New Reports Online

top

Preventing Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
Author(s): Jeni Klugman

Major civil wars are one of the most important source of human suffering in the world today, leaving millions of people dead, maimed, undernourished, and displaced. Since the end of the Cold War, major civil wars in developing countries have increased in number and in the magnitude of their effects. The UNU work on "The Wave of Emergencies of the Last Decade" is the first extensive analysis of the economic and political roots of vulnerability to humanitarian disasters and the political economy of the prevention of humanitarian emergencies. Key issues concern the level of wealth and the role of the state. Unless more is done to prevent humanitarian crises, the world will continue to spend vast sums on food aid, peacekeeping, and diplomacy to cope with humanitarian emergencies.

One of the greatest challenges facing African governments in the next Century is how to strengthen their countries' participation in the global economy - and to do so in ways that bring widespread and sustainable benefits to their peoples. A research project undertaken in collaboration with the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) compared the external performances of Africa with those of Southeast Asia, in order to identify key lessons that could be adapted to African contexts. The key findings were that African countries will need to take a strategic approach toward the forces of globalization. In particular, the research highlighted the importance of institutional factors such as political commitment, administrative competence, and secure property and contract rights. As well as being important in their own right, institutional factors have implications for the pace, timing, and sequencing of policy reform.

UNU/INRA initiated field surveys to assess the state of natural resources in several African countries. A major focus was the assessment of the state of indigenous African useful plants, with particular emphasis on medicinal plants. Other surveys assessed the state of indigenous African food crops, the extent of use, and their management and conservation in home gardens. Major findings and lessons learned were presented at a regional workshop for African academics and scientists, held at Accra from 2 to 5 March 1998.

There is a group of desperately impoverished countries whose ill-fated experiments with state socialism in the 1970s interacted with superpower rivalry to create conflict and economic collapse. All of these countries have underdeveloped human resources, all face problems of political and economic transition, and their reconstruction is, or will soon be, an urgent issue. State capacity is weak or barely exists, conflict has fractured civil society, and poverty is deep.

Although Africa may be the most marginal continent in terms of economic production and performance, it is increasingly central to issues of global conflict and insecurity of both traditional and non-traditional varieties. Such a distinctive position poses challenges of analysis, policy, and process for a multiplicity of actors and approaches.

The issues raised by information technology applications are perhaps most acute and urgent in Sub-Saharan Africa. This project aims to provide a basis for decision on national approaches to the application and diffusion of information technology in the region.

The Second Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD II) was held in Tokyo on 19-21 October, 1998. It was attended by representatives from 80 countries at summit level, including fifteen heads of state or government from Africa and Asia. The UNU has been collaborating closely with the Japanese Government with regard to TICAD II.

Scholars from a range of national and disciplinary backgrounds examine the growth of the largest cities in Africa; their characteristics, their dynamism despite economic crisis, and the outcomes of attempts to manage them. Case-studies of selected cities (Cairo, Lagos, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Abidjan, and Nairobi) examine economic and demographic trends; political, social, and physical characteristics; and arrangements for planning and management.

"The occasion of the Third Millennium provides a timely opportunity for the only global organization, in terms of its membership as much as of its areas of work, to identify the challenges that it will face in the future and to engage in an imaginative exercise to enhance and strengthen a unique institution."