Los escenarios humanitarios. Un nuevo reto para la salud ambiental infantil

From the point of view of the international agenda, humanitarian crises are defined as situations where a large number of people are displaced due to conflicts, natural disasters or other threats to human wellbeing and health. However, this approach to humanitarian crises is limited, i.e. it leaves out the reality experienced in other communities which, given their extreme vulnerability, are forced to migrate in the search for better living conditions. This second kind of humanitarian crisis, which is usually invisible, is the result of interactions among different types of violence—structural, cultural, environmental, and physical—that give rise to scenarios which are likely to lead to humanitarian crises outside a context of war or disaster; we have called them humanitarian scenarios. In these Humanitarian Scenarios, children are the segment of the population which is the most vulnerable and requires more protection since a healthy child population is at the heart of a community’s social progress. Through the PEACE scheme, we have designed a strategy to build Children Centers for Optimal Development (NIDO in Spanish), for the purpose of training people who are capable of managing and contextualizing new lines of action at the local level to promote human wellbeing from a human rights perspective. This strategy rests on three pillars: cohesion (health), a means of accompaniment (innovation) and a multidisciplinary approach (teamwork).