The severity and complexity of current and ongoing humanitarian crises necessitate the need to understand and harness this connectivity to facilitate sustainable and long-term solutions, notes Kate Moran of the Center for International Private Enterprise,* an international NGO that works to strengthen democracy and promote market-oriented economic reform. Today, we as an international community are facing some of the greatest challenges the world has seen in recent memory, she writes for Huffington Post:
The worst refugee crisis since World War II now counts more than 50 million worldwide and as of June 2015, one in every 122 people had been displaced by war, violence, or persecution. In Syria alone, there are upwards of 7.6 million internally displaced persons.
As globalization increases, so too does the capacity of states to impact international economic, political and development systems. Similarly, as conflicts in so-called fragile states increase in complexity, the need for a robust and globally inclusive humanitarian response to combat new challenges is augmented. This is because, more than ever before, globalization is enabling conflicts and their destabilizing consequences to be “exported” in the form of economic instability and political unrest.
“Globalization, itself a source of transformative change, necessitates the implementation of a relief strategy that is equally transformative,” she contends. “By capitalizing on our increased connectivity, we can best address the increasingly complex humanitarian challenges we face.”
*A core institute of the National Endowment for Democracy, the Washington-based democracy assistance NGO.
