Disasters

An ongoing change in legislation means decision-makers in Aotearoa New Zealand need to incorporate 'mātauranga' (Māori knowledge/knowledge system) in central and local government legislation and strategy. This paper develops a 'te ao Māori' (Māori worldview) disaster risk reduction (DRR) framework for non-Māori decision-makers to guide them through this process. This 'interface framework' will function as a Rosetta Stone between the 'two worlds'. It intends to help central and local officials trained in Western knowledge-based disciplines by translating standard DRR concepts into a te ao Māori DRR framework...

Aid relations in protracted displacement comprise a diversity of actors with different influence and involvement over time. Building on the case of Sri Lanka's northern Muslim's expulsion from the north of the country in 1990, this paper investigates the dynamic space of aid relations in their drawn-out internal displacement. The study draws on 38 key informant interviews and 10 focus-group discussions, conducted in Sri Lanka (Jaffna, Mannar, Puttalam, and Colombo) in 2022. The paper contributes new knowledge of the local dynamics of assistance in protracted displacement, by analysing the roles of a wide set of actors within this dynamic space of aid relations over time...

The risk of famine is rising in many countries today. Bold changes to famine information and response systems are urgently needed to improve capacities to prevent famine. To this end, the paper identifies six insights from social-ecological systems (SES) thinking for understanding and preventing famine. It argues that a state of famine emerges from human-environment interdependencies, complex causality, and non-linear system dynamics, shaped by history and context. The likelihood of famine can be reduced by strengthening resilience to the diverse stresses and shocks that drive destitution, food insecurity, undernutrition, morbidity, and mortality...

Since the end of the Second World War in 1945, the erection of camps within and across state borders has become the most common response to the influx of displaced persons. Based on empirical evidence from northern Uganda, this paper aims to provide answers to two main questions: (i) how does the camp influence and frame the upbringing of children?; and (ii) how do caregivers shape and adjust upbringing within this setting and when they return to their 'former homes' ? Interviews and focus-group discussions were conducted with 48 caregivers living in Kitgum District, northern Uganda...

The study aims to present an update of a forensic accounting of the numbers and demographics of migrants found deceased in the Evros region of Greece encompassing the years 2015-2022. Compared to data from 2000-2014, this update reflects the increasing number of border-related deaths in the region, as well as the changing demographic trends of the migrants who perish crossing the Greek-Turkish border. Specifically, this study documents a broadening of locations from which migrants originate, an increasing diversity of migrant death locations, and a shift in leading causes of death...

Understanding the dynamics of nonviolent action in situations of armed conflict has been labelled the 'new frontier' in resistance studies. This article reviews the growing body of literature on civilian resistance against rebel groups. Drawn from a systematic review of academic articles, book chapters and policy documents, examples of civilian resistance are ordered into distinct categories of unarmed action: deception, dissent and defiance. This classification provides the conceptual framework to tackle the main research question: Does civilian resistance against rebels work to protect unarmed populations from violence and harm? By scrutinising the effectiveness of civilian resistance, the article seeks to provide a necessary corrective to the dominant view expressed in the literature, which, as the author argues, is overly optimistic regarding prospects of wringing substantial concessions from armed groups via nonviolent action...

This study explores the impacts of armed conflict on women's sexual and reproductive health in Colombia, building on a reproductive justice perspective on original interviews with stakeholders in healthcare, women's rights, and peacebuilding. The analysis reveals a threefold impact of war on women's sexual and reproductive health, through violent politicization, collateral damage, and intersectional dimensions. Multiple armed actors have used women's health as an instrument in politically motivated strategies to increase their power, assigning political meaning to sexuality and reproduction within the context of war...

This paper assesses the extent to which COVID-19 directed the attention and resources of the international community away from peacebuilding, and the potential impact on conflict-affected environments. The paper draws from a global survey, interviews, and conversations with peacebuilding practitioners, publicly-available data on peacebuilding funding and real-time data on conflict events from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED). The paper argues that resources and attention have "pivoted" away from peacebuilding to address the threat presented by COVID-19, and that this can - but does not always - adversely impact conflict dynamics...

The alarming rise in disaster occurrences, along with the positive development of corporate social responsibility (CSR), has led to the growing need and involvement of businesses in disaster relief. However, this involvement differs greatly across organisations, and the fragmented research has not offered an understanding of these differences and how they affect disaster relief. This study provides a comprehensive model of companies' involvement in disaster relief by integrating two disaster relief frameworks (activities and timing) with two CSR frameworks (motivation and employee engagement)...

COVID-19 highlighted interconnections between questions of identity and citizenship, vulnerability, and inclusion in / exclusion from systems of care in times of crisis. Migrant workers from Nagaland State, Northeast India, were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic's socio-economic consequences. The pandemic brought into question who is 'Indian' and citizenship rights attached to that identity, heightening migrants' exclusion from central structures. Communitarian responses in Nagaland enhanced resilience in the face of often-inadequate government responses; but COVID-19 also exposed structural inequalities within and between Naga communities...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

This article analyses research findings from the PROWELLMIGRANTS project which qualitatively investigated the impact of COVID-19 upon migrants' wellbeing and mental health in Kerala, India. It draws from a novel conceptual framework that combines assemblage-thinking with theories of social contracts in disasters. The article first explores how past development processes and contemporary migration policies in Kerala, and India more widely, generated conditions of vulnerability for migrant workers in Kerala prior to the pandemic...

Humanitarian organizations are increasingly utilizing biometric data. However, we know little about the extent and scope of this practice, as its benefits and risks have attracted all the attention so far. This paper explores the biometric practices of the UN Refugee Agency, the United Nations World Food Programme, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières, and World Vision International. The paper analyzed relevant documents published over the past two decades and 17 semi-structured interviews with humanitarian workers conducted between June 2021 and June 2022...

Based on research with key stakeholders, this paper draws on theories of organisational and political listening to analyse the critical emergence of 'localisation' during the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit. The central focus is the two year pre-summit consultation process engaging 23,000+ people, mainly from the global south, facilitated specifically to bring different views and experiences to the task of reforming the global humanitarian agenda. Interviews explore 'voice and listening' during consultations, asking how these were framed by, and framed, power differentials within the humanitarian system...

Coping and recovery capabilities in disasters depend to a large part on social resilience. Prior disaster studies suggest a variety of indicators to assess social resilience in the natural hazard context. We discuss whether the most common disaster-related social resilience indicators like social cohesion and support can meaningfully capture social resilience in pandemic crises since pandemics typically comprise physical distancing and other social restrictions. Based on a review of frequently used social resilience measures, we propose pandemic-tailored indicators of social resilience...

This article introduces the notion of 'humanitarian ignorance' to address the growing concern of non-knowledge as datafication becomes a central instrument and ambition for the humanitarian sector. With the turn to digital humanitarianism, contemporary humanitarian action increasingly relies on technology-driven quantification to expand the ability to collect, analyse, and present information. Utilizing datafication processes, humanitarian organizations seek to assess 'risk' and mitigate 'uncertainty' more efficiently...

The number of deaths by tropical cyclones in Bangladesh has significantly reduced. Category 4 Cyclone Gorky in 1991 and Sidr in 2007 caused 147,000 and 4,500 deaths respectively and Cyclone Mora six in 2017. This is considered internationally to be an outstanding case of disaster risk management. Face-to-face interviews with 362 residents, participant observation and focus group discussions answer a research question how change in the coastal areas has contributed to this outcome. The research considered institutional approaches of disaster risk management through legal frameworks, administrative arrangements, cyclone preparedness activities, cyclone detection and early warning dissemination, construction of shelter centres, strengthening of varied types of coastal embankments, paved roads and pre-cyclone evacuation...

Aid workers offer important perspectives for better understanding the most pervasive challenges that arise when implementing emergency response programming in humanitarian settings. This study provides a global review of these perspectives, derived from 4,679 applications of aid workers applying to the National NGO Program on Humanitarian Leadership (NNPHL), in which applicants were asked to respond to the question, "What do you consider to be the biggest challenges in the implementation of emergency response programming in today's humanitarian settings...

This paper investigates changes in political participation following a disaster. Drawing from the electoral results and flood declarations following the 2010 flood in Slovakia, we constructed a dataset that illustrates when and how often each municipality was affected by disastrous conditions before the elections. The analysis revealed that experiencing a flood significantly increased the level of political participation in a municipality. However, the effect of flooding on elections is conditional. First, significantly higher turnout occurs only when a flood affects the municipality on election day...

An abundance of unstructured and loosely structured data on disasters exists and can be analyzed using network methods. This paper overviews the use of qualitative data in quantitative social network analysis in disaster research. We discuss two types of networks, each with a relevant major topic in disaster research (i.e., whole network approaches to emergency management networks and personal network approaches to the social support of survivors) and four usable forms of qualitative data. We explain five opportunities afforded by these approaches revolving around their flexibility and ability to account for complex network structures...