Tufts: 'Complexity and Context as the Determinants of the Future'

By Peter Walker

Humanitarian crises today are not due to one underlying cause but rather to a set of complex issues or an accumulation of adverse trends.

As a result, humanitarian action needs to be more broadly defined and reflect a wide, complementary range of interventions.

Responding to humanitarian needs--created by the combined effect of increasing costs of food, high energy prices, increased production of biofuels, climate change, and resulting natural disasters--is currently one of the humanitarian community's greatest challenges.

This opinion piece by Feinstein International Center Director Peter Walker, first delivered as a presentation to the 2008 meeting of the Global Humanitarian Platform in Geneva, introduces the issue of "accumulating adverse trends" with the aim of provoking discussion on how to better respond to the humanitarian challenges with which we are faced.

Access this report from Tufts