Emergencies, Displacement, and Refugees

Emergency response is in our DNA. Whether it’s a pandemic, a natural disaster, or a refugee crisis, we’re ready to deliver assistance.

Emergencies, Displacement, and Refugees

Emergency response is in our DNA. Whether it’s a pandemic, a natural disaster, or a refugee crisis, we’re ready to deliver assistance.

Concern’s values were forged in the fires and famine of Nigeria during the Biafran War over 50 years ago. We respond rapidly while ensuring our actions are guided by local priorities, and our work doesn’t end when the news cameras and first responders have moved on.

Humanitarian Emergency and Refugees Statistics: 11.5 million Syrians require humanitarian assistance due to the Syrian Civil War. 19.6 million people in DRC require humanitarian assistance—a 60% increase from last year. 1.1 million Rohingya refugees live in makeshift camps in Bangladesh. 82% the expected increase in hunger and malnutrition due to COVID-19.

An unprecedented 79.5 million people around the world have been forced to leave their homes, with causes ranging from natural disasters to conflict; famine to health crises. This includes more than 26 million refugees living in host communities abroad, half of whom are under 18.

When an emergency strikes, we seek out the most vulnerable and hardest-to-reach communities to meet their immediate needs, and work with them to design innovative, fast, and effective responses. We stay with them to help rebuild their lives and to ensure that they are more able to cope with future crises.

How We Do It

Rapid Response

Disaster Risk Reduction

Community Resilience

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Rapid Response

One of the main objectives of our emergency programming is to respond rapidly to emergencies in order to save lives and reduce suffering.

For example, by March 2017 drought and conflict had left nearly 23 million people in South Sudan, Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. We expanded our emergency response in these countries to directly assist 1.5 million people in the most vulnerable communities.

In Bangladesh, our rapid scale-up during the influx of an estimated 671,000 Rohingya refugees fleeing conflict in Myanmar demonstrated the flexibility and agility of our systems in coping with the sudden arrival of an unprecedented number of refugees. In Cox’s Bazar district, we screened over 61,000 children under five years old for malnutrition, and provided therapeutic feeding for around 2,700 severely malnourished children. We also provided health, nutrition and counseling services to over 13,000 women.

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Disaster Risk Reduction

Disaster risk reduction is central to our work in building community resilience when emergencies hit. After the immediate priorities are addressed, we work with communities to systematically identify, analyze, and reduce the risks of future emergencies or disasters. Our teams work to reduce the impact of natural disasters, as well as the human and environmental factors that trigger them.

Risk is a fundamental element that can force people into poverty and keep the cycle hard to break. All of the communities that we work with are subject to differing degrees of disaster risk, so therefore all of our programs incorporate disaster risk reduction.

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Community Resilience

Part of our humanitarian work aims to help communities withstand emergencies and to help them become less vulnerable to future problems. This is particularly important as most regions we work in experience frequent natural disasters or ongoing political instability.

We position ourselves in some of the most vulnerable places in the world so that we are there before disaster strikes. We are able to detect when a situation is deteriorating and respond with tailored interventions. We help to equip families with the skills and tools to feed and support themselves sustainably without resorting to negative coping strategies, such as selling essential assets, migrating for work, or child labor.

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Our Impact

Concern Worldwide impact statistics for emergency response programs.

And that’s just in one year.

For every dollar donated to Concern, $0.93 goes directly into our life-saving programs in 23 of the world’s most vulnerable countries. Your tax-deductible gift makes you part of a vital community that enables us to reach over 11 million people each year with lifesaving emergency response.

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Current Emergency Responses

Syrian Conflict

Rohingya Crisis

COVID-19

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Syrian Conflict

Since early 2011, the Syrian conflict has resulted in enormous suffering for millions of people, uprooting an estimated 11.5 million Syrians (nearly half of the estimated pre-war population). Of the displaced Syrians, 5.5 million are living as refugees in neighboring countries — namely Turkey (3.6 million), Lebanon (nearly 1.5 million), and Jordan (1.3 million).

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Rohingya Crisis

Since outbreaks of violence in Rakhine state, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) in 2017, over 700,000 Rohingya have fled the country, crossing the border to Bangladesh. Many of them have settled in informal camps in the Cox’s Bazar area, in Bangladesh’s southeast. The number of refugees in the area has swelled to nearly 900,000. The UN estimates that more than 60% of them are children. Many Rohingya arrived in the camps injured, wounded from the fighting and violence. Few brought more than the clothes on their backs. In the intervening time they have had to cope with disease, malnutrition, flooding, and COVID-19.

On March 22nd, 2021, a huge fire ripped through one of the many camps in the area, leaving at least 15 people dead and 400 missing. As many as 10,000 families lost their shelter and possessions. A massive effort is under way to ensure that they are supported with food, water, hygiene facilities and temporary shelter. Concern is at the heart of that response.

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COVID-19

COVID-19 threatens to reverse decades of hard-won development and progress to ending poverty and hunger. For Concern Worldwide, this is unacceptable. We’re in the communities that will be hardest-hit by this pandemic, and over 5 decades of experience have given us the knowledge and resources required to fight it.

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Our Humanitarian Mandate

All of the work that we carry out is guided by a series of codes and policies to which our teams strictly adhere. Concern’s codes and policies include the following standards:

The Core Humanitarian Standard

The Core Humanitarian Standard on Quality and Accountability (CHS) is an internationally-recognized standard of nine commitments. Concern Worldwide adheres to the CHS to improve the quality and effectiveness of our work.

The UN Principles of Humanitarian Aid

Originally set out by the United Nations General Assembly, the four principles of humanitarian aid are Humanity, Impartiality, Neutrality, and Independence.

The UN Principles of Humanitarian Aid

Originally set out by the United Nations General Assembly, the four principles of humanitarian aid are Humanity, Impartiality, Neutrality, and Independence.

The Disaster Relief Code of Conduct

Prepared by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent and the ICRC, the Disaster Relief Code of Conduct ensures that we maintain a high standard of behavior, effectiveness, and impact when responding to a disaster.

The Dóchas Code of Conduct

The Dóchas Code of Conduct ensures that we are accurately and fairly representing the people and communities we serve in all of our imagery and messaging.

Emergencies, Displacement, and Refugees

Emergencies, Displacement, and Refugees