|
To assess potential humanitarian impacts of sanctions, a reference point must be established against which changes in humanitarian conditions can be measured. This socalled “baseline” assessment provides such a reference point for humanitarian and socioeconomic conditions around the time of the onset of sanctions.
A good baseline predicts where the focus of future assessments should be: the areas of greatest humanitarian concern will evolve over time and therefore the focus of information to be collected may also have to shift. Recent trends can only suggest future developments. Prospective, or forwardlooking, collection of information is needed to determine what is happening during the period of the assessment.
The baseline assessment represents prevailing or “unsanctioned” underlying social and humanitarian conditions. Prospective data and information can then be collected periodically during the period of sanctions. In addition to providing a presanctions reference point for humanitarian conditions, a baseline study helps to identify:
- Reliable informants and information sources, and weaknesses and gaps in existing information;
- Problems and inconsistencies among multiple information sources and begin the process of triangulation to validate data sources;
- Vulnerable groups in the society and anticipate how sanctions will exacerbate their preexisting vulnerability (see section 5.3.1 below);
- Likely areas where sensitive indicators of change in humanitarian conditions can be found;
- The existing capacity for information collection and the needs and opportunities to strengthen it;
- The frequency with which ongoing assessments should be carried out.
Baseline assessments are often undertaken as onetime “snapshots”. This approach fails to capture variations and trends in a country. If subsequent changes in humanitarian conditions point to deterioration in certain aspects of people’s lives, it may be that these indicators were experiencing a declining trend anyway. Sanctions may in fact have contributed little or nothing to the decline. For this reason, baseline assessments should include recent historical trends in humanitarian conditions in the country or region.
The baseline assessment may use indicators that are more suitable for evaluation of conditions at a given point in time, rather than indicators that may be more suitable for measuring changes in conditions (see section 4.2). The reference table of humanitarian indicators (table 7) included in annex II identifies indicators best suited to measurement of baseline conditions.
Increased exposure to risk creates vulnerability. Humanitarian vulnerability is characterized by decreased access to essential goods and services (relevant to the “4 + 4” human security subject areas) relative to the needs of the individual. Assessment of the vulnerability of population groups to changes in humanitarian conditions as a result of sanctions is critical in establishing an effective baseline and for monitoring the possible impact on these groups over time.
Women, children, disadvantaged ethnic groups, the poor, the elderly and refugees are often more vulnerable, may be discriminated against and have lower incomes. Thus they are also often less able to obtain the needed goods and services. Local custom or law can create vulnerabilities even if the income is not lower by denying the right to use funds, own property or charging members of certain groups more than others for the same services or items. Even if they receive the same level of goods as others, they may be vulnerable if they need more than others.
Humanitarian vulnerability is dependent not only on the characteristics of the individual (gender, education level, economic status) and environment (political, economic environment etc.), but also on the types of measures imposed. Different types of sanctions will affect different groups in different ways. Targeted trade sanctions, for example, may pose a hazard for employees in certain industries whereas they may have previously been considered one of the least vulnerable groups due to their income derived from employment. In short, groups that were not at risk of suffering a decline in their humanitarian status prior to sanctions may suddenly become vulnerable under sanctions.
Vulnerability must be assessed on the basis of how sanctions can place groups within the population at increased humanitarian risk by constraining their access to certain goods and services. Therefore, a priori assessment of likely vulnerabilities is essential for the understanding of the potential humanitarian implications of sanctions.
Assessment of humanitarian vulnerability requires both identification of vulnerable groups and analysis and mapping of the degree of vulnerability. One technique employed to analyse and catalogue vulnerability is the Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping (VAM) approach used by the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and other humanitarian agencies.
WFP has used Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping in the context of food security analysis, and in this application the VAM framework includes consideration of three components: availability, access and utilization (of food).32 The technique can similarly be applied to health, water and sanitation and education, the three subject areas that, together with food and nutrition, constitute the four core human security subject areas in the sanctions assessment methodology. Analysis and mapping of vulnerability can be undertaken in four steps.
First, indicators are identified in each of the subject areas of interest across three dimensions: availability, access and utilization. For this purpose, indicators can be selected from the “4 + 4” human security subject areas. An example of the indicators used by WFP for vulnerability assessment in northern Iraq is illustrated in box 4.
Second, the investigator must ensure that the “direction” of all indicators is the same: that is, ensure that a high value across all indicators represents a consistently favourable or unfavourable indicator.
Third, weighting factors are defined to rank the relative importance of the chosen indicators to overall vulnerability (for example, how important is “wheat production” compared to “income”?).
Fourth, an overall vulnerability index is calculated using the indicators and weighting factors.
In addition to these steps, the following points should be considered in identifying possible vulnerable groups:
- Women are at greater risk of malnutrition when pregnant and breastfeeding because of the increased nutritional demands that a child places on their bodies;
- Young children are at greater risk because they are more physically vulnerable to disease as well as physical stress; they require nutrients for growth that cannot be made up for later; they are less able to identify or acquire needed resources; and they need more timely access to a changing set of those goods for growth and development;
- In many countries, women have lower education and very often have lower incomes than men. Child bearing leaves them less time in the labour force and they often experience discrimination in hiring. For these reasons, they are at special risk of the possible economic impacts of sanctions. As more frequent users of public services, the deterioration of these services during economic and social crises also may affect women more severely;
- Information is a key resource in the modern world. Any group with lower educational achievement is likely to be more vulnerable to sanctions due to poorer access to good and timely information. This is commonly the case among women, rural residents and those from discriminated social groups. Radios, televisions and social networks are important means by which information is transmitted. If access to these is constrained, knowledge of how to access, acquire or use key resources may be weakened.
Qualitative methods can assist in identifying the vulnerable groups, and the reasons for their vulnerability, in a particular context. Tracing changes over time by characteristics associated with their vulnerability—by education, sex or site of residence, can help in specifying the causal model and identifying the unique impact of sanctions.
The preceding sections have identified the main elements of a baseline assessment and the techniques used for assessing vulnerability as part of that assessment. A summary checklist of actions required to make a baseline assessment is presented in box 5.
Characterization of humanitarian and socioeconomic conditions at baseline should include:
- Levels, rates of change and relative stability of key humanitarian indicators from annex II, in each of the “4 + 4” human security subject areas, over recent years;
- Factors influencing these conditions in the particular context of the country;
- Regional variations in key indicators;
- Status of humanitarian conditions among vulnerable groups;
- Role of the industries likely to be affected by sanctions;
- Alternative employment options;
- Monetary and nonmonetary contributions from various industry and service sectors to the national economy, government revenue and local society.
Comparability across assessments is enhanced when the desired information is also of interest to other users. The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) use a framework of common (across agency) indicators to assess progress towards achieving agreed development targets. This framework can provide a nucleus of indicators for conducting humanitarian assessments prior to and during sanctions. In recent years, many countries and agencies have begun to concentrate on generating this short list of key indicators using common definitions and standards.
Box 6 lists select indicators for measuring progress toward achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals—which are also in the Common Country Assessment list of indicators—crossreferenced with the eight human security subject areas. Therefore, the UN Country Team may have already compiled many of the indicators necessary for sanctions assessments.
However, many of these CCA indicators are not collected reliably for regions within countries or for subgroups of a given population. Moreover, some indicators are not available for all countries and for every year; some reported data may come from old surveys, projections, or estimates between years for which data is collected. Such limitations can be established by carefully reviewing when, where, and how the data were collected.
Even when these data are available, they may not be sufficiently sensitive in order to identify changes due to sanctions. In the health subject area, more sensitive indicators could be the percentage of hospitalbased births of children weighing less than 2,500 grams, the number of children seen at clinics with diarrhoea or pneumonia, or epidemics of immunization preventable diseases. For any of the Millennium Development Goal indicators, a fuller picture will be developed if one or several other indicators are used in addition to those listed in box 6. The choice of indicators to use should depend on the criteria listed in chapter 4 and must be chosen by the investigator once an evaluation of data availability and quality is made for the country in question.
| 
