Urban violence and humanitarian action in Medellin - Humanitarian Action in Situations Other than War Discussion Paper 5

This paper tests the intensity and organization of violence in the case of Medellin. It finds that while not experiencing outright warefare, Medellin confronts a complex form of intense and disorganized violence. For one, the city exhibits different forms of lethal and non-lethal violence that has humanitarian implications for the lives and livelihoods of specific segments of the population. At the same time, the large number of armed actors together with their disoragnized structures and their complex relationships are dynamics and, consequwntly, highly volitile. Due to the extreme levels of violence in Medellin, there is also a high demand for humanitarian services that agnecies such as the ICRC are able to provide. But as the paper shows, delivering such services is much more complicated than in more "traditional" settings.

This paper offers a number of conceptual and practicalinsights for humanitrarian agencies that are considering action in urban spaces.