Strategic Goal 10: Humanitarian Response

Strategic Goal 10: Humanitarian Response Minimize the human costs of displacement, conflicts and natural disasters

The U.S. commitment to humanitarian response demonstrates America’s compassion for victims of armed conflict, forced migration, human rights violations, widespread health and food insecurity, and other threats.  The strength of this commitment derives from both our common humanity and our responsibility as a global leader.  When responding to natural and human-made disasters, the United States complements and enhances its efforts to promote democracy and human rights.  In addition to saving lives and alleviating human suffering, humanitarian programs support the objectives of the U.S. National Security Strategy by addressing resource and economic crises with potential regional (or even global) implications, fostering peace and stability, and promoting sustainable development and infrastructure revitalization.

The Department is a leader in international efforts to prevent and respond to humanitarian crises.  It provides substantial resources and guidance through international and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for worldwide humanitarian programs, with the objective of increasing access to protection, promoting burden-sharing, and coordinating funding and implementation strategies.  The Department provides early warning about potential humanitarian crises through its extensive reporting capacity.  When a humanitarian crisis does occur, the Department urges and participates in multilateral response.  Department field staff often provide critical resources and information as humanitarian emergencies unfold.  The Department’s emphasis on regular monitoring and evaluation of humanitarian programs ensures that the needs of refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), and other conflict victims are met, and that the international community continually strives to improve its response to their plight.  Its financial support for demining activities makes areas safe for the return of refugees and IDPs.  Its management and support of overseas refugee admissions programs provides an important durable solution for refugees, and also serves as a leading model for other resettlement countries.

Crude mortality rates and child nutritional status are vital data in refugee and other humanitarian emergencies; they indicate the severity of a crisis, and the effectiveness of response.  Department-funded humanitarian programs prevent crude mortality and child malnutrition rates in refugee settings from reaching the emergency level of one death per 10,000 people per day.  In exceptional cases where this effort fails due to external factors, the Department supports urgent interventions to reduce the major causes of mortality and malnutrition. 

The Department seeks to increase the amount of food available for humanitarian emergencies – a significant factor in preventing mortality and child malnutrition – by encouraging other governments to contribute to the World Food Program (WFP). 

The Department’s effort to resettle 100 percent of the allocated number of refugees annual authorized the President for admission to the United States to provide the maximum number of refugees in need or resettlement world-wide with lasting protection and the opportunity to rebuild their lives in a new home. 

The Department works to prevent exploitation of humanitarian victims and to improve accountability for refugee protection.  Before FY 2004, in all spheres of programming, Department-funded humanitarian partners will have adopted codes of conduct and implemented anti-exploitation measures such as awareness training for staff and reporting mechanisms to detect fraud, waste, abuse, or exploitation in all spheres of programming. 

The Department continues to work with USAID to address more effectively the needs of IDPs.  The Department also and to funds humanitarian resettlement to Israel through the United Israel Appeal, although the latter program is expected to decline.

In immediate post-conflict situations, humanitarian mine action (HMA) reduces casualties and enables refugees and IDPs to return in safety, and allows for the delivery of other types of humanitarian assistance, food, and medical services.  HMA often serves as a confidence-building measure, and in the long term, it fosters the social and economic development of mine-affected nations by promoting the health and welfare of the workforce.  The clearance of agricultural land facilitates the development of self-sufficiency in food production.  HMA opens infrastructure, allowing access to water, the rebuilding of roads, rail lines, schools, hospitals, and power plants.  Reconstruction cannot begin while mines are still present.  The adjacent chart shows that the Department intends to clear mines from an additional 20 million square meters of land during FY 2004.

Do not exceed a CMR of 1/10,000 people per day during refugee crises. 

         Prioritize appropriate resource allocation and interventions to reduce the major causes of mortality in refugee settings.

         Continue to collaborate with the Standard Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions (SMART) initiative and SPHERE partners to improve and expand data collection.

         Encourage international and NGO partner organizations to report on CMR data collected.

         Increase the number of refugee situations where data collection and reporting are conducted.

         Improve data accuracy by encouraging implementing partners to adopt standardized surveillance methods, survey tools, and data triangulation.

In humanitarian crises, children under five year of age to have weight-for-height ratios greater than or equal to 2 standard deviations from the mean (Z scores of greater than or equal to –2), or greater than 80 percent median weight-for-height, and an absence of nutritional edema.

         Prioritize appropriate resource allocation and interventions to reduce the major causes of child malnutrition in refugee settings.

         Continue to collaborate with the Standard Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Transitions (SMART) initiative and SPHERE partners to improve and expand data collection.

         Encourage international and NGO partner organizations to report on nutritional data they have collected.

         Increase data collection and reporting for refugee situations/crises.

         Improve data accuracy by encouraging implementing partners to adopt standardized surveillance methods, survey tools, and data triangulation.

As a percentage of the President’s annual allocated ceiling, 100 percent of refugees are resettled in the United States.

         Identify new refugee populations in need of resettlement.

         Actively seek/ develop new resettlement populations.

         Train assistance NGOs to identify refugees for resettlement.

         Provide appropriate resources to UNHCR to develop resettlement referrals.

         Expedite the transmission of Security Advisory Opinion for resettlement applicants.

Increase the number of donors to WFP by five, and non-U.S. contributions by 5 percent over 2003.

         The USG will work with the WFP to encourage “twinning,” a mechanism to match non-traditional donors of commodities with non-traditional donors of cash for the delivery of humanitarian assistance in food emergencies

         With the goal of halving hunger by 2015, the USG will introduce a famine initiative in the G-8 to mobilize more resources, make available more effective tools, strengthen international cooperation mechanisms and analytical approaches, and focus on shared efforts to reduce the risk of famine and to intervene quickly to prevent its worst effects.

         The USG will urge other traditional and non-traditional donors to initiate/increase cash or commodity contributions to the WFP. 

Reported landmine casualties in HDP program countries decrease by 5 percent.

         Focus resources on mine action, i.e., operational demining to locate and destroy landmines and other unexploded ordnance (UXO), to train indigenous demining groups, and to educate refugees and IDPs on how to live safely with a mine/UXO threat. 

         Use surveys to prioritize clearance operations for high impact areas.

         Coordinate mine risk education to best inform returning refugees and IDPs.

Clear mines from 230,000,000 square meters of land per year.

         Provide training for demining clearance to International standards.  Training consists of providing a demining expert to train indigenous persons to either be a member of a demining team or to train other deminers.  Deminers learn how to search for, locate and destroy mines and UXO. 

         Introduce mine detection dogs and mechanical demining to programs that rely solely on manual methods.

         Provide technical assistance for mine action operations.

Increase by four the number of program countries in sustainment or end state.

         Provide technical assistance to national mine action centers.

         Support management training for middle and senior level mine action managers.

         Support train the trainer programs in demining methods.

         Provide equipment and machinery for demining.

Complete the effort to develop a GDIN Information Facilitator/Broker Service.

         Provide 24/7 access to operational disaster information to national and sub-national authorities, NGOs, and UN agencies.

         Based on GDIN access to information, provide advice to operational NGOs to make triage decisions that would otherwise to impossible, except at great cost.