The word resilience means everything to everyone. It is a new buzzword of a floundering aid system, pushed by donors increasingly looking for cost effectiveness and a way to marry all components of aid to a process of state building.
Over the past 10 years, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has progressively seen a reduced capacity amongst the aid community to respond to emergencies.
Recently we have been forced to invest more and more in our own capacity to do water and sanitation in emergencies – something that previously would have been handled by other organisations rapidly responding and working alongside MSF.
However, we increasingly find ourselves alone in some of the biggest humanitarian crises – while aid agencies sit on the peripheries talking about building resilience, but doing nothing.
In a review of the concept of resilience done by MSF – the following was used as a working definition: “Resilience of a particular system (household, community) includes: Capacity to anticipate and prepare for a shock or stress; Capacity to absorb, accommodate stress or destructive forces through resistance or adaptation; Capacity to manage, or maintain certain basic functions and structures, during disastrous events; Capacity to recover or ‘bounce back’ after a shock or stress (in a timely and efficient manner).”
