than injuries, most of them light, requiring relatively simple care[3]. Although natural disasters usually strike a clearly defined territory for a very short time, generating homeless populations who are suddenly living in acute vulnerability, war situations often affect entire regions for years, leading to protracted mass uprooting of affected populations.
However, humanitarian risks related to emergency situations remains something difficult to anticipate. For political reasons, governments that are affected by a crisis are sometimes understating the obvious risks, most of the time when it comes to major epidemics and pandemics[4].
Being able to respond effectively to emergency situations requires specific competencies, i.e. knowledge, skills and ability that are different from post-emergency interventions. It also requires adapted learning mindsets and organizational set-up in order to keep on performing in highly deteriorated situations that are usually featured by understaffed and underequipped set-ups with little capacity to defer or to transfer to other organizations the emergency burden.
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[1]Penser dans l’urgence - Rony Brauman– Seuil
[2]See outbreak alerts launched in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, or the exaggerated number of typhoon victims reported few weeks after the Phılıppınes Typhon in Phılippınes (Nov. 2013)
[3] R. Brauman – Global Media and the Myths of Humanitarian Relief – Nov. 2006
[4] In April 2014, some humanitarian organizations warned about the risk of an unprecedented Ebola epidemic, a position that was then thought to be excessively ‘alarmist’ by some affected countries, including the World Health Organization’.
Emergency humanitarian responses are based on a similar concept, taking assistance to peoples in danger who are facing the immediate threat of high morbidity / mortality risks in the very near term. These situations are usually triggered by armed conflicts, natural disasters or epidemics including acute food crises, and require emergency intervention (interventions by “default”).
Within just a few months for natural disasters, few years and sometimes decades for armed conficts, these critical situations will have moved into a post-emergency phase requiring a more dedicated response based on rehabilitation or reconstruction works (interventions "by choice").
In order to raise more attention and funds, some humanitarian players or disaster affected governments may tend to overstate a crisis situation and describe it as more urgent than it actually is[2]. As a reality, the vast majority of humanitarian responses are taking place outside of acute emergency situations.
According to some aid experts, armed conflicts cause three to five times more wounded than they do deaths, whereas natural disasters lead to more deaths than injuries, most of them light, requiring relatively simple care[3]. Although natural disasters usually strike a clearly defined territory for a very short time, generating homeless populations who are suddenly living in acute vulnerability, war situations often affect entire regions for years, leading to protracted mass uprooting of affected populations.
However, humanitarian risks related to emergency situations remains something difficult to anticipate. For political reasons, governments that are affected by a crisis are sometimes understating the obvious risks, most of the time when it comes to major epidemics and pandemics[4].
Being able to respond effectively to emergency situations requires specific competencies, i.e. knowledge, skills and ability that are different from post-emergency interventions. It also requires adapted learning mindsets and organizational set-up in order to keep on performing in highly deteriorated situations that are usually featured by understaffed and underequipped set-ups with little capacity to defer or to transfer to other organizations the emergency burden.
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[1]Penser dans l’urgence - Rony Brauman– Seuil
[2]See outbreak alerts launched in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami, or the exaggerated number of typhoon victims reported few weeks after the Phılıppınes Typhon in Phılippınes (Nov. 2013)
[3] R. Brauman – Global Media and the Myths of Humanitarian Relief – Nov. 2006
[4] In April 2014, some humanitarian organizations warned about the risk of an unprecedented Ebola epidemic, a position that was then thought to be excessively ‘alarmist’ by some affected countries, including the World Health Organization’.