Disasters最新文献

Millions of people from Ukraine have been forced to flee their homes to seek safety, protection, and assistance owing to armed conflict. This study aims to draw a parallel between the meaning and importance of the initial impact of Russian military aggression in February 2022 and the recent plight of Ukrainian refugees on Romania's territory. It is based on the results of a dedicated thematic survey of Ukrainian refugees as part of fieldwork carried out by the authors between March and April 2022 and a survey launched by the United Nations Refugee Agency in Romania between October 2022 and August 2023. The study emphasises the importance of raising awareness and building solidarity and support to counterbalance the effects of the crisis with respect to: (i) refugees in their hometowns and losses incurred; (ii) refugees' needs, help provided, and expectations; (iii) the need to integrate refugees into different fields of daily life; and (iv) a return to Ukraine.

This research explores the dynamics of interaction between the sovereign state and international humanitarian organisations in alleviating human suffering in the Syrian civil war. Considering civil wars as a rupture in sovereignty, its focus is on the practices of the sovereign state within its social context and the resulting implications for aid organisations. I argue that the Syrian regime has employed state violence, in tandem with administrative and bureaucratic impediments, to reassert its sovereign authority in humanitarian decision-making processes. This exercise of sovereign power is intertwined with the actions of aid organisations, thereby reshaping power dynamics among the state, aid organisations, and vulnerable populations. Through a qualitative method, I show that the deployment of state violence concomitantly pushes aid organisations, specifically the United Nations, towards enforcing the state sovereignty defined by the regime. As an effect of assertive sovereignty, interpretations of humanitarian principles and practices are continuously negotiated and constructed differently by aid organisations, even though they share a common overarching goal.

This paper challenges current approaches to undertaking community-centred disaster recovery. Community-centred approaches are widely recognised as 'the gold standard' for effective recovery from disasters. Yet, they are rarely applied well enough in practice. Challenges include the 'authority' culture of command-and-control agencies, the emphasis on discrete recovery time frames, and the reluctance to relinquish centralised control. The paper focuses on people's experiences of community-centred recovery in New South Wales, Australia, which has experienced severe fires and floods since 2019. We undertook key informant interviews and an online survey to inquire into how community-centred recovery is enacted. Our work uncovered widespread dissatisfaction with current practices. The paper discusses key themes emerging from the research and ends with a call to change how community-centred recovery is framed and conducted by responding organisations, to include the underlying causes of vulnerability in recovery, to measure success differently, and to alter the narrative of who 'owns' disasters.

Little evidence exists on the design and implementation of anticipatory action (AA) in complex crises. This article examines a 2022 United Nations 'early action' pilot in South Sudan in advance of extreme flooding. As a case study of efforts to act in a complex crisis, it contributes to learning on assisting conflict-affected and displaced populations in advance of extreme weather events. The research points towards the possibility and value of implementing forecast-informed early action in complex contexts with limited forecast skills and multiple hazards when trigger-based AA is not possible. It also argues for the need to link AA implemented in complex crises to development and peacebuilding actors and processes. More broadly, examining the perceptions and processes of AA in the form of early action, rather than a formal AA framework, is highly relevant for the AA community as attention is increasingly placed on providing AA in countries affected by fragility and conflict.

The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic initiated debates on how crisis management affects democracy. In them, the balance between deploying control strategies that limit citizens' freedom and their democratic legitimation features prominently. Informed by theoretical debates about responsive crisis governance, this paper explores how Chinese citizens reacted by quantitatively and qualitatively analysing social media expressions and Chinese stakeholders' narratives. The quantitative analysis indicated that public sentiments towards pandemic control were complex and mostly related to the severe pandemic in Wuhan. Negative sentiments were mainly directed at local states; national states largely received respect. The qualitative analysis exhibited more nuances. Although Chinese crisis governance raised efficiency and trust, aggressive accountability efforts and improper information exchange caused justice deficits and public anxiety. Draconian social control misaligned public interests and a lack of specific partnership mechanisms frustrated social participation. Reconciling institutional efficiency with civic liberties on diverse governance levels is thus expected to increase the responsiveness of pandemic control to public demands.

What are the consequential socio-spatial vulnerabilities of fragmentation in flood risk governance (FRG) functions in Tana River County, Kenya? To answer the question, this paper utilises social differentiation theory to establish types and consequences of such fragmentation. It applies theoretical patterns and processes of social differentiation to expose that FRG diversification could result in fragmentation of FRG functions. The study employs an interview strategy that focuses on governmental and non-governmental FRG actors. The results reveal that fragmented FRG functions in Tana River County was not an intentional policy decision, but rather a product of a transitional vacuum between policy promulgation and implementation. Furthermore, socio-spatial vulnerabilities differentiated by patterns and processes related to age, gender, disability, and ethnicity, for instance, are consequential outcomes of fragmented FRG functions in the Tana River floodplains. The study recommends implementation of the National Disaster Management Policy in Tana River County and institutionalisation of a specific FRG policy and legal framework.

This study explores the South Korean Deaf community's response to sign language interpreting during the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) health crisis, focusing on individual factors affecting the signers' comprehension. The data were collected from a mobile-based questionnaire survey conducted among 401 Deaf adults; binary probit modelling was adopted to analyse the data. The major findings are: (i) 59.9 per cent of the respondents understood less than 70 per cent of the interpreting; (ii) males and urban residents tend to understand better; (iii) younger people (less than 50 years) and signers with a Bachelor's degree or higher are likely to have lower comprehension; and (iv) Deaf adults who visited a doctor after the COVID-19 outbreak tended to have lower comprehension. The findings demonstrate that individual characteristics, including age, impact significantly on the extent to which Deaf individuals understand the sign language interpreting of COVID-19 information, indicating that steps are needed to achieve a Deaf-inclusive society during a health disaster.

Public discourse is rich in meaning, reflecting consensus, dissent, and change. Yet, very little public discourse on the humanitarian sector has been authored by aid workers themselves. We conducted a thematic analysis of the 'Secret Aid Worker' (SAW) series, published in The Guardian newspaper between 2015 and 2018, the only corpus of data on humanitarian life experiences publicly accessible through mainstream media. Our research questions were twofold: how did authors frame their work and appraise humanitarian structures?; and how did they reflect and amplify humanitarian issues of the time? The main themes included: personal challenges of humanitarian life; characterisation of stakeholders; and systemic issues within the humanitarian sector. The SAW narratives reveal a powerful discourse of discontent. They planted seeds of change regarding shifting power, coloniality and racism, sexual abuse, and duty of care. We argue that such public discourse has symbolic power, calling for greater accountability, equity, and justice in remaking the future of the humanitarian sector.