Critical care medicine is far from the first medical field to come to mind when humanitarian action is mentioned, yet both critical care and humanitarian action share a fundamental purpose to save ...the lives and ease the suffering of people caught in acute crises. Critically ill children and adults will be present regardless of resource limitations and irrespective of geography, regional or cultural contexts, insecurity, or socioeconomic status, and they may be even more prevalent in a humanitarian crisis. Critical care is not limited to the walls of a hospital, and all hospitals will have critically ill patients regardless of designating a specific ward an ICU. Regular and consistent consideration of critical care principles in humanitarian settings provides crucial guidance to intensivists and nonintensivists alike. A multidisciplinary, systematic approach to patient care that encourages critical thinking, checklists that encourage communication among team members, and context-specific critical care rapid response teams are examples of critical care constructs that can provide high-quality critical care in all environments. Promoting critical care principles conveys the message that critical care is an integral part of health care and should be accessible to all, no matter the setting. These principles can be effectively adopted in humanitarian settings by normalizing them to everyday clinical practice. Equally, core humanitarian principles-dignity, accountability, impartiality, neutrality-can be applied to critical care. Applying principles of critical care in a context-specific manner and applying humanitarian principles to critical care can improve the quality of patient care and transcend barriers to resource limitations.
This article provides a first attempt at analysing the complex set of issues around remote management practices in insecure environments and their increased use. It looks at definitions and reviews ...existing published and grey literature on remote management and related practices. It tries to situate remote management in the evolving context of post-Cold War strategies of dealing with conflict and crisis. On the basis of interviews with a cross-section of aid workers, senior headquarters managerial and policy staff, donors, and research institutions, it provides an assessment of current remote management practices, with a particular focus on Afghanistan and Somalia, and their implications for the future of humanitarian action.
Purpose
This paper aims to discuss the main reasons behind the tension between accountability to donors and accountability to beneficiaries, in terms of obtaining the basic needs and human rights of ...the latter. Relying on three arguments; firstly, based on Angela Crack’s (2013) theory of the three waves of accountability, the authors argue that the unequal power relations between donors, international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) and beneficiaries is a source of the deficit and gap of this accountability. Secondly, the authors examine the relation between INGOs and politics, their role in influencing policy making and their increased involvement with governments and states. The authors suggest that INGOs reliance on governments for facilitation and funding makes them accountable to those governments in a way that conflicts with the needs of their beneficiaries affecting their chances to obtain their basic human rights. Thirdly, the authors explore the different agendas between the global north and global south, considering the Western roots of INGOs. Finally, the paper suggests that unequal power relations, INGOs’ questionable legitimacy and the unclear relation with politics explain the causes behind the tension in accountability making it inevitable.
Design/methodology/approach
Angela Crack’s (2013) theory of the three waves of accountability.
Findings
The paper suggests that unequal power relations, INGOs’ questionable legitimacy and the unclear relation with politics explain the causes behind the tension in accountability making it inevitable.
Originality/value
Identifying and resolving the tension between INGOs accountability to donors and accountability to so-called beneficiaries can result in better obtainment of human rights.
For many decades, humanitarian assistance relied on emergency response, triggering both funding and operational activities only after disaster impacts had been recorded. In recent years, many ...humanitarian actors have joined forces to complement traditional, reactive mechanisms with a forward-looking approach that can be activated before a disaster strikes. Anticipatory action (AA) uses forecasts of extreme weather events and combines them with risk information to identify and implement locally-led early actions with the goal of protecting lives and livelihoods more efficiently. AA is still a relatively new approach. Hence, monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning (MEAL) is crucial to measure its effectiveness and adjust where necessary, as well as for (government) donors that want to see the added value of their investment maximized. However, evidence-based studies that investigate potential limitations and the exact impact pathway of AA at household level are time-consuming, costly, and therefore scarce. Satellite earth observation can become a game changer in AA by strengthening the evidence base
via
rapid, low-cost assessments. Both commercial and freely available satellite-derived data have reached an unprecedented level of quality, spatial, and temporal resolution. Simultaneously, there are major uncertainties regarding where, when, how, and under what conditions satellite data can support MEAL for AA at all. We argue that satellite data for an advanced MEAL framework should be considered already in the design phase of AA projects and that the translation of satellite data into actionable information will require a cross-cutting community of practice.
Mental disorders have the potential to affect an individual's capacity to perform household daily activities such as water, sanitation, and hygiene (food hygiene inclusive) that require effort, time, ...and strong internal motivation. However, there is limited detailed assessment about the influence of mental health on food hygiene behaviors at household level. We conducted a follow-up study to detect the effects of mental health on food hygiene behaviors after food hygiene intervention delivery to child caregivers in rural Malawi. Face-to-face interviews, based on the Risk, Attitude, Norms, Ability, and Self-regulations (RANAS) model, were conducted with 819 participants (control and intervention group) to assess their handwashing and food hygiene-related behaviors. Mental health was assessed using the validated Self-Reporting Questionnaire. Study results showed a significant negative relationship between mental health and handwashing with soap behavior (
= -0.135) and keeping utensils in an elevated place (
= -0.093). Further, a significant difference was found between people with good versus poor mental health on handwashing with soap behavior (
= 0.050) among the intervention group. The results showed that the influence of the intervention on handwashing with soap behavior was mediated by mental health. Thus, integration of mental health in food hygiene interventions can result in improved outcomes for caregivers with poor mental health.
Humanitarian technology: a critical research agenda Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora; Gabrielsen Jumbert, Maria; Karlsrud, John ...
International review of the Red Cross (2005),
03/2014, Letnik:
96, Številka:
893
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
New technology may offer many opportunities for humanitarian action, but it also presents a number of challenges. Currently, most of the critical analysis of these potential challenges takes place in ...the blogosphere, on tweets and on listservs. There is a strong need for more scholarly engagement on the subject. This article offers an agenda for critical inquiry into the emergent field of humanitarian technology as applied to a broadly defined context of crises, encompassing both natural disasters and conflict zones, by identifying what technology does to the humanitarian enterprise, and by reflecting on the key challenges that emerge.
•Thinking spatially can aid in locating and identifying missing persons.•Human interaction with the environment is patterned and non-random.•Modelling the missing with GIS is both an inductive and ...deductive process.
We review the current and potential uses of Geographic Information Software (GIS) and “spatial thinking” for understanding body disposal behaviour in times of mass fatalities, particularly armed conflict contexts. The review includes observations made by the authors during the course of their academic research and professional consulting on the use of spatial analysis and GIS to support Humanitarian Forensic Action (HFA) to search for the dead, theoretical and statistical considerations in modelling grave site locations, and suggestions on how this work may be advanced further.
Human trafficking is a complex, multifaceted, and deeply layered issue. Consequently, any mitigation strategy employed against it must also be layered and target the distinct aspects of the issue. ...For long, the obvious and perhaps the most visible practice to deal with cases of trafficking has been employing a criminal justice approach where the focus largely lies on the persecution of the criminal instead of the protection of the survivors. More nuanced approaches, such as anti-trafficking clauses that protect human rights and focus on removing root causes that directly or indirectly have an impact on trafficking patterns, including labor, migration, and sexual exploitation issues, have emerged to successfully tackle human trafficking as a global issue. The principles and guidelines for such a multi-sectoral, human rights-based approach are primarily aimed at trafficking prevention, protection, assistance to survivors of trafficking, criminalization, punishment, and redressal. This article aims to evaluate this approach and its intersections with the traditional criminal justice approach. It will further discuss the approach that is currently in practice and argue for further improvements and efforts. Finally, it will also discuss the impact of COVID-19 on trafficking in persons.
Abstract
Forensic anthropologists are often responsible for the management of long-term unidentified individuals. Others have contextualised these decedents—many of whom likely belonged to socially, ...politically, and/or economically marginalised groups in life—as part of a larger identification crisis in the US. However, there has been little discussion surrounding how this humanitarian crisis has manifested in academic institutions, where anthropologists often provide medicolegal consultation and act as long-term stewards of the unidentified. The Identification & Repatriation Initiative was created at the Forensic Anthropology Centre at Texas State University (FACTS) to recognise and investigate unidentified human remains in long-term storage. Our paper outlines common challenges that were encountered during our initial reassessment of unidentified cases at FACTS, emphasising the detrimental impacts of inconsistent procedures, loss of context, and case fatigue. It is likely that other academic institutions face similar challenges, and by highlighting these issues we hope to help initiate a larger conversation concerning ethical stewardship of human remains in these settings. By incorporating humanitarian perspectives into forensic casework, anthropologists in academia can better advocate for the long-term unidentified. Key PointsForensic anthropologists at academic institutions are qualified to act as consultants on forensic casework when requested by jurisdictional authorities and are often responsible for the long-term management of unidentified human remains.The long-term unidentified represent a vulnerable population and academic institutions are not exempt from calls for humanitarian approaches to identification.The Identification and Repatriation Initiative was created at the Forensic Anthropology Centre at Texas State University to acknowledge and investigate unidentified human remains in long-term storage.This paper considers possible ways for humanitarian action to be incorporated into academic settings and suggests anthropologists can better advocate for the unidentified through procedural standardisation, institutional and interagency collaboration and ethical stewardship.
PDF
