Integrated Solutions for Stressed Populations

Effective strategies for supporting stressed populations must consider short-term and long-term situations (from multi-week disaster relief to multi-year refugee camps), in domestic and foreign venues, with or without military involvement. In some cases, such as disasters, responses must be rapid and flexible. In other cases, such as capacity building and stability operations, solutions need to be implemented systematically in the near and long term. Strategies in nearly all of these cases should be “bottom-up,” focusing on the needs of the stressed population rather than the interests of aid providers, and they should link, where possible, to “top-down” frameworks. Solutions must be sustainable by those who will have to live with them.