Armed actor interventions in humanitarian and public health crises: examining perspectives of crisis-affected community members.

BACKGROUND: Despite frequently providing non-military services in times of crisis, little systematic research has examined the perspectives of crisis-affected community members on the role of armed actors responding to humanitarian crises and public health emergencies. METHODS: To address this research gap, 175 interviews were conducted (2020-2021) amongst humanitarian and public health practitioners; armed actors; and crisis-affected community members across three country and four crisis contexts. Specifically, this effort included an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; a refugee crisis on the Jordanian-Syrian border; and a volcanic eruption and COVID-19 outbreak in the Philippines. Data was analysed using grounded theory principles. RESULTS: Crisis-affected community members held diverse views. Non-state armed groups (NSAGs) and government armed actors were characterised as antagonists by some but supportive by others; gender issues were central to perceptions of armed actors, in ways that were both prejudicing and favourable. Overall perception was most closely linked to armed actor roles rather than the relative amount of conflict in a given area. CONCLUSIONS: Findings nuance the relevant literature characterizing NSAGs as disruptive agents, and also the relevant literature that does not fully consider the nuances of gender and armed actor roles as deeply relevant to crisis-affected community perspectives on armed actors. These findings have important implications for both policy and academic discourse on militarization and localization.

The role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in the COVID-19 response across the Global South: A multinational, qualitative study.

Despite receiving less attention than high-income countries, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) experienced more than 85% of global excess deaths during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the unprecedented speed and scale of the COVID-19 pandemic, which placed large demands on government capacity, many LMICs relied on civil society organizations (CSOs) to assist in implementing COVID-19 response programs. Yet few studies have examined the critical role CSOs played in mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in low resource settings. This study explored the CSO response to COVID-19 in five of the most heavily impacted LMICs in the Global South. Interviews were conducted from May to August 2021 with a purposive sample of CSO key informants within each of the five countries. A total of 52 CSOs were selected from which 53 key informants were interviewed either via Zoom or by phone. Interviews were coded and analyzed using NVivo or MAXQDA2020. Out of the 52 CSOs selected, 24 were national organizations, 8 were regional, and 20 were local. CSOs fell into six categories: community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, unions/professional organizations, campaigns/social movements, research organizations/think tanks, and networks/coalitions. CSOs across all five countries adapted their missions, stretched their resources, and performed a wide range of activities that fit into five programmatic areas: food security and livelihood support, public health and medical care, cash transfer programs, risk communication and community education, and needs assessment. This qualitative analysis demonstrates the critical role CSOs played in supplementing government emergency aid response by delivering necessary resources and supporting highly vulnerable populations during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the primary challenges they faced in doing so. Given the generally weak state of public capacity in the LMICs studied, this role was vital to responding to the pandemic.

Moving humanitarian-military relations forward: a new typology.

This article presents a new typology for humanitarian-military relations (HMR). This typology can serve as an analytical framework for assessing, during humanitarian emergencies, how civilian responders can and should engage with armed actors. The typology considers two factors: (1) the nature of crisis-affected population's perceptions of an armed actor, and (2) the extent of alignment of civilian responders' and armed actors' interests and objectives. This typology is empirically rooted in an in-depth analysis of HMR across four humanitarian response contexts: (1) the Kivu Ebola Epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, (2) the Rukban forced displacement crisis along the Jordan-Syria border, (3) the Taal volcano eruption in the Philippines, and (4) the COVID-19 pandemic in the Philippines. The analysis presented in this article is based on 175 qualitative interviews conducted with civilian responders, armed actors, and crisis-affected individuals across these contexts.