Background: In Myanmar, ongoing conflict since the 2021 military coup d'etat has been characterized by targeted violence against health workers (HWs), particularly those participating in the pro-democracy movement. Existing knowledge about the challenges faced by health workers in Myanmar is scant, including their perspectives on mitigating their suffering and the broader impact on community health. This knowledge gap prompted our study to assess the extent of the violence, its impact on the workers and the community, and identify resource priorities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe scale of attacks on healthcare has become more visible and its impact greater in recent armed conflicts in Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar. In these conflicts, combatants systematically target health facilities and ambulances. We need to ensure that attacks on healthcare do not become the new norm amongst governmental troops and non-State armed groups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Attacks on health care represent an area of growing international concern. Publicly available data are important in documenting attacks, and are often the only easily accessible data source. Data collection processes about attacks on health and their implications have received little attention, despite the fact that datasets and their collection processes may result in differing numbers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Attacks on health care in armed conflict, including those on health workers, facilities, patients and transports, represent serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. Information about these incidents and their characteristics are available in myriad forms: as published research or commentary, investigative reports, and within online data collection initiatives. We review the research on attacks on health to understand what data they rely on, what subjects they cover and what gaps exist in order to develop a research agenda going forward.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSurprisingly little attention is paid to the role of digital technology and related forms of data production, storage, processing, and sharing in humanitarian governance. This paper uses Michael Barnett's () conceptualisation of humanitarian governance when arguing for a better accounting of technology in literature on humanitarian governance. Specifically, it proposes a two-fold alertness to governance of (a) the uses of new technology and (b) that which is produced by digital technologies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper explores three questions related to acceptance as a security management approach. Acceptance draws upon relationships with community members, authorities, belligerents and other stakeholders to provide consent for the presence and activities of a non-governmental organisation (NGO), thereby reducing threats from these actors. Little is documented about how NGOs gain and maintain acceptance, how they assess and monitor the presence and degree of acceptance, or how they determine whether acceptance is effective in a particular context.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper documents current understanding of acceptance as a security management approach and explores issues and challenges non-governmental organisations (NGOs) confront when implementing an acceptance approach to security management. It argues that the failure of organisations to systematise and clearly articulate acceptance as a distinct security management approach and a lack of organisational policies and procedures concerning acceptance hinder its efficacy as a security management approach. The paper identifies key and cross-cutting components of acceptance that are critical to its effective implementation in order to advance a comprehensive and systematic concept of acceptance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper reports on research conducted on the insecurity of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) between 1999 and 2002, with the goal of contributing to the debate on the reasons why NGO actors are targets of violence in conflict settings. The research involved the collection of data from three countries-Angola, Ecuador and Sierra Leone-and exploration of the relationship between levels of insecurity, context and the characteristics of NGOs. Four risk factors appear to heighten the degree of insecurity that NGOs face: (1) carrying out multiple types of activities and providing material aid; (2)'operationality'(that is, implementing programmes and activities); (3) working with both sides of the conflict; and (4) integrating into the local community.
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