Identifying and understanding the limits to available policy instruments

The problems arising in humanitarian emergencies reflect fundamental social, economic and political dislocations, with multiple causes and effects. Most emergencies have been years in the making and will persist in changing ways for many years. Experience suggests that one common error in such situations is that policy makers are over-ambitious in their planning. Naive commitments to a particular “solution” may shape policy objectives without real consideration of the attainability of this solution, or the effects of policies being adopted in the meantime. The lack of realism and critical reflection might have significant impacts.

Relief programs often fail to recognize survival strategies, resulting in the waste of precious resources and duplicating or damaging people’s own efforts. Effective programs use ethical criteria to guide selection of key policy thrusts. Such ethical criteria include the importance ascribed to different age and sex categories and social groups within the population, consideration of short- versus long-term outcomes, and physiological versus socio-economic and psycho-social well-being. In addition, professional judgments determine how limited time and resources can best be directed to achieve desired outcomes.