THEMATIC AREA
Cross-cutting issues in humanitarian action
Gender, environment, protection, mental health, disability... Some issues must be addressed in any humanitarian intervention. This section explains what these cross-cutting issues are, why they are a priority in modern humanitarian action and how to integrate them in practice.
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What are cross-cutting issues in humanitarian action and why do they matter?
Crises exacerbate pre-existing inequalities, destroy social support networks, degrade the environment and expose people to risks that go far beyond the immediate emergency. Integrating these issues from context analysis through to evaluation, in a way that is adapted to the approaches of each technical sector, is a condition for humanitarian response to be relevant, safe and free from additional harm.
- 1 in 5 people affected by conflicts and emergencies suffers from a mental disorder. The prevalence of depression, anxiety and PTSD is two to three times higher than in populations in stable contexts.
- The IASC intervention pyramid organises the response into four complementary levels: basic psychosocial considerations across all sectors, strengthening of community networks, focused non-specialised support, and specialised clinical care.
- Non-specialised staff, when well trained and supervised, can deliver scalable psychological interventions with good outcomes, multiplying the reach of the response.
- Mental health must be integrated from the very start of the project cycle and across all sectors, not only in dedicated MHPSS programmes.
14-minute read + 2 AI-assisted reflection questions
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- Humanitarian crises exacerbate pre-existing gender inequalities, increasing the risk of gender-based violence, reducing girls' access to education, and burdening women with additional care responsibilities without resources or protection.
- Integrating a gender lens into the project cycle means analysing differentiated needs, ensuring the participation of women and girls in design, preventing discrimination in access, and disaggregating monitoring data by sex and age.
- Transformative gender approaches seek to change structural norms of inequity, and require cultural change within humanitarian organisations themselves.
- Local women's organisations continue to receive insufficient funding and have limited meaningful participation in decision-making.
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- 80% of current humanitarian crises have environmental factors among their causes.
- Humanitarian action can damage the environment if not carefully planned: from deforestation caused by refugee camps to inadequate waste management or the carbon footprint of logistics operations.
- Frameworks and tools exist to integrate environmental considerations into every phase of the project cycle and across all sectors of intervention.
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- All humanitarian organisations, regardless of their sector, have the responsibility to integrate four basic protection principles: do no harm, ensure access to assistance, be accountable to the assisted population, and promote their participation and empowerment.
- A poorly planned intervention can generate additional risks, such as food distributions that lead to violence, refugee camps with unsafe areas for women and girls, or the absence of mechanisms to report abuses by humanitarian staff themselves.
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