Containing Systemic Crisis: The Regionalization of Welfare and Security Policy

The aim of this chapter is to explore the West’s humanitarian response to what the UN calls ‘complex emergencies’. That is, protracted and often conflict-related political crises usually involving large-scale population displacement, non-natural death and social disruption. Moreover, in relation to UN and other relief agencies, a system-wide response of varying degrees of integration and depth is implied. In a few places, military forces have played a supporting role. Recent events in Bosnia, Angola, Sudan, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and so on, are typical of so-called complex emergencies.