Editorial: The urbanization of humanitarian crises

From “natural disasters” causing large-scale destruction, to slow-onset crises such as droughts, through to conflict and persecution, the number of people around the world needing humanitarian assistance is growing – and increasingly, they are found in urban contexts. This paper, which also serves as an introduction to this special issue of Environment and Urbanization on urban humanitarian response, highlights why there is a pressing need for the humanitarian sector to adapt its crisis response to urban settings, and for urban actors to be better prepared to deal with crises, whether chronic or acute. The world currently has higher numbers of forcibly displaced populations than ever before. The 2017 Global Trends report of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) counted 65.6 million people forcibly displaced globally in 2016, of whom 10.3 million were newly displaced that year. Of this total, 40.3 million are internally displaced, remaining within their country’s boundaries, with the remainder being refugees and asylum seekers. Not only is the number of displaced people growing, but this displacement is also increasingly protracted: the average duration of refugee displacement is now estimated to be 26 years. Increasingly, the proportion of displaced people moving to urban areas is growing – in 2016, 60 per cent of refugees were living in urban areas. At the same time, in a world where more than 50 per cent of the population lives in urban areas, the effect of disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons is increasingly going to be felt by urban populations. For humanitarian agencies, which typically provide emergency response, there are particular challenges to operating in an urban context, as compared to a more traditional camp setting.