Topic 2: What is community?
The historical development of complex emergencies & peace-keeping operations
The situation of disasters and complex emergencies should ideally be assessed within the overall framework of global development, and the question needs to be asked are things actually getting better or worse?
Progress in global development can best be analysed by reading the key sections of a number of publications produced by a combination of international and UN agencies. The socio-economic data contained in tabulated format in their appendices is particularly revealing.
As complementary information, the Millennium Development Goals Report (2010) provides an overview of the progress that has been achieved since 1990 in tackling each of the eight identified Goals in the current global struggle against poverty.
The following reports are the kinds of documents you should become familiar with. We don’t expect you to read every word from cover to cover, but we do expect that you will begin to recognise the organisations and gain a sense of the nature of these texts by scanning through them.
Click on the link to the PDF for each Reading below and scan through to get a feel for the content area and perspective of each publication. Naturally there may be a later edition of each of these reports by the time you read this Topic. If you are interested please go online and source the latest editions, however the ones below will give you a good grounding in what to expect.
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Read the Millennium Development Goals 2010 |
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Read the Humanitarian Agenda 2015: Final Report - The State of the Humanitarian Enterprise |
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Watch the Tufts University on-line seminar by Peter Walker entitled ‘From Haiti to Afghanistan, and the future of humanitarian assistance’ by entering through this page: http://www.learningtimes.net/tufts/walker-recording This is a very good presentation once you get past the introductions, well worth the effort. We have made this activity optional, as you need to register on the website (it’s free) before being able to access the video. |
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Read the International Monetary Fund (IMF) World Economic Outlook. Scan through the socio-economic data contained within the appendices. |
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The United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report: Annual State of the World’s Children –Executive summary. If you want to access the full report as a free download go to: http://www.unicef.org/sowc/ |
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The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP): Annual Human Development Report: Summary. To access the full report as a free download go to: http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2010/chapters/en/ |
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