Complex humanitarian emergencies involve population movements on a massive scale, driven by drought, famine, or war. The international community may respond with humanitarian aid or peacekeeping operations but local responses to international intervention may exacerbate the emergency. Combatants divert aid to finance coercive activities, and peacekeeping operations are resisted by those who benefit from social disruption. This article develops a rational choice model that shows how individuals' choices among their options of production, coercion, and relocation affect the aggregate supply and demand of food in ongoing conflicts. This model demonstrates that humanitarian aid and peacekeeping operations have complementary strengths and that the international community can best achieve its goals by carrying out both kinds of operations. This simple model captures important aspects of the policy substitutability and alternative trigger effects in complex humanitarian emergencies, and suggestions for future research are outlined.
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