A new kind of humanitarian crisis is emerging in Namibia and its neighbouring countries. It is a complex triad consisting of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, deepening food insecurity and a hollowing out of capacity on national, community and household levels. This triple threat represents a fundamental challenge to the way that Governments, the UN and other partners understand the development process and the impact of humanitarian crisis.

Previously, steady progress in human development (1a) could be interrupted by an external shock such as a drought or a flood (2a). Under normal conditions, households, communities and nations would recover when good rains and good harvests return (3a), and after some time there would be a return to the pre-crisis path of sustained...albeit often painstakingly slow— progress towards improved human development (4a). The net result of the crisis would thus be a temporary delay in development. This was very much the situation after the drought of 1992, which had a devastating impact in large parts of Namibia but from which the nation and its people were able to recover from fairly quickly.

The prospects for recovery after the 2002/03 drought and food insecurity could be bleaker. While overall production levels have improved once the conditions for agriculture improved after nearly three decades of the HIV/AIDS epidemic the capacities of households and governments to manage the crisis and drive the development process have been critically weakened. In this new reality, the process of sustained progress in human development (1b) has been interrupted by the external shock (2b) but instead of a return to recovery the death toll keeps climbing, social indicators keep falling and institutions are increasingly unable to respond effectively. The triple threat represents a real risk for social disintegration and potential collapse. In 2003 UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Humanitarian Needs in Southern Africa, James Morris, reported on ‘Africa's food crisis as a threat to peace and security’ to the UN Security Council: “Political structures at the national level in the worst affected countries may gradually just fade away and, along with them, the services and social order they were intended to provide.”