Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T19:50:49.975Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Reversing the spiral of vulnerability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2010

Extract

What can be done to counter the innumerable attacks on human dignity? This vexing question is today a global issue. Over the past 75 years — ever since the founding of the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation — it has given rise to increasing concern. Indeed, the history of our century, with its seemingly endless succession of wars and economic crises, has furnished constant reminders of its urgency. The problem is currently taking on a new dimension in many States and international organizations, and it is in this context that “improving the situation of the most vulnerable”, the strategic aim of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, should be situated.

Type
I. The concept of vulnerability — Identifying vulnerable communities
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Improving the situation of the most vulnerable — Strategic Work Plan for the Nineties, revised by the General Assembly at its IXth Session, Birmingham, 25–28 10 1993, p.5.Google Scholar

2 Perroux, François, L'économie du XXe siècle, PUF, Paris, 1964, p. 370.Google Scholar

3 World Bank, Report on World Development, 1980, World Bank, Washington 1980, p. 38.Google Scholar

4 For the Federation, the most vulnerable are “those at great risk from situations that threaten their survival or their capacity to live with a minimum of social and economic security and human dignity”. op. cit., note 1 above, p.7.

5 World Bank, World Development Report 1990, World Bank, Washington, 1990, p. 32.Google Scholar

6 These data come from a study conducted in 1989 by the Overseas Development Council, Washington, cited by UNICEF in: The state of the world's children, 1994, UNICEF, New York, p.33.Google Scholar

7 UNICEF, Adjustment with a human face, published under the direction of G. A. Cornia, R. Jolly, F. Stewart, Economica, Paris, 1987, 372 pp.Google Scholar

8 UNICEF, Central and Eastern Europe in Transition, Public Policy and Social Conditions, Regional Monitoring Report No. I, 11 1993 Google Scholar, UNICEF, International Child Development Centre, Florence, 89 pp.

9 These trends are confirmed by some studies conducted by the European Economic Commission (see Collette, Jean-Michel, “Perspectives économiques en Europe centrale et orientale” (economic prospects in Central and Eastern Europe), in Futuribles, No. 183, 12 1993, pp. 27 – 42.Google Scholar

10 UNICEF (1993), op.cit., p.11.Google Scholar

11 UNICEF (1993), op.cit., p.25.Google Scholar

12 UNDP, Human Development Report 1993, Economica, Paris, 1993, p. 13.Google Scholar