What is a humanitarian crisis?

Humanitarian

• Concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare. [Oxford dictionary]
• (a person who is) involved in or connected with improving people's lives and reducing suffering [Cambridge dictionary]
• If a person or society has humanitarian ideas or behavior, they try to avoid making people suffer or they help people who are suffering. [Collins dictionary]

Humanitarian crisis

A humanitarian disaster occurs when the human, physical, economic or environmental damage from an event, or series of events, overwhelms a community’s capacity to cope. [World Vision]

Around the world, people are being killed, injured and forced from their homes by terrifying conflicts and oppression. Going hungry because their harvests are failing, year after year. Watching as natural disasters they cannot escape tear apart their families. [Oxfam]

A humanitarian emergency is an event or series of events that represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people, usually over a wide area. [Humanitarian Coalition]

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 (IASC). [International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies]
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.

Humanitarian crises -- including man-made conflicts, natural disasters and pandemics -- often result in or exacerbate human rights concerns. In addition, deteriorating human rights situations may trigger crises and increase humanitarian needs of affected populations. [Office of the High Commissioner human rights, United Nations]

Humanitarian assistance is aid to a stricken population that complies with the basic humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality and neutrality. Assistance can be divided into three categories based on the degree of contact with the stricken population: 1. Direct Assistance is the face-to-face distribution of goods and services. 2. Indirect Assistance is at least one step removed from the population and involves such activities as transporting relief goods or relief personnel. 3. Infrastructure Support involves providing general services, such as road repair, airspace management and power generation that facilitate relief, but are not necessarily visible to or solely for the benefit of the stricken population. [WHO]

Dr. Pierre Chan

Legislative Councillor, HKSAR

Dec 2019