This article argues that paying attention to music can help humanitarians understand self-protection strategies, especially as music can create space for discussion even about emotive or political topics that cannot be verbalised in other ways.
Protection of artists during times of conflict has no specific framework in international humanitarian law. However, cultural sites, artefacts and institutions are protected. This article contributes empirical evidence from South Sudan to reveal how artists experience the protection gap and how they become informal protection stakeholders.
Humanitarians have recently championed faith actors as valuable resources in delivering humanitarian aid. This paper explores how faith has been entangled within the dynamics of two spatially connected crises: Ugandans fleeing post-Amin reprisals in the mid-1980s, and South Sudanese fleeing civil war from 2013.
Many contemporary humanitarian organisations derive their legitimacy from their claims to protect civilians. Yet, what these organisations do in its name includes a diverse and contested range of activities that are often far from what global publics and affected populations understand as constituting protection. We review what three well-known humanitarian organisations publicly say they have done to protect strangers across three violent protracted crises.
Recent wars have brutally shown that civilians are not safe. This is despite high-level global commitments and multi-billion-dollar humanitarian spending to keep civilian strangers protected. The high civilian death tolls in recent armed conflicts are prompting new questions about how and if we can protect civilians in times of war, and what the real politics of such protection is. In this introduction, authors argue that it is essential to pay attention to civilians’ actual experiences of protection and their own strategies for staying safe.
Risk Communication and Community Engagement (RCCE) is a critical component of cholera outbreak response. Sharing insights, strategies, and best practices for RCCE from national and regional efforts to combat cholera can enable actors to co-create solutions to common challenges and help pave the way towards stronger and more empowered communities.
One in a series of UN Women gender alerts begun at the start of the war in Gaza, this one focusing on WASH services.
A ‘Public Anthropologist’ blog by Heidi Mogstad, a researcher for the ‘War and Fun: Reconceptualizing Warfare and Its Experience’ research project.
Allegra essayists write that the facts of war can no longer be disputed; instead, what is at stake is how violence and harm are framed.
This commentary highlights the impact of armed conflict on children at the Gaza-Israel border.
In this article, one of our SSHAP fellows from Sudan, Mariam Sharif, shares an update on the conflict and three ways in which the healthcare infrastructure has been compromised.
Ethiopia is currently experiencing several intersecting humanitarian crises including conflict, climatic shocks, COVID-19, desert locust infestation and more, affecting nearly 30 million people. This brief outlines important contextual factors and social impacts of the Northern Ethiopian crisis and offers key considerations to improve the effectiveness of the humanitarian response.
Key considerations focusing on how conflict, displacement and inter-communal tensions may influence disease control in Myanmar.
The purpose of this guidance note is to support UNICEF staff in understanding the contextual factors (the practices, behaviours, social norms and wider factors) that shape risks of cholera transmission, being able to separate the social and cultural factors from those that are more structural or systemic.
Ethno-demographic grievances define the conflict between Buddhist and Rohingya-Muslim populations in the Rakhine State of Myanmar. Due to the government’s decision to avoid the enumeration of self-identifying Rohingya, this study has relied on several recent local surveys to reconstruct a local demographic description of the Rohingya.
From the beginning of time, their have been food crises in one form or another. Ancient books such as the Bible have records of various famines devastating portions of the world. And while it’s easy to attribute these crises to a single cause, such as war or drought, the causes are usually much deeper and much more complex. Nelson Mandela said, “Overcoming poverty is not an act of charity, it is an act of justice.”
In order for us to achieve the kind of justice envisioned by Mandela, it’s essential that we first understand the underlying causes of food crises. Only after we have understood can we then begin creating meaningful solutions.
With that in mind, here are 8 primary factors behind almost every global food crisis. While not all 8 of these will be present at a time, you will almost always find several of these at work.
In Somalia, Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) – a multi-donor project managed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) and FEWS NET are working together to ensure that livelihood products, tools, and skills meet FSNAU’s and FEWS NET’s decision support needs. This report offers an overview of the Household Economy Analysis methodology and a brief account of its history in the FSNAU, and then a summary analysis of the essential information from the baseline profiles taken together. This is followed by a series of livelihood profiles for each of the eighteen livelihood zones identified in Somalia.
Through accessible helpdesk responses, briefings and syntheses, the Platform aims to provide the information humanitarian actors and agencies need when, how and in forms that suit them.
During the last decade, there has been a particular focus of research on the economic and social impact of conflict. The evidence that has emerged shows that armed conflict takes a heavy toll on development and the welfare of the population that are subject to such continued violence.
While this is not surprising at all, it can be extremely devastating. Understanding the causes and implications of this type of violence on the individual and communities will only enable us to lessen the negative impact.
The fact that the Colombian armed conflict has continued for almost five decades there is still very little information on how it affects the mental health of civilians. Although it is well established in post-conflict populations that experience of organised violence has a negative impact on mental health, little research has been done on those living in active conflict zones. Médecins Sans Frontières provides mental health services in areas of active conflict in Colombia and using data from these services we aimed to establish which characteristics of the conflict are most associated with specific symptoms of mental ill health. An analysis of clinical data from patients (N = 6,353), 16 years and over, from 2010–2011, who consulted in the Colombian departments (equivalent to states) of Nariño, Cauca, Putumayo and Caquetá. Risk factors were grouped using a hierarchical cluster analysis and the clusters were included with demographic information as predictors in logistic regressions to discern which risk factor clusters best predicted specific symptoms.
Ebola seems to be a particular risk in conflict affected contexts. All three of the countries most affected by the 2014-15 outbreak have a complex conflict-affected recent history. Other major outbreaks in the recent past, inNorthern Uganda and in the Democratic Republic of Congo are similarly afflicted although outbreaks have also occurred in stable settings. Although the 2014-15 outbreak in West Africa has received more attention than almost any other public health issue in recent months, very little of that attention has focused on the complex interaction between conflict and its aftermath and its implications for health systems, the emergence of the disease and the success or failure in controlling it.The health systems of conflict-affected states are characterized by a series of weaknesses, some common to other low and even middle income countries, others specifically conflict-related.
Added to this is the burden placed on health systems by the aggravated health problems associated with conflict.
About 125 million people are affected by crises. A quarter of those people are female and of reproductive age – and women are 14 times more likely than men to die in a crisis.
