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.
One in a series of UN Women gender alerts begun at the start of the war in Gaza, this one focusing on WASH services.
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 paper explores multifaceted approaches to mitigate severe risks to children’s physical, cognitive, emotional and social development, emphasising the need for comprehensive support systems for children in conflict zones.
This commentary highlights the impact of armed conflict on children at the Gaza-Israel border.
