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2. Two Years at the Forefront: Exploring the needs and experiences of women-led, women’s rights and LGBTQIA+ led organizations two years into the Ukraine humanitarian response
- Author:
- Charlotte Greener
- Publication Date:
- 02-2024
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- Two years on from the escalation of the war in Ukraine, Oxfam spoke with a number of people leading the work of local and national women-led organisations (WLOs), women’s rights organisations (WROs), LGBTQIA+ led organizations, and other local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) addressing the needs of women, girls and gender minorities in Poland and Ukraine. We wanted to understand how the humanitarian crisis has impacted them, personally and as organizations, and their needs and priorities for the future. At the beginning of the humanitarian crisis following the escalation of the war in Ukraine, local WLOs, WROs and LGBTQIA+ led organizations were some of the first on the ground responding to their communities’ needs, both within Ukraine and in neighboring countries, and two years on, they are still at the forefront of providing assistance. The conversations that we had with these organisations highlighted that they are facing key challenges in continuing to sustain their vital role in responding to humanitarian needs; the need for greater investment in their voice and agency as decision-makers in the humanitarian response; and the need for flexible support to these organisations that allows them to carry out their important work across all stages of the response to the humanitarian crisis.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, Women, Refugees, LGBT+, Humanitarian Crisis, Civil Society Organizations, Gender, and Humanitarian Response
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Ukraine, and Poland
3. Inflicting Unprecedented Suffering and Destruction: Seven ways the government of Israel is deliberately blocking and/or undermining the international humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip
- Author:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Publication Date:
- 03-2024
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Oxfam Publishing
- Abstract:
- Over five months into the Israeli mass atrocities on the Gaza Strip, in response to the horrific 7 October 2023 attacks by Palestinian armed groups, a meaningful and safe humanitarian response is made impossible by the government of Israel. In this briefing we outline seven fundamental humanitarian access constraints.
- Topic:
- War Crimes, Atrocities, Palestinian Authority, Humanitarian Response, Blockade, 2023 Gaza War, and Forced Displacement
- Political Geography:
- Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Gaza
4. The Influence of the UN at the Country Level: The Case of Sri Lanka from 2007 to 2011
- Author:
- Neil Buhne
- Publication Date:
- 01-2024
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University (ISID)
- Abstract:
- Assessments of the effectiveness of the UN often assume that there is one “United Nations,” when in fact there are many different “United Nations”: one of these is the UN at the country level, whose work is often undervalued or overlooked. As the experience in Sri Lanka from 2007 to 2011 demonstrates, the UN despite internal and external limitations, can have unique influence on a country’s crisis response and development path, because of its role in most countries as the “locally based international organization” transparently embedded in a country and society. Through that, it may be able to influence a country across the range of needs related to peacebuilding, human rights, crisis response/humanitarian assistance, and development/recovery. If there is stronger recognition and support for that role, the UN can be a better “influencer,” helping countries to prevent crises and/or respond to them in ways which improve their citizens’ lives. The experience in Sri Lanka demonstrates both the limits on what a UN Country Team can do “locally,” and what more a UN country team can do to influence the possibilities a country has.
- Topic:
- United Nations, International Development, Crisis Management, Peacebuilding, and Humanitarian Response
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and Sri Lanka
5. Health responses during COVID-19
- Author:
- Neha Singh, Kimberley Popple, and James Smith
- Publication Date:
- 08-2024
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
- Abstract:
- The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic presented a grave global health challenge, both in terms of scale and severity. The novelty of the virus and the widespread economic impacts of efforts to contain it created an urgent global need to understand the virus, issue accurate guidance and develop effective prevention and treatment. As the pandemic progressed, many contexts already affected by humanitarian crises faced a new health threat, further compounded by the pandemic’s deleterious impact on socioeconomic indicators, food security and essential services. Many other countries, not previously considered as affected by humanitarian crises, had to reorientate to crisis response given the extent of the threat posed by COVID-19. Both the anticipated and realised impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic placed immense pressure on healthcare systems worldwide to both prevent and treat COVID-19 cases – something that has often required complex interventions – while simultaneously maintaining essential health services. As such, policymakers and healthcare workers were pressed to make changes to systems and practices to respond to the direct threat posed by COVID-19, and the indirect impact of COVID-19 response measures on non-COVID-19 health needs. Much of the available COVID-19 guidance primarily focused on higher-income countries, many of which became the early epicentres of the pandemic, and thus far has not necessarily been as relevant or applicable to humanitarian settings where living and working conditions, as well as the wider socio-cultural environment, are very different, and where local health systems may already be weakened by existing humanitarian crises and other challenges. Furthermore, where guidance has been developed for humanitarian settings (Interagency Standing Committee [IASC], 2020; Ramalingam, 2020), the diversity of countries and contexts that fall under such categorisation is such that any guidance produced is not able – nor intended – to be context specific. As such, humanitarian organisations at the country level have initiated adaptive interventions to respond to the specific challenges they have experienced (Lancet, 2020). These adaptations often demonstrate a complex process whereby organisations acknowledge guidance is available to support interventions, but that they must nonetheless adapt or innovate in response to contextual realities (Odlum et al., 2021).
- Topic:
- Health, COVID-19, and Humanitarian Response
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
6. The World’s Humanitarian, Economic, and Political Engagement with Afghanistan
- Author:
- Paul Fishstein and Aman Farahi
- Publication Date:
- 01-2023
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Center on International Cooperation (CIC)
- Abstract:
- The August 2021 fall of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and its replacement by the Taliban ended a two decade chapter of economic and social development. On top of an already weak economy reeling from COVID-19 and a multi-year drought, the overnight cutoff of most Western aid, freezing of foreign reserve funds, and effective severing of Afghanistan’s links with the global financial system plunged Afghanistan into multiple and overlapping humanitarian, economic, financial, and political crises of almost incomprehensible proportions. As of December 2021, 98 percent of the population lacked sufficient food and 90 percent were projected to be living in poverty. By summer 2022, the economy had shrunk by 20-30 percent. Afghanistan faces a daunting array of immediate security, humanitarian, and long-term development challenges. The Taliban’s restrictive social policies and refusal to move towards an inclusive government and the charged political environment dictates much of what can or cannot be done by the international community. The West’s central challenge is at once both moral and political: trying to walk a fine line between delivering humanitarian and economic assistance to relieve some of the effects of sanctions and isolation and help the Afghan people, while avoiding even the appearance of endorsing or legitimizing the Taliban. Workarounds so far have included re-purposing the World Bank-administered Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, previously the main vehicle for funding Afghan government operations, to channel funding through United Nations (UN) agencies to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to provide feeding, health, education, and other services. This paper highlights the significant challenges for the international community, among them: Relationship management Working with or alongside the Taliban Who performs the functions of the state? Channeling support away from the DFA and directly through the UN and NGOs can be effective for certain types of services (e.g., health, education), but this has its limits. International community cohesion, coherence, and capacity Finally, the authors highlight a number of recommendations, divided roughly into policy and operational considerations, for how, if not to resolve the impasse, to at least mitigate or get around it. These 14 recommendations assume that regardless of the Taliban’s distasteful policies and moral and technical shortcomings, the collapse of their rule would not be in anyone’s interest. There is no one to replace them, and the chaos and fragmentation that would follow would be far worse.
- Topic:
- Taliban, Afghanistan, Economy, Engagement, Humanitarian Crisis, and Humanitarian Response
- Political Geography:
- Afghanistan, South Asia, and Global Focus
7. The Humanitarian Response in Post-Earthquake Syria: An Urgent Need for Depoliticisation
- Author:
- Munqeth Othman Agha
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Commentary and Analysis
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- Less than four days following the deadly earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria on 6 February 2023, Syrians from the less-impacted areas in the northeast sent a convoy of 140 trucks carrying humanitarian aid toward the northwest.[1] Solidarity convoys drove successfully through checkpoints across different zones of control, including those controlled by the Kurdish Autonomous Administration (AA) in northeast Syria, the Syrian regime and the Syrian Interim Government (SIG) in Turkish-influenced areas in northern Syria. While doing so, they overtook other convoys sent by the AA and the UN Damascus that were stuck behind for different political and logistic reasons. Search and rescue activities in northwest Syria were primarily led by local efforts (in particular the Syrian Civil Defense or the White Helmets),[2] with very few international rescue teams joining, especially in the early days. Eyeing this, Syrians furiously, but also sarcastically, wondered how ordinary Syrians already living in harsh living conditions were able to mobilise more aid and deliver it faster than the UN and other INGOs. This event adds another episode to the long history of UN structural failure to deliver aid to disaster-struck zones in the country since the outbreak of the conflict in 2011. As living conditions have never been worse in Syria, and the humanitarian system has never been more paralysed and politicised, there is no more rightful time than now to rethink the whole system of aid delivery.
- Topic:
- Natural Disasters, Earthquake, Humanitarian Response, and Economic Aid
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and Syria
8. A Decade of Greek Immigration and Asylum Policy (2015-2024): A Balancing Act of EU Participation, Humanitarian Obligations, and Security Concerns
- Author:
- Angelo Tramountanis
- Publication Date:
- 09-2023
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Brown Journal of World Affairs
- Institution:
- Brown Journal of World Affairs
- Abstract:
- Greece was at the forefront of the European Union’s (EU) immigration and asylum policy implementation during the migration crisis of 2015–2016. Throughout this period, it is estimated that more than one million migrants and refugees traveled through Greece, moving toward other Western European countries.1 The sheer size of this transient population—and its multifaceted political and social implications for European countries—prompted the EU to attempt to curb the influx of immigrants to Greece and, by extension, to its member states. In 2023, almost a decade later, a tragic shipwreck near Pylos claiming over 600 lives, as well as ongoing discussions by several actors and organizations regarding Greece’s migrant pushbacks, has brought the country under the European spotlight once again.
- Topic:
- European Union, Refugees, Borders, Asylum, Humanitarian Response, and Migration Policy
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Greece
9. Five Years Lost: Youth Inclusion in the Rohingya Response
- Author:
- Imrul Islam and Zia Naing
- Publication Date:
- 03-2023
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal on Migration and Human Security
- Institution:
- Center for Migration Studies of New York
- Abstract:
- While youth are routinely lauded as “change-makers,” they are often underserved and unsupported in refugee responses. As the Rohingya face protracted displacement in Bangladesh, what is the state of youth inclusion in the response? Do youth and adolescents feel supported, or are they ignored and left behind? To answer these questions, the paper uses: • Literature on youth participation and inclusion in humanitarian programming; • Key informant interviews with practitioners from national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and UN agencies; • Focus group discussions and key informant interviews with refugee individuals and groups across nine camps for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. It finds that: • Refugee Rohingya youth and adolescents remain firmly on the margins of humanitarian programming, and are largely excluded from decision-making processes; • Approximately 96 percent of surveyed youth between 18 and 24 years of age report being unemployed; • For surveyed women aged 18–24 years, unemployment rates bordered on 99 percent; and • Stress and anxiety are omnipresent amongst the community: an overwhelming majority of respondents reported experiencing disturbing thoughts and resorting to negative coping mechanisms. The paper ends with a series of recommendations to the Strategic Executive Group (SEG) and the Inter-Sector Coordination Group (ISCG), to donors, the international community, and the government of Bangladesh.1
- Topic:
- Youth, Rohingya, Inclusion, and Humanitarian Response
- Political Geography:
- Southeast Asia and Myanmar
10. Bridging or Breaking the Silos: Young Women’s Leadership in Peacebuilding and Humanitarian Action
- Author:
- Lynrose Jane Genon
- Publication Date:
- 10-2023
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP)
- Abstract:
- This research presents how adopting the Youth, Peace and Security (YPS) resolutions has strengthened youth leadership, especially that of young women, in peacebuilding and humanitarian action. It showcases how meaningful inclusion and participation of youth need to extend beyond global policy to the design, implementation, and evaluation of the progress of the YPS agenda. It outlines recommendations for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers working in these areas globally. This publication was created with support from Global Affairs Canada’s Peace and Stabilization Operations Program (PSOP), in the framework of the project “Empowering Rohingya Refugees, Burmese and Bangladeshi Women to Contribute to Sustainable Peace.”
- Topic:
- Security, Women, Leadership, Youth, Peace, Peacebuilding, and Humanitarian Response
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus