An acute crisis is one of three displacement scenarios presented in DRC’s response framework. In the acute crisis displacement scenario people’s lives and dignity are at risk. The set of actions that DRC undertakes to save lives, support dignity and access to basic rights for people and communities affected by forced displacement during the acute crisis is what we classify as our Emergency Response.
When an acute crisis hits it severely affects the operational context. Whether we are faced with a sudden onset crisis or a chronic crisis flaring up, your preparedness planning should have helped you some of the way and hopefully you and your in-country colleagues have seen the signs and taken steps to respond, while relaying an early warning to your DRC colleagues in the RO and HQ. Or maybe the crisis has happened in a country where DRC is not yet present, but where we could potentially start up a new operation.
It is likely that the affected DRC operation is already in “emergency mode” and that you or other humanitarian actors have the capacity and ability to scale up the response to meet the new needs. Nonetheless it remains essential for us to understand the nature and scope of the crisis as well as the CO and RO capacity to respond. This will enable our Executive Management Team to make a qualified decision on the most appropriate response modality: ranging from the default country-led model with ad hoc organizational surge support to the fully fledged Corporate Emergency declaration which obliges the entire organization to support the emergency response.
This Crisis section and the two sub-sections on Emergency Response Modalities and Decision Making on Response Modality provide you with the tools and guidance to understand the different emergency response modalities available in DRC and the criteria underpinning the decision making on modality choice. Linked to this you will also see what is expected of stakeholders at different levels in the organization during a crisis and what type of surge support is available.