The importance of building resilience in humanitarian emergencies

In Bangladesh, a country hit hard by the changing climate, AA has also had documented success. During the 2020 monsoon floods, together with partners WFP distributed unconditional cash transfers to 145,000 people living along the Jamuna River as early as four days before floodwaters reached critical levels, enabling them to evacuate or purchase food or other necessary items to mitigate the effects of the floods.

“People who are able to receive early warning messaging alongside additional financial resources showed a huge improvement in their coping capacities,” Mason said. An independent impact study found that the anticipatory cash transfers resulted in households being 36% less likely to go a day without eating during the floods. Mason also emphasized that AA adds value from a financing point of view. People in Bangladesh were assisted at $13 per person through anticipatory actions in 2020, compared to $26 per person in the more traditional humanitarian assistance following the floods in 2019.

Another country facing extreme weather events — as demonstrated by last year’s devastating floods — is Pakistan. The International Rescue Committee is currently working to support the millions of people suffering as a consequence of the disaster. Although the catastrophe is still ongoing, IRC’s emergency response plan includes early, mid-term, and long-term recovery phases, following the initial life-saving stage. 

“You are really missing the opportunities unless resilience building and disaster risk reduction happen as part of humanitarian action,” said Shabnam Baloch, IRC’s country director for Pakistan. Alongside responding to the most urgent needs of the population, IRC has long been investing in resilience-building initiatives for communities most prone to disasters in Pakistan, including improving WASH and health care infrastructure and providing training to community leaders, NGO representatives, and local government officials on early warning, search and rescue, and relief.

When IRC’s teams visited the flood-affected areas in 2022 they observed that the communities who had received training were less impacted, Baloch explained. The groups that were trained shared flood information with more than 12 villages and helped evacuate more than 1,000 people to safety before the floods hit. They also coordinated with authorities and relief agencies to deliver immediate lifesaving assistance to affected households, such as food, water, shelter, and medical support.

Swiss humanitarian aid organization Medair is another group coupling immediate humanitarian response with resilience-building interventions to make populations less vulnerable to emergencies. One of the countries it works in is Lebanon, which has been battling a multi-layered humanitarian crisis since 2019 when it entered a deep financial and political crisis. The situation has been exacerbated by COVID-19 and the massive explosions at the Port of Beirut in August 2020. 

Following the port explosions, Medair rehabilitated both residential buildings and public facilities, while also assisting people with essential supplies. “Our team managed to build back the damaged buildings better, as some of them were in fairly poor conditions [to start with],” said Anna Chilvers, Medair's country director for Lebanon. Many houses required a full renovation including electrical repairs, plastering, painting, and fixing water leaks.

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