Crisis Response

Conflicts, armed violence, disasters, epidemics, pandemics and other crises force millions of people to leave their homes and communities, sometimes for years or even decades. Millions of people are currently living in displacement within and across borders with disasters displacing around 25 million on average each year. Economic downturns, political instability and other drivers also compel large population movements.

As the leading UN agency working on migration, we are committed to saving lives and helping populations move out of harm’s way. We protect and assist those displaced or stranded by crisis, and support populations and their communities to recover. We work to mitigate adverse drivers that force people from their homes, help build resilience and focus on reducing disaster risk so that movement and migration can be a choice.

The Organization is among the world’s largest humanitarian actors and one of the few international organizations directly impacting programmes across the humanitarian, development and peace nexus to provide comprehensive responses at all phases of crises. 

Crisis Response in Ghana

Mobility-induced emergencies, including those arising from the ecological impact of climate change, can trigger the mass movement of populations within or across national borders. Such movement, when unmanaged, could not only destabilize social cohesion in societies but also leave such populations vulnerable to the activities of human smuggling and trafficking or other organized criminal networks which is detrimental to development of the society.  

To strengthen mechanisms for managing mobility-induced crisis, IOM Ghana supports the government and national actors in enhancing disaster risk management systems for preventing, preparing, mitigating and responding to displacement caused by natural and human-induced disasters at national level. 

Key actions include: 

• Increase incorporation of migrants and migration dynamics in national/regional disaster management and climate change adaptation plans. 
• Continue management of movements and logistics for the resettlement of refugees. 
• Reinforce capacity of emergency migration stakeholders to respond to disaster-related displacement and to migrants in times of crisis. 
• Improve internal capacity to support programming on the mobility dimensions of crisis.  
• Strengthen support to sustainable and climate-smart livelihood diversification and disaster risk reduction at the community level. 
• Increase policy dialogue, knowledge production and concrete action at community level to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on human mobility.