This study finds that experiences in Afghanistan highlight significant tension between stabilisation and internationally recognised guidelines and principles governing civil–military interaction. Civil–military dialogue was more effective when it was rooted in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and strategic argumentation, such as advocacy focused on reducing harm to ...» more
Library
This e-library contains more than 4500 external publications on governance, social development, conflict and humanitarian issues. It includes academic and grey literature selected for its basis in good quality research and coverage of a range of perspectives. Policy-oriented summaries of each document are provided, plus links to the full text.
Sanctuary in the city? Urban displacement and vulnerability
Little is known about how displaced people negotiate the urban environment, their relationships with host communities and governance institutions and their specific vulnerabilities as compared with other urban residents. This report collates the main findings of a two-year research project, which involved seven in-depth case studies – Nairobi, Kenya; Yei, South Sudan; Damascus, ...» more
Transnational Organized Crime in Eastern Africa: A Threat Assessment
Transnational organized crime in Eastern Africa is a product of both illicit markets that span continents and an underlying weakness in the rule of law. This report finds that:Due to conflict and poverty, Eastern Africa produces a large and vulnerable stream of smuggled migrants, who are abused and exploited at multiple stages of their journey. More than 100,000 people paid ...» more
Disaster Risk Reduction and Livelihoods
This report finds that Disaster Risk Reduction programmes and research need to begin to address the gaps in DRR knowledge and programming and the increased vulnerability of certain populations and locations. Such gaps include: Limited national capacity Limited funding for DRR compared to relief efforts Lack of standardised definitions, tools, methodologies, or assessments ...» more
Documentation and Transitional Justice in Afghanistan
In Afghanistan, the social upheaval resulting from thirty-five years of war has created widely differing narratives of the conflict: communities and political factions have reconstructed events through the lens of their experiences. Extensive dislocation of large segments of the population and poor communication throughout the war years meant that Afghans often had no way of ...» more
Call Detail Records: The use of mobile phone data to track and predict population displacement in disasters
Information about the displacement of people after disasters is crucial in determining the scale and impact of the emergency, and is vital for conducting humanitarian needs assessment on the ground. Methods to forecast or detect such migration are however very limited at present. However, this paper suggests that geo-referenced mobile phone call data could help to forecast ...» more
Applied political economy analysis: five practical issues
The last decade has seen an explosion of interest among operational development organisations in more and better ways of understanding the countries and sectors in which they operate. Aware that their efforts have often been compromised by ill-informed or unsophisticated assumptions about country context, agencies from the World Bank to local NGOs have been convinced that what ...» more
The Strugglers: The New Poor in Latin America?
This paper identifies a group of people in Latin America and other developing countries that are not poor but not middle class either. The authors define them as the vulnerable “strugglers”, people living in households with daily income per capita between $4 and $10 (at constant 2005 PPP dollar). These people are well above the international poverty line, but still vulnerable ...» more
On the Right Track: A brief review of monitoring and evaluation in the humanitarian sector
Do humanitarian organisations successfully measure the effect of their work, and what defines the extent to which this occurs? If additional efforts are needed to better capture the effect of humanitarian action, what specific gaps should these address?This report addresses these questions, based on a review of all indicators used by member organisations of the Consortium of ...» more
Social Capital and Disaster Recovery: Evidence from Sichuan Earthquake in 2008
Social capital can help reduce adverse shocks by facilitating access to transfers and remittances. This study examines how various measures of social capital are associated with disaster recovery after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. It finds that households having a larger Spring Festival network in 2008 do better in housing reconstruction. A larger network significantly ...» more
Cooperation from Crisis? Regional Responses to Humanitarian Emergencies
With the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Syria and the broader Middle East in mind, this report investigates how past examples of regional responses to humanitarian crises have succeeded or failed to meet humanitarian objectives, in order to inform responses to contemporary crises. Second, it assesses whether such regional responses contributed to strengthening regional ...» more
Social Transfers and Child Protection
This paper assesses the available evidence on the potential effects of social transfers on child protection outcomes in low- and middle-income countries: the negative outcomes or damaging exposure of children to violence, exploitation, abuse and neglect, and improved outcomes or a reduction in exposure to these phenomena. The study evaluates three possible channels through ...» more
Outside the Circle: A research initiative by Plan International into the rights of children with disabilities to education and protection in West Africa
Children with disabilities across West Africa are subject to profound levels of poverty, exclusion and discrimination. They are widely excluded from education and denied access to protection services as well as other rights enjoyed by abled children. This report outlines why children with disabilities are denied these basic rights; why they are outside the circle. It calls on ...» more
Placing protection at the centre of humanitarian action: Study on Protection Funding in Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
The big picture of trends in protection funding is mixed. On the plus side, the total amount of funding to protection has remained fairly steady, despite a decline in overall humanitarian funding since 2010. However, when we examine the extent to which protection is funded in appeals, it is always funded to a lesser extent than the sectors perceived to be more life-saving ...» more
Bringing Global Jihad to the Horn of Africa: al Shabaab, Western Fighters, and the Sacralisation of the Somali Conflict
Sacralisation of conflict is the process through which religion, or, in most cases, a militant interpretation of it, evolves from being an irrelevant or secondary factor at the onset of a conflict to shaping the views, actions, and aims of one or more of the conflict’s key actors. The article outlines how this phenomenon has taken place in Somalia over the past twenty years by ...» more
Mogadishu rising? Conflict and governance dynamics in the Somali capital
Somalia’s eight-year transition period officially ended on 20 August 2012, bringing to a close the TFG and its fractious parliament. Though the roadmap to transition process has been welcomed outside Somalia it was largely forced through by external actors. This carries the risk of isolating dissenting Somali voices, including those who may try to disrupt the new political ...» more
Building a Political Settlement: The International Approach to Kenya’s 2008 Post-Election Crisis
This study’s main findings indicate that in the 2008 post-election period the international development and diplomatic communities collectively commanded substantive influence over the nature and trajectory of Kenya’s evolving political settlement. It argues that these actors enhanced their influence over many important political issues principally as a result of applying good ...» more
The Protection of Civilians: An Evolving Paradigm?
Despite the enormous growth in opportunities for interaction between militaries and humanitarians there is only a very limited literature on their interaction over protection issues and evaluations of the emerging doctrines. Consequently this article charts the growth in military policies towards POC in the UN, UK, NATO and a range of other states as well as drawing attention ...» more
Lights, Camera, Jihad: Al-Shabaab’s Western Media Strategy
While the threat that al-Shabaab poses to the West can easily be overstated, its outreach to Muslims living in Europe and the United States has been successful relative to other al-Qaeda-linked groups and warrants exploration. The organisation has recruited dozens of foreign fighters from the West. It also holds the dubious distinction of being the first jihadist organisation ...» more
The Two Faces of Security in Hybrid Political Orders: A Framework for Analysis and Research
This paper reframes the security and development debate through fresh theoretical lenses, which view security as highly contested both in the realm of politics and in the realm of ideas. For some analysts security concerns political power, including the use of organised force to establish and maintain social orders and to protect them from external and internal threats. For ...» more
