Humanitarian Risk Profile Guidance Note - Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs Overview 2015

Introduction

This supplementary guidance note provides additional information on the humanitarian risk profile and analysis approach of the 2015 Afghanistan Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO) and elaborates on the results and implications for humanitarian programming. The humanitarian risk profile is a planning tool to help assess the potential changes in risk based on recent historical events and identify possible escalations in severity. Its purpose is to provide a forward perspective on humanitarian issues and help to frame the discussion on emergency preparedness in order to enhance response capacities.

The Afghanistan context is complex and dynamic. In an effort to avoid the problems associated with an overly complicated and purely hypothetical scenario planning process, the risk profile focuses on existing and foreseeable risks to the population. The risk profile only concerns itself with the most likely scenario, which is a continued deterioration of the humanitarian situation. Hence, the objective of this analysis is to enumerate the possible escalation of existing risks. It uses recent data to provide a provincial view of risks caused by conflict incidents, civilian casualties, conflict displacement, drought, and disease outbreaks, and draws attention to provinces that may be more susceptible to a decline in the humanitarian situation. The three key elements to the humanitarian risk profile are as follows:

1. The humanitarian risk register was developed using the IASC guidance on inter-agency Emergency Response Preparedness, which sets out the likely emergency risk events and the forecasted severity of those risks.

2. The existing relative risk of adverse events highlights the provinces experiencing the highest level of existing risk, such as conflict and displacement, based on a selection of proxy indicators.

3. The possible escalation of existing risk provides a forward look based on the forecasted severity of the emergency risk events and the existing relative risk profile.