What to pack if you have to leave because of conflict

A conflict go-bag differs from a natural-disaster one in two ways: you may not come back, and you may have to walk with it for a long time. That changes the priorities. In a hurricane you carry food; here you carry identity, money and range, in that order.

First: the documents

They are the only thing in the bag that cannot be bought again at the other end. Prepare two copies: paper inside a waterproof pouch, and an encrypted digital set in the cloud, with the password known by two adults.

• ID for everyone, children included.
• Birth certificates and family record book or equivalent.
• Deeds, lease or any proof of address.
• Vaccination record and relevant medical reports.
• Prescriptions for long-term medication, naming the active ingredient and not just the brand: in another country the brand may not exist.
• Recent photos of each child, with name and date of birth written on the back.

What goes in, in order of importance

Category	What	Note
Documents	The list above	The first thing packed
Money	Cash in small notes	Split across two places
Water	1–2 litres + filter or tablets	Water is the weight
Medication	7 days minimum	With prescription, in its box
Warmth	Waterproof shell, fleece, hat	Emergency blanket: 50 g
Light and power	Torch, power bank, cable	Head torch beats handheld
Food	Bars, nuts, 1–2 days	Nothing that needs cooking
Hygiene	Soap, toothbrush, pads or tampons	Always forgotten, always needed
First aid	Pressure dressing, antiseptic, painkillers	Tourniquet if you are trained
Comms	Small radio, contact list on paper	Paper never runs out of battery

Weight: the constraint that decides everything else

Do this before calling the bag finished: load it, put on the shoes you would actually leave in, and walk for one continuous hour. Not around the block: an hour. Almost everybody discovers on that walk that they are carrying two kilos too many and that the new boots were a bad idea.

If the weight does not work, what gets cut is not the documents or the medication: it is the food — you can get that on the way — and the water, replaced by a filter.

One bag per person

Sharing the weight is the obvious reason; the important one is different: if the group gets separated, each person has to be self-sufficient for a few hours. That is the real reason every bag carries its own water, its own torch and its own copy of the contact list.

In the children’s bags:

• Little weight: their bottle, a snack, a change of clothes, a small torch.
• A toy or soft toy. Not an indulgence: it is what makes a night in a strange place manageable.
• An identification card in an outer pocket, with full name, date of birth, parents’ names and a contact number outside the conflict area.
• For very young children, also a label sewn inside the clothing with the same details.

Maintenance: twice a year

A bag packed three years ago is a bag with expired medication, dead batteries and clothes the children have grown out of. Every six months:

1. Check expiry dates on medication, food and purification tablets.
2. Replace batteries and recharge the power bank.
3. Adjust clothing to size and season.
4. Update any documents that changed and the children’s photos.
5. Weigh it again.

To work out quantities by number of people and days, the go-bag calculator gives the list with weights, and the family plan solves the part a bag cannot: where you meet and who you call.