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The world is facing an alarming rise in humanitarian crises. As these crises intensify, the need for emergency humanitarian responses for immediate and life-saving activities has never been greater.The Danish Refugee Council is ready and prepared with emergency capacity to respond to humanitarian crises. To enable life-saving responses, DRC continues to adapt and evolve our thinking and mechanisms, as demonstrated through our Emergency Response Framework and capacity building of DRC staff.
DRC operates in over 40 countries, addressing urgent needs in some of the most severe humanitarian emergencies worldwide, including Afghanistan, DR Congo, Lebanon, Mali, Myanmar, oPt, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela. DRC works with local partners to enhance the impact and sustainability of emergency responses, ensuring the effectiveness and relevance of the assistance.
DRC’s objective in emergency response is that people affected by displacement have their basic human rights upheld in a safe and accountable environment.
Our effectiveness in emergencies hinges on our ability to rapidly scale up and adapt our activities in response to sudden shocks caused by political and societal upheaval, violent conflict, food insecurity, and extreme climate and weather events.
This requires ongoing learning and improvement of our organizational capacity, ensuring that we implement systematic, context-specific approaches, and better align our resources during emergency responses.
DRC is delivering life-saving humanitarian response activities in Gaza to respond to the humanitarian needs created by the conflict, and ongoing blockade.
As the situation evolves, DRC and partners will continue to adapt to emerging needs, and to reach affected people across Gaza. Priorities include:
DRC targets communities at risk of displacement before they have to leave their home due to a shock (conflict, natural disaster, etc...) and seek safer places.
DRC implements life-saving activities for displaced individuals who left their home due to a shock and are transiting to a safer place.
DRC supports individuals who have reached a safer place after being displaced from their home, and are no longer in transit.
DRC plans recovery and long-term solutions for displaced individuals when they feel safe to return to the place they left.
Within this challenging humanitarian context, DRC also recognises the need to work differently and act earlier, by forecasting the occurrence and humanitarian impact of climate induced disasters and conflicts/displacement - and proactively mitigate them - by applying an anticipatory approach and increasing the focus on preparedness.
This leads to an increase in the quality and effectiveness of our action, such as through emergency capacity development including scenario training for colleagues and partners, and evaluation and learning activities. Driven by innovative and accurate forecasting models and internal preparedness processes, DRC can act early to get ahead of emergencies, which can prevent humanitarian needs from arising in the first place, mitigate impact and be more prepared when the shock materialises.
DRC is a leading actor in the field of developing predictive models for Anticipatory Action (AA) for conflict-induced displacement, in addition to displacement induced by climate shocks. Anticipatory Action programming is founded on operational plans – Anticipatory Action Plans - produced by DRC in collaboration with affected communities, local authorities and in-country partners.
These plans outline the Anticipatory Actions that will be taken and pre-allocated resources that will be disbursed when a specific hazard is forecasted to impact communities. These plans include pre-agreed early warning indicators that forecast when a hazard, of a pre-defined magnitude and scale, is likely to occur in the future, with precise thresholds for when to act based on levels of the different indicators at pre-defined lead times, a hierarchy or order of the indicators, how the levels on the indicators will be monitored and the decision-making process when triggers have been met to activate actions.
DRC works in six emergency sectors:
The six sectors in emergencies all integrate climate, environment, and inclusion (age, gender, diversity) priorities.
Following an emergency declaration, DRC rapidly moves to provide relevant, timely, quality humanitarian assistance to save lives, safeguard dignity, and alleviate immediate suffering in displacement-affected communities.
This includes urgent interventions to protect and restore displaced peoples’ existing livelihoods-related food and income sources, through provision of appropriate livelihood inputs and technical support.
DRC continuously aims to increase the speed at which we respond to emergencies and expand the scope and impact of our emergency work, including enhancing our anticipatory action approach.
DRC achieves this through expanding its flexible funding for rapid and quality responses to sudden emergencies and anticipatory action and strengthening DRC Emergency Response Surge Team (EMPACT).
The Global Emergency Response Fund (GERF) is intended to kick-start emergency interventions addressing unforeseen shocks and emergencies and ensuring life-saving needs are met.
Emergency funds are allocated on an ad hoc basis and DRC ensures their proper allocation, prompt disbursement, and transparent reporting.
EMPACT is a specialized global team within DRC, established in 2014, and comprised of highly skilled senior emergency staff. The team is prepared for rapid deployment within 48 hours to areas where humanitarian needs are most pressing. EMPACT staff also receive intensive emergency response training.
