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.

Damage to medical complexes in the Israel-Hamas war: a geospatial analysis.

INTRODUCTION: Medical facilities are civilian objects specially protected during armed conflict by international humanitarian law (IHL). These protections are customarily applied regardless of the conflict, parties or contexts involved. Attacks on medical care have characterised the bombardment campaign of the Gaza Strip beginning 7 October 2023. This study presents evidence regarding patterns of damage to medical complexes relative to all other buildings in the first month of this conflict. METHODS: This is an observational pre/post-study of damage to buildings during the first month of the Israel Defence Force bombardment of Gaza from 7 October to 7 November 2023. Open-source polygons for the Gaza Strip were spatially joined with building damage assessments from satellite imagery analysis. Medical facilities were included in the analysis if they were cross-referenced by a minimum of two datasets. Welch's t-test was used to test for statistically significant differences in the proportions of damaged medical complexes and other buildings. RESULTS: A total of 167 292 unique buildings were identified, including 106 cross-referenced medical complexes. Approximately 9% of non-medical buildings and medical complexes alike sustained damage during the first month of the bombardment (p>0.7292). CONCLUSION: During the first month of the bombing campaign, evidence suggests medical complexes have not received special protection as required by IHL. This finding raises concerns about combatants' application of the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution, suggesting the importance of further investigation.

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.

Continuity planning for public health crises: Designing workplace redundancies for organizational resilience.

Continuity planning prepares organizations to maintain essential functions despite disruptions to critical infrastructure that occur during crises. Continuity planning is especially important for Public-Safety Answering Points (PSAPs), which must prepare to answer 911 calls and dispatch first responders in all-hazard environments, including public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, continuity planning typically focuses on disruptions to cyber-physical infrastructure rather than social infrastructure disruptions that occur when outbreaks of communicable disease limit the ability of essential personnel to perform an organization's essential functions. Reporting findings from interviews with US officials, this study examines how PSAPs decentralized essential personnel by designing redundant workplaces during the COVID-19 pandemic. Realizing existing continuity plans prepared PSAPs to relocate and recentralize essential personnel in a single, shared workplace, officials developed new plans to protect and decentralize telecommunicators across multiple, separate workplaces. To do so, PSAPs achieved passive, standby, and active workplace redundancies that recommend continuity planning objectives and requirements for organizations preparing for future public health crises.

Crisis social media data labeled for storm-related information and toponym usage.

Social media provides citizens and officials with important sources of information during times of crisis. This data article makes available labeled, storm-related social media data collected over a six-hour period during a severe storm and F1 tornado that struck Central Pennsylvania on May 1st, 2017. Three datasets were collected from Twitter using location, keyword, and network filtering techniques, respectively. Only 2% of the 22,706 total tweets overlap among the datasets, providing researchers with a broader scope of information than normally available when collecting tweets using location (i.e., geotag-based) and keyword filtering alone or in combination during a crisis. Each data collection technique is described in detail, including network filtering which collects data from networks of social media users associated with a geographic area. The datasets are manually labeled for information content and toponym usage. The 22,706 tweet IDs, dehydrated for privacy, are labeled for relevance (storm-related and off-topic) and 19 types of storm-related information organized into six categories: infrastructure damage, service disruption, personal experience, weather updates, weather forecasts, and weather warnings. Data are also labeled for toponym usage (with or without toponyms), location (local, remote, and generic toponyms), and granularity (hyperlocal, municipal, and regional toponyms). The comprehensively labeled datasets provide researchers with opportunities to analyze crisis-related information behaviors and volunteered location information behaviors during a hyperlocal crisis event, as well as develop and evaluate automated filtering, geolocation, and event detection techniques that can aid citizens and crisis responders.

Strategic Documentation of Violence against Healthcare: Towards a Methodology for Accountability.

The valuable efforts that have arisen in recent years to document attacks against healthcare workers and infrastructure during armed conflicts have brought this issue to the forefront of the policy agendas of many health, public health, humanitarian and human rights organizations. However, although professionals and activists have highlighted the importance of accountability in deterring these attacks, considerations of international criminal responsibility in data-gathering efforts remain underexplored. This paper suggests an approach that could direct further accountability efforts for organizations interested in engaging in documentation. Such non-governmental organizations should aim to gather not only information about the nature of the attack but also data that help establish specific characteristics about the victim, the intent of the attacker and the patterns of violence. Additionally, these efforts to document attacks on healthcare workers, facilities and patients should involve a systematic, rigorous and demonstrable methodology.