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jfverdugo edited this page Mar 30, 2023 · 18 revisions

Framework

Objective of the tool

A2SIT is a tool made for facilitating the building of a composite index. The name derives from the next components:

  • A2: administrative level 2. The tool aims to measure the severity at the maximum of geographical disaggregation. The choice of that administrative level follows the idea of collecting data that measures the closest to the reality of communities. The criteria for choosing an administrative level is the data availability that national statistics agencies use.
  • Severity Index Tool: the A2SIT aims to measure the severity of conditions that need UNHCR’s intervention. This severity is determined by the conditions of the territory, potential hazards, and the presence of the people we serve.

The index objective is to be a tool for analyzing relevant data for targeting territories for humanitarian aid, specifically in the context of UNHCR’s mandate. Prioritization of a territory can be difficult due to the heterogeneity of conditions present in a territory. The index aims to work with data to comprehensively present many variables that can orient humanitarian intervention.

The Global Compact on Refugees recognizes the need to address the specific needs of forcibly displaced people, the root causes of forced displacement, and the needs of host-communities, especially development challenges posed by large human mobility presence (United Nations, 2018). The index has been built with four dimensions to account for all the elements needed for a humanitarian intervention strategy:

  • Vulnerability
  • Threats
  • Response capacity
  • Human mobility

Vulnerability

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR, n.d.b) defines vulnerability as “The conditions determined by physical, social, economic and environmental factors or processes which increase the susceptibility of an individual, a community, assets or systems to the impacts of hazards”.

Vulnerable communities, households, and individuals cannot withstand hazards and are more likely to rely on displacement, leading to a decrease in their well-being. On the contrary, resilient communities, households, and individuals can absorb the shock of a hazard and recover easily. Even if these resilient units rely on displacement, they can quickly find a solution without losing their physical, financial, and social resources (Pinto, Attwood, Birkeland & Solheim, 2014).

The areas given to this dimension are as follows:

  • Socioeconomic: It includes general living conditions of a territory, like the state of the economy (GDP, unemployment, etc.); the habitability of houses; the access to adequate food intake; and public services. Only electricity and water services are incorporated into the public services categories because other services are included in the response capacity dimension.
  • Vulnerable groups: groups in society suffer from discriminatory structures and institutions. Usually, these characteristics have a historical origin in institutions like slavery that may have ended but still have a negative legacy in everyday life (UN, n.d.). This area has two categories: the presence of vulnerable groups (indigenous people, LGBTQI+, etc.) and exclusion patterns (like discrimination from public services).

Threats

The general definition of a threat is a recurrent phenomenon that may cause damage at the community, household, or individual level (UNDRR, n.d.). The threats included in the A2SIT are the ones considered as root causes of forced displacement: armed conflict, generalized violence, violation of human rights, and natural or human-made disasters (UNHCR, n.d.).

It’s important to emphasize that the A2SIT is a tool for building an index of UNHCR interest. Therefore, the selection of threats must be in accordance with the Agency’s mandate.

The areas assigned to the threats dimension are as follows:

  • Human-made: This covers every threat people can suffer in a territory driven by human behavior. This area covers violence in all forms, from everyday life violence (theft, assassination, etc.) to large-scale violence (wars, armed conflict, etc.).
  • Natural-made: Includes every disruption of the functioning of a community due to a natural event like earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc.

Response capacity

The capacity of a community to endure hazards depends significantly on its community organization and the availability of public services. In the academic literature about vulnerability, response capacity is commonly defined in the context of natural or human-made disasters (Dunford, et al., 2015). Instead, the A2SIT response capacity is considered in the context of human-forced displacement. Therefore, response capacity is measured as preparedness for high-impact disasters (like natural disasters or armed conflicts) and daily life hazards (common violence as an example) that can lead to forced displacement.

Categories:

  • Emergency readiness: It covers all the resources available to reduce the harm a hazard could cause in a community. It is expected to include variables on public emergency resources such as shelters and humanitarian access.
  • Institutional capacity: This area is like the emergency readiness area but covers all the already installed public services the government has that aren’t necessarily narrowed to emergency response. Institutional capacity is divided into the following services: judicial, healthcare, community, and education.

Human mobility

The term human mobility “refers to all aspects of the movement of people: human mobility is understood to encompass involuntary internal and cross-border displacement of populations, voluntary internal and cross-border migration and planned and consented relocation.” (UNFCCC, 2015, p.2). Leaving the habitual place of residence can be a response to the multiple threats present in the territory. Human mobility can be at the community level (a whole community moves because of a natural disaster or war), household level, or individual level.

UNHCR’s core mandate is to provide international protection and humanitarian assistance for people that has been forcibly displaced from their homes. The A2SIT takes this into account and assigns a whole dimension to measure the presence of human mobility in a territory where the presence of people UNHCR serves should be included.

These are the areas included in the human mobility dimension:

  • Forced displacement: it includes individuals and communities that have been forced to flee their places of habitual residence because of events like armed conflicts, generalized violence, and others (GPC Working Group, 2008). This area should include data on refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons, and stateless people.
  • Mixed movements: It refers to a situation in which several people travel together using the same routes and means of transport but for different reasons (UNHCR, n.d.). In this area, data on people transiting and returnees should be included.

Interrelation between dimensions

In the A2SIT, a territory is seen as an interrelationship between the living conditions (vulnerability dimension) and the availability of public resources (response capacity dimension). This system receives a hazard (threat dimension) as input and, depending on the state of the territory, it will return the output as human mobilization. Based on academic literature (Pinto et al., 2014 and Dunford et al., 2015), the underline premise of the A2SIT is that territories with high impact of hazards and poor conditions will have individuals and groups in mobility that may have international protection needs.

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A limitation that should be remembered is that the A2SIT is not a predictive model of human mobilization with international protection needs. It’s a tool that joints variables directly related to what UNHCR should account for targeting territories with humanitarian aid.

Bibliography

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