UC Berkeley

Crises are on an upward continuum, and their impacts are far-reaching and interdependent. The forthcoming years will bring numerous examples of compounded crises. While existing scholarships have largely focused on polycrisis or protracted crises, this study differentiates context-bound compounded crises through community-based and human rights informed approaches, enabling a more granular understanding of how crises are experienced and operationalized at the local level. Compounded crises can be defined as localized contexts in which two or more hazards, shocks, or stressors, occur concurrently and interact over time to create reoccurring stressors to intensify vulnerability among women and girls, erode their coping capacity, and progressively undermine social and health systems. This study first introduces a compounded crises framework. It advances a novel analytical perspective on compounded crises by examining how interacting and context-specific crises generate recurring stressors and shape pathways that influence reproductive health outcomes for women and girls in humanitarian settings, particularly Kakuma and Kalobeyei refugee camps in Kenya. Specifically, the analysis demonstrates how compounded crises constrain access to health services for historically marginalized populations at individual and interpersonal levels, amplify social and structural vulnerabilities at the community level, and disrupt service delivery through progressively overburdened health systems.