Complex emergencies

COMPLEX EMERGENCIES

A complex emergency is a major humanitarian crisis that is often the result of a combination of political instability, conflict and violence, social inequities and underlying poverty. Complex emergencies are essentially political in nature and can erode the cultural, civil, political and economic stability of societies, particularly when the situation is worsenes by natural hazards and diseases such as HIV and AIDS, which further deteriorate livelihoods and worsen poverty.

• For example, in Somalia, more than two decades of civil conflict resulted in loss or damage.
• Some disasters can result from several different hazards or, more often, to a complex combination of both natural and man-made causes and different causes of vulnerability.
• Examples being, food insecurity, epidemics, conflicts and displaced populations

A humanitarian crisis in a country, region or society where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict and which requires an international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single agency and/or the ongoing UN country program (Inter-Agency Standing Committee).

Such “complex emergencies” are typically characterized by:

• -extensive violence and loss of life;
• -displacements of populations;
• -widespread damage to societies and economies;
• -the need for large-scale, multi-faceted humanitarian assistance;
• -the hindrance or prevention of humanitarian assistance by political and military constraints;
• -significant security risks for humanitarian relief workers in some areas.

On a national level, conflict may involves warlike encounters between armed groups from the same country which take place within the borders. Such outbreaks of war may pose large-scale medical problems such as epidemics, lack of water, accumulation of rubbish, displaced persons, refugees, food shortage, hunger etc.

Internationally, war may break out between two or more armies from different countries. Similarly such conflict may cause large scale mass movements of refugees and displaced persons.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) mission is to protect the lives and dignity of victims of war and internal violence and to provide them with assistance. It directs and coordinates the international relief activities conducted by the Movement in situations of conflict. It also endeavours to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles.

A complex emergency is an emergency situation where government services have broken down. These situations don’t have to be caused by conflict, but conflict is often a part of the problem.

Emergencies are challenging by nature, but  become especially complicated when there’s no (or very little) government structure. 

That means NGOs [non-governmental organizations are missing their most important partner, and people often can’t access the help they need to recover.

The global trend in the case of complex emergencies have generally shown an increasing trend as evidenced by the statistics. This can be justified by:

Population explosion

 For example: