humanitarian crisis

The international aid regime tends to exaggerate changes over the last decade in the nature of so-called humanitarian crises. Neither violence perpetrated against civilian populations nor the dilemmas posed to aid organisations attempting to assist them have worsened since the end of the Cold War. 

According to Wikipedia, "a humanitarian crisis is an event or series of events which carry with them a critical threat to the health, safety or wellbeing of a collectivity, usually over a wide area.