Security in Urban and Densely Populated Environments | GISF at HNPW

Summary

In recent years, tens of millions of people have been affected by humanitarian crises in urban settings across the globe, including Marawi, Aleppo and Port-au-Prince. However, unique security risks can be a significant constraint on access to these populations.  

This session builds off a recent paper exploring this issue, ‘Good Practices, lessons learned, and the unique challenges affecting security risk management in urban humanitarian responses.’ The paper was published by the Global Interagency Security Forum in January 2024.  

This session will unpack some of the key contextual elements humanitarians encounter in urban settings and the security risk management (SRM) implications of these dynamics, such as high population density, diverse populations, the prevalence of urban violence and crime and intense political activity. It will also offer an opportunity to share ideas on new approaches to account for the ‘urbanisation’ trend, including the need to increase sector dialogue on urban SRM approaches, further support urban security collaboration, and adapt acceptance approaches to meet the specific challenges. 

Speakers

• Rob Grace, Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boston University
• Shashwat Saraf, Regional Emergency Director – East Africa at International Rescue Committee (IRC).
• Roman Antoni Cioma, Security Specialist – Ukraine at UN Women

Steps to register to join a HNPW session:

1. Click the link above and follow instructions to register

Or

1. Log in (or create an account) on the HNPW homepage;
2. Select ‘Event Programme‘ on the navigation toolbar, where you can view the full HNPW event programme;
3. To find any GISF event, you need to find ‘Priority Topics‘ in the filter selection on the left-hand side of the screen;
4. Under ‘Priority Topics’ please select ‘Humanitarian Security’– this will filter to show you any registered GISF event;
5. To register your attendance for any event, please select ‘register‘ just to the left-hand of the session title;
6. You will have the option to register, either face to face or virtually depending on the session; bookmark the event; or cancel your registration;
7. When you select register, the ‘register’ button will change to ‘registered‘, and you will receive a confirmation email from ‘no-reply@un.org’. 

If you have any questions on registration, please reach out to info@gisf.ngo.

To find out more about the Humanitarian Partnerships and Network Week (HNPW) and to see our other planned sessions please click here.