Crisis in 'a normal bad year': spaces of humanitarian emergency, the IPC scale and the Somali famine of 2011 (original) (raw)
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Accessing the inaccessible: Assembling Humanitarian Access in Somalia
BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE: NAVIGATING WAR, POLITICS AND EXPLODING NEEDS THROUGH PRINCIPLED HUMANITARIAN ACTION. Humanitarian Congress: Research Papers., 2024
Somalia has historically been the theater of a set of complex challenges, including decades of political instability that is currently intertwined with instances of terrorism and extremism, the dire effects of climate and environmental change, and significant trends of mass displacement. The country has therefore provided a prominent ground for the emergence of humanitarian challenges and the test of humanitarian approaches and responses. Key among them, humanitarian access continues to represent a puzzle for the humanitarian community working in and on Somalia. For instance, the country has often been described as "hard-to-reach" (IFRC 2018), meaning that its communities "are not receiving essential humanitarian assistance because humanitarian actors (local, national or international) are not adequately present or able to provide adequate assistance to the places where they are located" (IFRC 2018, 1). State fragmentation, violent political contestation, infrastructural gaps and donors' neglect have all contributed to hampering governmental and non-governmental organizations' efforts to provide assistance to people in need in Somalia. Over the years, the humanitarian community has done its best to overcome existing challenges, through the implementation of creative and sometimes daring practical solutions to ensure humanitarian access. While recognizing the importance of experimenting pragmatic solutions to meet pressing needs, we argue that part of the challenges also arises from a tendency to often take as a given and reify Somalia's inaccessibility to humanitarians. Humanitarian access has been defined by OCHA (2010, 1), the United Nations (UN) agency in charge of coordinating humanitarian affairs, as "humanitarian actors' ability to reach populations affected by crisis, as well as an affected population's ability to access humanitarian assistance and services" and, therefore, as a "a fundamental prerequisite to effective humanitarian action." Such a definition is often treated as absolute and rarely challenged. furthering the crystallization of certain places as inaccessible or "hard-to-reach". In the conversations we had with humanitarian practitioners in Somalia, that gave rise to this work, we often observed a tendency to recognize access as dynamic and fluidin the words of one interviewee, as "in a constant state of flux" (FAO). However, this same fluidity was moreoften-than-not attributed only to contextual and external factors, and rarely we observed selfawareness and critical reflexivity on the role of logics and criteria that humanitarians themselves attribute to access in constructing a place as (in)accessible. With this work we aim to call into question the criteria informing the conceptualizationand crystallization-of "hard-to-reach" areas, as well as their effects on the daily practice of accessing. We claim that access, or rather inaccessibility, does not exist in a vacuum; rather, it depends on the underpinning logics and criteria that are attached to access itself, and on the mosaicand interactionof human and non-human entities that are involved in gaining access to a certain place. We hope, in this way, to open new creative spaces for humanitarians to rethink what access means. This map shows the places that are in IPC [Integrated Food Security Phase Classification] 1-2 all the way to 5. The green is minimal IPC 1, yellow IPC 2, usually we provide humanitarian intervention from IPC 3 and above. (...) Then we start the process of selecting the people that we provide assistance to. So we use data from this map to inform programme design and location of programmes and activity.
The Age of Humanitarian Emergencies
1996
The Age of Humanitarian Emergencies makes an effort to define and operationalize a humanitarian emergency. After having discussed extensively definitions related to collective violence, especially genocide and civil war, the paper opts for a more comprehensive definition associated with the idea of a 'complex humanitarian emergency'. This idea stresses the multidimensionality and the political nature of humanitarian crises. Multidimensionality is reflected in the decision to define a humanitarian emergency by four factors: warfare, disease, hunger, and displacement. The human-rights dimension is considered relevant, but embedded in the four other factors than an independent defining characteristic. The political nature of emergencies is reflected, in turn, in the intra-crisis struggle for relative gains in the distribution of economic gains and political power in the crisis-ridden society. While natural disasters can have socio-economic consequences, the humanitarian crises ...
Vulnerability to Hunger: Improving Food Crisis Responses in Fragile States
2008
The paper examines the imperative for improved classification and analysis of food crises in different fragile contexts. Recognizing the persistence and protracted nature of food crises, the paper questions how prevention and response mechanisms could be improved to help decisionmakers better address the underlying causes of vulnerability and hunger. The paper draws on case study information to examine real life opportunities and constraints in applying a recently developed food security classification system, named the analytical frameworks at country level, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). Developed originally in Somalia, this classification framework is now being applied in a range of country contexts within and outside of Africa by national governments, UN agencies, donors and NGO organizations. The paper draws on early applications of the IPC to consider opportunities and constraints in the application of common classification systems, taking into accoun...
Facing famine: Somali experiences in the famine of 2011
Food policy, 2016
In 2011-12, Somalia experienced the worst famine of the twenty- first century. Since then, research on the famine has focused almost exclusively on the external response, the reasons for the delay in the international response, and the implications for international humanitarian action in the context of the "global war on terror." This paper focuses on the internal, Somali response to the famine. Themes of diversification, mobility and flexibility are all important to understanding how people coped with the famine, but this paper focuses on the factor that seemed to determine whether and how well people survived the famine: social connectedness, the extent of the social networks of affected populations, and the ability of these networks to mobilize resources. These factors ultimately determined how well people coped with the famine. The nature of reciprocity, the resources available within people's networks, and the collective risks and hazards faced within networks, a...
In many countries, prolonged conflicts result in food emergencies that recur over years or even decades. Initial humanitarian relief efforts are rarely replaced by programmes that offer a longer-term perspective on food security. This book provides examples of opportunities to bridge the gap between emergency relief and longer term developmental approaches, which can help us rethink how to support food security in protracted crises. Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo have all been affected by severe protracted crises. For the first time, evidence and in-depth analysis from these countries sheds light on how to support the livelihoods of local populations. Using concrete examples, Beyond Relief demonstrates how food security means different things in different contexts while also advocating a crosscutting learning process for longer-term approaches to protracted crisis. Published in association with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Journal of Humanitarian Affairs
The article shows how the data of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) remain ‘poor numbers’. First, because of the intrinsic uncertainty that presides over their production, but above all because of their necessary translation into the media system to trigger responses to crises. Drawing on Boltanski’s thesis on the politics of pity, it emphasises how figures are seen as a partial element of media rhetoric. The figures becomes a performative number when combined with registers of emotion and collective representations of famine. Two examples are developed through interviews with humanitarian practitioners: the crisis in Yemen (2018) as an ‘overexposed crisis’ and the crisis in Madagascar (2021) as a ‘silent crisis’.
Crisis in Somalia in the Context of Brecher's Definition International Crisis
2010
The crisis in Somalia is one of the worst crises that have ever happened on both local and international scene. It is characterised by violence, which keeps on escalating between Transitional Federal Government and the Islamic Courts union. This situation has made Somalia a dangerous country to the extent that since 1991 it has been without a central government. This persistent crisis in Somalia has caused Somalia into intractable conflicts both locally and internationally. In the light of this, there has been international intervention and withdrawal of external actors due to complexity of the crisis. In this context this crisis has been perceived differently. This paper attempts to explain the Somali crisis in the context of Michael Brecher’s definition of international crisis. The focus is on the key drivers for the persistent breakdown of Somali society that have kept the crisis alive. The paper concludes that Somalia has been plunged into continuous spiralling violence resultin...
The impediments and key challenges in Somalia's humanitarian emergency response
2020
Since the collapse of the central government of Somalia in 1991 Somalia has been embroiled in a civil war that has created dire humanitarian conditions that have claimed the lives of thousands of people. This has made Somalia one of the most vulnerable in humanitarian crises in the world today as the ongoing armed conflict created devastating humanitarian situations. The country has currently ranked as the ‘second lowest in the world on the Fragile States Index’ (Maxwell et al., 2018), it also has the ‘fifth highest fertility rate in the world, and the second highest infant mortality rate, topped only by Afghanistan’ (Maxwell et al., 2018). Nevertheless Somalia ‘is one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with nearly 7 out of 10 people living in poverty’ (October, 2020). However the conflict in Somalia has been accompanied by international efforts to find a lasting solution to the crisis and armed conflicts in Somalia with numerous conferences taking place in various countries between 1991-2000 but unfortunately most of them failed because of exclusion, clan dynamics and the insurgency. In 2000 the Arta Conference was held which resulted in an atmosphere of stability and consensus resulting in the emergence of an inclusive government for the first time despite the many challenges surrounding the conference. However it’s noteworthy during that time a massive humanitarian crisis occurred including mass displacement, famine and vast human right violation including killing, rape and child labor.