Humanitarian Scenarios: A Tool for Addressing Violence as a Health- and Environment-Related Issue

Abstract

Mexico is currently in the top 20 percent of countries with the highest levels of inequality in the world, and has violence levels comparable to those of countries in a situation of war and armed conflict. The inequality-violence relationship creates a vicious circle where inequalities lead to violence and violence increases inequalities. In this respect, violence in Mexico has become an issue that affects public health, the economy and the comprehensive development of its communities. Even though there are many positions on the origin and conceptualization of violence, violence should be seen as multimodal because it is the result of the interaction of various factors. Multimodal violence has given rise to humanitarian crises in subnational scenarios that have exacerbated existing inequalities and worsened community conditions, especially health conditions. In view of this situation, we have come up with a proposal for shining a light on multimodal violence scenarios, which we have termed Humanitarian Scenarios. Our proposal revolves around the conceptual construction of Humanitarian Scenarios, an index for their identification and a useful model for dealing with syndemic vulnerability and preventing humanitarian crises. From this point of view, the only way to break the inequality-violence- crisis vicious circle created by syndemics is to develop a new health-development-peace chain.