Congratulation, you made it through week two about the humanitarian context.
I hope you get a better understanding of these challenging environments.
During this week, we have seen that the humanitarian system is complex,
with many stakeholders not always coordinated.
Despite that, they are increasingly challenged,
especially in current conflicts.
Humanitarian principles that are impartiality, neutrality,
independence, and humanity must remain a reference tool to guide humanitarian action.
During this week, we have also seen that the humanitarian context,
despite urgent needs, you should not rush to the implementation of activities.
Such behavior is likely to result in inadequate projects to address critical needs.
You should ensure that adequate time and
resources are committed to assess and analyze the needs,
and formulate a strategy in order to
design effective and relevant project for the beneficiaries.
The project management cycle is a sequence of logic steps to help
you to maximize the benefits of project for the beneficiaries.
Humanitarian action has been mainly designed to
respond to the needs in acute emergencies,
and in rural environments.
However, known this, we see
an increasingly number of protracted conflicts that take place in new urban environments.
It poses new challenges.
Indeed, people in human context rely on essential services.
These services are beyond
the technical capacity and the direct physical control of the residents.
It affects the residents or the inhabitants.
These essential services such as water supply,
power supplies, sanitation are interconnected.
No electricity, no water.
This interconnectivity between essential services needs to be understood and
properly integrated into humanitarian action in order to avoid counter-project effects.
Urban services require three elements in order to
function: people, hardware, and consumables.
Disruption to an essential service
occurs when the functions of any of the critical people,
hardware, or consumables are compromised.
These three components can be affected by direct,
indirect, and cumulative impacts.
Direct impact such as damage to infrastructure from
explosive munitions attracts the most attention.
But field experiments suggest that the cumulative impact is
the most destructive and the most difficult to recover from.
Humanitarian response in urban areas is a major challenge of today's humanitarian crisis.
Further information of these critical issues can be found in these ICRC publication.