Social Sustainability
Protracted Crisis
Definition
A protracted crisis is a context in which a significant proportion of the population is acutely vulnerable to hunger over an extended period, as a result of combined causes — recurrent natural disasters, conflict, insecurity, weak governance and livelihood collapse. The FAO's formal criteria combine duration of crisis, share of humanitarian assistance, and prevalence of undernourishment.
References
Overview
How it is used
The category is used by FAO, WFP and the OECD in allocating assistance, designing resilience programmes and reporting on the state of food insecurity; countries in protracted crisis account for a large share of global hunger.
Why it matters
Most of the world's acutely hungry people live in protracted crises; meeting food security goals depends on approaches built for persistence, not just emergency response.