This brief summarizes actions that program planners and implementers should take to minimize the impact that emergencies have on the lives of young children and their families.

In the weeks after the December 2004 tsunami, survivors in devastated Aceh province, Indonesia, who were made homeless by the waves, found themselves in often crowded living conditions that put them at an increased risk for many kinds of infectious disease. The IRC responded immediately with emergency medical care and water and sanitation programs that dramatically reduced the potential for mass outbreaks. 

Following the release of the IRC’s Emergency Watchlist 2024 in December last year, a list of 20 countries most at risk of humanitarian deterioration where Sudan was ranked number 1, the IRC has produced a mid-year Sudan Crisis Alert Report to show the trajectory of the world’s worst displacement crisis, as an update to the Watchlist report. Read our report here.

The MHM in emergencies mini-toolkit in Arabic.

The ongoing conflict has devastated the civilian population of Gaza.

The IRC’s 2022 Watchlist of countries at risk of deepening humanitarian crisis reveals a world in which the systems set up to prevent human suffering are broken.

Each year, the IRC lists the countries at greatest risk of worsening humanitarian crisis over the coming year.