Where we work
We provide assistance in emergencies where needs are often the most acute, and where community resilience may be at its most fragile. Our country operations must ensure that they are able to provide frontline responses to new crises that may arise. We frequently work in complex, protracted crises characterized by long-term or cyclical displacement as well as recurring violence and shocks.
Our programme and advocacy work contributes to and promotes durable solutions for displacement. We also aim to prevent further displacement. Through this spectrum of work, we often bridge the humanitarian-development divide.
The contexts where we work are generally highly volatile, and we often see the different phases of displacement overlap. As such, programme responses developed in an emergency phase must also transition towards the greater beneficiary, community and local government engagement, reinforcing community preparedness and resilience.
The people we assist
Our target group, as mandated in our mission, is “populations or people affected by crisis”. Displaced people often face threats to their safety and dignity, including violence, coercion, exploitation and deprivation, as well as restrictions on their access to services, assistance, livelihoods and other basic rights. For HRO, populations and people affected by displacement include: IDPs, refugees, returnees, people at risk of displacement and people who are unable to flee (whether they are being obstructed or because they lack the means or ability to do so). Given the important role that host communities have in supporting displaced people and in contributing to durable solutions, we also include members of host communities in our programmes. This aligns with our conflict sensitive approach and our efforts to understand and mitigate the potentially negative effects of our interventions and programmes on communities, markets and the environment. In line with enhancing integration among refugees or IDPs and the host communities, HRO also targeted the host communities’ members
HRO primarily works in situations of armed conflict, providing assistance, protection and concrete solutions. In some countries where we operate, we can expand our target group to include people affected by displacement from disasters caused by natural hazards (previously called natural disasters), adverse effects of climate change and generalized violence, and vulnerable migrants. In these contexts, we assess where our displacement expertise and competencies add value, and then engage accordingly. Wherever we are present, HRO prioritizes reaching hard to access populations.