ABSTRACT
Deeply challenged humanitarian contexts are an important poverty frontier where large numbers of people in acute poverty reside, and which are increasingly sites of protracted and extreme polycrisis. This applied chapter draws on in-depth mixed methods data and analysis in Afghanistan and Nigeria to investigate multi-scalar drivers of chronic (i.e. longer-term) and acute (i.e. more severe) poverty amidst polycrisis in complex humanitarian settings. It highlights systemic vulnerabilities that predate crises and helps emphasise crises as embedded in longer-term structural inequality with mutually reinforcing dimensions, rather than episodic events. The chapter also examines the ways in which these crises can contribute to intersecting shocks and stressors at micro- and meso-levels to amplify the effects of macro-level crises and overwhelm coping systems, thus reinforcing negative feedback loops. In this process, it recognises not only the multiple crises affecting the context in which people live, but also the multiple sources of vulnerability and potentially personal crises among those most affected—including those displaced, women and young adults living in poverty, and others experiencing intersecting inequalities.
