Today’s global challenges continue to grow. We currently have five ongoing emergencies ranked at the highest level of operational complexity and urgency in Iraq, Nigeria, South Sudan, in the Syria region and Yemen. While the majority of these are conflict emergencies, the frequency of natural disasters is also on the rise – with Cyclone Winston hitting Fiji in February 2016 and Hurricane Matthew striking Haiti last October. The need to strengthen preparedness and resilience is becoming more and more critical.
On behalf of the entire humanitarian community, participants at the launch of the UN’s One Humanity: Shared Responsibility report at the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) in 2016 called for a commitment to empower affected people as the driving force of humanitarian response. The need for a unified approach in crises is needed now more than ever before. This ties in directly with the mandate of the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC): to ensure that all those responding to humanitarian emergencies - including affected communities - have access to vital communications services.