Hosts: United States of America and United Kingdom
Languages: English
Where: room 7/8
Description:
As the world’s population becomes ever more urbanized, so humanitarians will be increasingly called upon to respond to crises in towns and cities. This issue is steadily gaining recognition, as the focus on urban risk in the 32nd International Conference demonstrates. Displacement within or to urban areas can magnify the vulnerability of particular groups, especially in urban areas with preexisting elevated levels of violence. Cities are also often the focus of hostilities in conflict.
They are also places where people fleeing conflict choose to settle, but where humanitarian actors struggle to understand their needs and vulnerabilities. The session will take a broad introductory approach. It will cover a range of different urban crisis contexts and examine the challenges and opportunities presented by the environment for the protection and support of vulnerable populations.
The aim of the session is to encourage participants to apply an urban lens to their own work, and consider what steps need to be taken for their own institution to be ready to respond to the inevitable rise in urban crises.