Vital Systems Security

I am teaching a class this semester called Governing International Emergency. A ton of interesting stuff is beginning to come out, as we move from theoretical work and work focused on the United States to international questions. I will try to blog on issues of particular interest for VSS questions as they emerge, and may be able at some point to post some web pages that are being produced in connection with four ongoing projects in the class on humanitarian response, natural disasters, climate change, and global pandemic preparedness. Here is a first installment.

This week we began to work through some materials on international humanitarian response, focusing on technical protocols and organizational issues in the field. The material was organized by two students, Jen Hill and Nat Katin-Borland, who are working intensively on these problems (and who may do fieldwork on related questions this summer). There are a range of interesting things emerging, including the consolidation of professional norms around early warning, preparedness, situational awareness, and response.

One particularly interesting document that we read was a World Food Program Agenda Item from 2005 updating that organization’s definition of “emergency,” originally laid out in1970. Check out the whole thing, which is short and very much worth the read. Two highlights.

First, the document emphasizes that what has changed is not so much the understanding of emergency as the set of tools that are used to anticipate and respond to emergencies:

“This paper concludes that the existing definition, with minor adjustments, remains largely valid. What has evolved substantially over the past decades is the set of tools used by WFP to identify vulnerable people and determine the most appropriate food-aid intervention. This improved knowledge, especially in the areas of early warning, disaster preparedness, vulnerability analysis, nutritional analysis and emergency needs assessment (ENA) methodology, serves as the basis on which WFP decides whether or not to respond to emergencies. The modifications to the existing definition incorporate more recent thinking on types of emergencies and their causes. The new definition maintains flexibility for the Executive Director to respond to urgent human food needs in diverse and unpredictable situations.”

Second, as with VSS more generally, there is a strong emphasis on an all-hazards approach, one that sees “famine” as the product of multiple different types of emergency that can be understood and managed in the same frame.

“The event or series of events may comprise one or a combination of the following:

a) sudden calamities such as earthquakes, floods, locust infestations and similar unforeseen disasters;

b) human-made emergencies resulting in an influx of refugees or the internal displacement of populations or in the suffering of otherwise affected populations;

c) food scarcity conditions owing to slow-onset events such as drought, crop failures, pests, and diseases that result in an erosion of communities and vulnerable populations’ capacity to meet their food needs;

d) severe food access or availability conditions resulting from sudden economic shocks, market failure, or economic collapse — and that result in an erosion of communities’ and vulnerable populations’ capacity to meet their food needs; and

e) a complex emergency for which the Government of the affected country or the
Secretary-General of the United Nations has requested the support of WFP.”

At one level, all this is obvious, common sense. But what we are clearly seeing in formation now is a common technical space of humanitarian action — anticipation, preparedness, and response — that is consolidating around increasingly stable knowledge forms and modes of authorized expertise.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 15th, 2008 at 9:13 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.