Tending the helper's flame: Providing psychosocial support to humanitarian aid workers

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Ehrenreich
Keyword(s):  
Psychosocial Support ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Humanitarian Aid Workers

scholarly journals Humanitarian Aid Workers: The Forgotten First Responders

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Robert I.S. Macpherson ◽  
Frederick M. Burkle
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Health ◽  
Traumatic Stress ◽  
Stress Disorder ◽  
Psychosocial Support ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Psychological Problem ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Humanitarian Aid Workers ◽  
Hazardous Alcohol

Abstract Humanitarian aid workers are an overlooked population within the structure of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) research and assistance. This negligence is an industry-wide failure to address aid workers’ psychological health issues. The suspected numbers of death by suicide, diagnosed PTSD, depression, anxiety disorders, hazardous alcohol and drug consumption, emotional exhaustion, and other stress-related problems are impossible to quantify but are considered endemic. Tools for establishing organizational frameworks for mental health and psychosocial support are readily available. However, the capacity to implement this assistance requires the creation and practice of an open and non-judgmental culture, based on the realistic acceptance that aid work has become inherently dangerous. The possibility of developing a psychological problem because of aid work has increased along with the rise in levels of disease, injury, kidnapping, and assault. As a result, expressions of traumatic stress have become the norm rather than an exception. This commentary outlines the essential steps and components necessary to meet these requirements.

Sojourn Abroad: Adjustment Experiences of Missionaries and Humanitarian Aid Workers

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynette H. Bikos ◽  
Michael Klemens ◽  
Leigh Randa ◽  
Alyson Barry ◽  
Thomas Bore
Keyword(s):  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Humanitarian Aid Workers

scholarly journals Work–Life Balance Among Humanitarian Aid Workers

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 1191-1213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miranda Visser ◽  
Melinda Mills ◽  
Liesbet Heyse ◽  
Rafael Wittek ◽  
Vincenzo Bollettino
Keyword(s):  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Life Domain ◽  
Work Life ◽  
Work Life Balance ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Life Balance ◽  
Humanitarian Aid Workers ◽  
Trust In Management ◽  
Humanitarian Work

A limited body of research has examined satisfaction with work–life balance of expatriate workers who live abroad, residing outside the typical “family” or “life” domain. This study aims to demonstrate how and under which organizational circumstances job autonomy can increase work–life balance satisfaction of humanitarian aid expatriates. We hypothesize that especially in humanitarian work, trust in management can buffer potential negative effects of high autonomy. We test our hypothesis by means of ordinal logistic regression, using survey data collected among expatriates of the Operational Center Amsterdam of Médecins Sans Frontières ( N = 142). Results reveal that high levels of autonomy are positively related with work–life balance satisfaction when trust in the management of the organization is high. When trust in management is low, the effect of high autonomy on work–life balance satisfaction is negative. This implies that trust in management indeed buffers negative effects of high autonomy among expatriate humanitarian aid workers.

The Impact of Integrated UN Missions on Humanitarian NGO Security

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-225
Author(s):  
Emizet F. Kisangani ◽  
David F. Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Intrastate Conflict ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
Humanitarian Aid Workers ◽  
Humanitarian Action ◽  
Generalized Methods Of Moments ◽  
To Come ◽  
Methods Of Moments ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Since the end of the Cold War, the UN has extended many of its missions in conflict zones to include political, military, and humanitarian activities. Many humanitarian nongovernmental organizations have been critical of these “integrated” UN missions, claiming that they can blur the distinction between political, military, and humanitarian action, thus placing humanitarian aid workers at risk of retaliation from warring factions opposed to the UN’s political objectives. This proposition is empirically tested using generalized methods of moments statistical analysis of sixty-seven countries that experienced intrastate conflict between 1997 and 2018. When assessing attacks in general—to include the sum of aid workers killed, wounded, and kidnapped—the results indicate that humanitarian aid workers are more likely to come under attack in countries that have an integrated UN mission. However, when the attacks are assessed separately, results show that this relationship holds only with aid workers who are killed in the field.

scholarly journals Vicissitudes of laughter

Pragmatics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-300
Author(s):  
Kevin McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Job Satisfaction ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Palestinian Territories ◽  
Humanitarian Aid Workers ◽  
Humanitarian Work ◽  
The Way

Abstract This paper is concerned with the way that laughter is employed to manage threats to interlocutor affiliation in talk among humanitarian aid workers as they describe their professional activities in settings of armed conflict. I first set out to situate my analysis within the tradition of work in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EM), exploring how that approach differs in significant ways from work in pragmatics and related traditions of discourse analytic research. Unlike the latter approaches, EM examines laughter for the intelligibility it is deployed by speakers to furnish, so that the presumption of laughter’s revelatory nature which characterizes a pragmatically-oriented analysis is seen as a participant resource for rendering the situated significance of actions visible by and for the involved parties of a given episode of interaction. Following this, I examine talk from open-ended interviews with aid agency operatives who work in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, exploring how laughter is employed to manage threats to interlocutor affiliation where the potential accusation of opportunism arises in accounts of personal job satisfaction as against the legitimacy otherwise afforded with an appeal to altruism and self-sacrifice. Where speakers attend to the criticism of humanitarian activity for its significance in affecting outcomes of warfare, the management of these different demands is accomplished in reflexive work to ironize their own and others’ formulations of motivation for pursuing humanitarian work.

Occupational health for humanitarian aid workers in an Ebola outbreak

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannele Haggman ◽  
Joyce Kenkre ◽  
Carolyn Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Occupational Health ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Humanitarian Aid Workers
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