What kind of events can come under this? Either they need to be large scale events or small scale as well.
Humanitarian crisis covers all those events which cause harm to the humanity...It cane be the natural disaster like floods and earth quake etc and it can also be the harms caused to humanity by the humanity... Small scale events can also be the part of humanitarian crisis but it depends on the nature of event....
Yes I am agreed with the operationalization of sahifa, but it mostly depends on researcher's intentions that what kind of angle he/she intended to measure. It could be the floods, hearthquake, bombings, massive killings, hurricanes, or anyother thing which is directly affecting humans.
Humanitarian crisis can be defined in many ways, cause can be natural or anthropogenic. The crisis can be large scale or small, WWII caused a large humanitarian crisis, Hitlers attempted extermination of the Jewish. Then we also have natural caused crisis that involves a human element the 2011 Japan earthquake, which also caused a nuclear disaster. Or we have purely natural disaster, such as the Haiti earthquake. Each of these large events created a humanitarian crisis, but can we look at much smaller events and consider them to be within the realm of a humanitarian crisis? Can we call AIDS a humanitarian crisis? It is not a single catastrophic event, yet it continues to affect humanity in a detrimental way. Thus if we look at all possible scenarios I think we would come up with a definition that would include "...an event that creates a significant negative effect on humans..."
One way of getting an operational classification is to look at horizon scanning research where "wild cards". hence a.o. crises, are a) natural b) human intentional and c) human non intentional - although I agree with Tom's thoughtful comment, i.e. irrespective of intention, does it have an effect on humanity? Look e.g. Rafael Popper at Manchester Uni, for what I'm talking about.
In a way I agree with all of the above, but I'm not sure whether that really helps us any further "to operationalize" - in other words to classify, to research, to get - shall I dream? - to a taxonomy of it all. There are two strands of thought that my help - I hope. One is to look at the emergence of the crisis/disaster for a start, that is the causes, motives and intentions (hence, man made/anthropogenic and natural, intentional and non-intentional, motivated and not motivated), then the disaster itself (the event, the actions), leading ultimately to its consequences (direct and indirect consequences, intended and unintended consequences). That pathway in a way is from deontological to teleological, from neo-Kantian to utilitarianism, with Rawls Theory of Justice possibly as a bridge. Another strand reminds me of the work of Jorg Matthes and Matthias Kohring; The content analysis of media frames: Towards improving reliability and validity. Journal of communion 58 (2008) 258 - 279. In essence it tries to operationalize frames as clusters of frame elements, and it may inspire you as another start-off point. It looks at 'problem definition' (What on the one hand, who on the other), 'causal attribution' (benefits to whom, risks to whom), 'moral evaluation (what benefits, what risks) and finally 'treatment' (i.e. judgments). Although it comes from a different tradition, i.e. 'media effects', there's an overlap with the former strand and most of the above suggested dimensions if you think about it. But obviously it doesn't simplify one's job.
I think we should not ignore that "humanitarian crisis" functions as a propaganda term in the sense of Noam Chomsky. It is, of course, possible and fully legitimate to ask for a "text book meaning" or "official meaning" as you do. But there is also that what Chomsky calls the "technical meaning" that is the actual, pragmatic meaning of the term. I would suggest that according to its technical meaning "humanitarian crisis" applies to all situations that serve as a justification for military intervention (Responsibility to protect). The humanitarian crises in Kosovo in 1999 or in Libya in 2011 that served as such a pretext do in no way number among the ten worst humanitarian crises according to a reasonable official or text book meaning.
Kind regards, Franz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmoXze-Higc
I not only agree with Franz, but would go further, in that just "naming" something a "crisis" is fraught with all sorts of problems, let alone naming something a "humanitarian crisis". There's a good book published recently by a.o. Teun De Rycker (no relation) called "Crisis and Discourse", which through some 12 case-studies demonstrates how events are earmarked/framed as crises to further other political agendas. It is especially strong on Critical Discourse Analysis (as it was compiled from that discipline), hence giving you several ways of "operationalizing" crises (in normal parlance, for I'm not too keen on a word such as "operationalizing", it provides you with methods of studying it/researching it, scientifically and critically).
Best regards,
Johan De Rycker
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