Challenges Faced by Humanitarian agency in Emergency Response in Urban areas: Lessons from Haiti and Chile
it has been found the local political leaders participate in relief distribution campaign in urban areas rather than remote rural areas to achieve their political strength among the people. And it disturbs the agencies that responsible for relief distribution and as well the general people who all are waiting long time for arrival of the political leader in distribution point.
5.2 Frequent Displacement in Urban areas For the survival, the people who all are living in slums or shanty towns they frequently migrated themselves within the periphery of the same urban areas. But it creates difficulties for the humanitarian agencies for their estimation and analyses of damage assessment of a particular place identifying the vulnerable groups in the society. The frequent displacement of vulnerable groups each and every year makes difficult to make a sound disaster management plan as well as during in emergency response phase it makes a crisis in urban areas.
5.3 Social cohesion The urban areas have got heterogeneous community in the urban areas and this community has got lack of cohesiveness and co-operation among them. Even they have lack of trust and hostile attitude some times. So this community creates more obstacles during disaster management. Their demands are varied among the same community because of their mixed culture and different lifestyle. The humanitarian agencies may face lot of difficulties to fulfill their all demands.
5.4 Psychological perceptive In the rural areas the community is almost same in pattern, regarding their culture, food pattern and their belief. In the rural areas the living community’s culture generally represents their local culture. For that reason In particular rural area the living community represents similar kind of psychological expression. In case of urban areas, people having different type of cultures and life patterns. It has been found in a particular urban area there may be a number of people or communities from different rural areas having different type of cultures. So it’s generated different type of demands and psychological effects. During disaster these different types of people from different cultures may expose different type of psychological expression or post disaster traumas which may affect the disaster management of the urban areas.
5.5 Security of the Humanitarian agencies The security part of the humanitarian agencies is more difficult especially while they are relief distributing in slums or the shanty towns. Because people from this locality are more violent and crime ridden than rural areas. The recent looting and violence in Haiti and Chile after the earthquake are the best example of that.
5.6 Looting after earhtquake Looting was the common and worst situation in urban areas after any disaster specially earthquake and national power grid failure for long time. This looting was the most uncommon and criminal attitude of a society.Social psychologists accept that looting is criminal behaviour, and that it is natural when the forces of law and order disappear.They distinguish different types of looting, including:
(i) Looting of goods needed for survival
(ii) Opportunistic theft of good such as TV sets
(iii) Collective action, conditioned by the political environment
Dr. Jason Nier, an expert in social psychology and professor at Connecticut College, explains this behavior with a theory he calls the “psychology of looting.”
This theory is based in part on the phenomenon of “group dynamics”. People will do things as part of a group that they would never deem appropriate on their own, for example stealing and breaking into stores and private homes. Another related concept is “deindividuation,” which is the concept that people can regress into a kind of Orwellian “groupthink,” allowing them to behave in ways that violate social norms. Being part of a group can diminish feelings of personal responsibility and potentially bring out our basest human instincts. Most compassionate people are likely to forgive the looting of basic necessities like water, food and clothing because sometimes the government cannot do enough fast enough to aid its citizens. But it is the theft of luxury items that causes the most concern and forces the realization that anarchy might be just one natural disaster away.
5.7 Violence and crime Rapid migration towards urban areas turned the urbanization as an uncontrolled process and breeds violence and crime in urban areas. According to Wayne Cornelius, three propositions were central:
(1) Rural-urban migration breeds economic frustration among migrant populations. The rapid influx of migrants cannot be