30/05/14

Q&A: Fresh challenges for refugee relief

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Copyright: UN Photo/John Isaac

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Humanitarian organisations have helped to eradicate many of the killer diseases of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But now their role must change.
 
Ongoing conflicts have turned the refugee emergency into a chronic problem, which causes political instability as well as new health issues.
 
And now climate change and shifting trends in poverty look to be the next sources of conflict-based refugee flows, says Jennifer Leaning, director of the FXB Center for Health & Human Rights at Harvard University in the United States.
 
In this interview, she discusses current methods of humanitarian response to crisis, how they arose, why new crises are so challenging and possible solutions.