Humanitarian Responses to Complex Displacement Crises

Abstract

Disasters, conflict, and climate change increasingly intersect, forcing communities to flee and trapping them in cycles of displacement. Yet, humanitarian responses remain fragmented, often addressing displacement crises in isolation. This thesis aims to advance knowledge of how the humanitarian system is responding to complex displacement driven by the converging influences of climate and conflict. It begins with a narrative literature review that synthesises evidence on the interaction between commonly recognised causes of displacement. Drawing upon grey literature, the review examines how humanitarian actors categorise displacement contexts. The literature review is complemented with 32 semi-structured interviews with humanitarian practitioners in the Philippines to examine how the humanitarian community navigates complex displacement in practice. A comparative case study then digs deeper to analyse the difference in data reporting between a complex displacement case (involving both disaster and conflict) and single-event displacement case (involving disaster only). To capture the nuances of overlapping triggers, this thesis operationalises the term “complex displacement”, as situations in which communities are forced to flee amid the complex interaction of climate change, disasters, and conflict. The findings reveal two dichotomies in how organisations frame displacement contexts. It further demonstrates that practitioners rely on trigger-based, temporal, spatial, and precedent-based classifications of displacement contexts. The decision of organisations to respond (or not) is found to hinge on four major factors – government requests, operational presence, security, and logistics. Using time-series and spatial analysis, disparities in both the frequency and the temporal and spatial coverage of displacement reporting are identified. This thesis contributes to ongoing efforts to develop more holistic approaches towards responding to complex displacement crises.