The development and spread of new technology and the internet has opened a new world of possibilities to gather data and create information in a crisis. However, it is not clear which information field managers require to make the best possible decisions. As a result, it is difficult for volunteers, technology developers, and others, to collect and analyze data that results in information that ...

Aid workers increasingly face risks when working in crisis regions. In order to improve effectiveness and safety of humanitarians, it is of great importance to provide a well thought out real-time socio-technical support. Thus, new policies and innovative technological solutions need to be developed and integrated into humanitarian workflows. For the requirements elicitation process to realize ...

Sexual violence is highly prevalent in armed conflict and other humanitarian crises and attracting increasing policy and practice attention. This systematic review aimed to canvas the extent and impact of initiatives to reduce incidence, risk and harm from sexual violence in conflict, post-conflict and other humanitarian crises, in low and middle income countries. Twenty three bibliographic dat...

Background The Syrian armed conflict is the worst humanitarian tragedy this century. With approximately 470,000 deaths and more than 13 million people displaced, the conflict continues to have a devastating impact on the health system and health outcomes within the country. Hundreds of international and national non-governmental organisations, as well as United Nations agencies have responded t...

Following the second Sahelian famine in 1984-1985, major investments were made to establish Early Warning Systems. These systems help to ensure that timely warnings and vulnerability information are available to decision makers to anticipate and avert food crises. In the recent crisis in the Horn of Africa, alarming levels of acute malnutrition were documented from March 2010, and by August 201...

On a bed in the fi eld hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an emaciated child, barely more than a stick fi gure, reaches out shakily to its mother’s back for support. But the mother is sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to the child, staring into space. She does not turn around. In the next bed, another refugee, Khadija, holds her 10-month-old son. They are doing slightly ...

In areas of armed conflicts, efforts to provide mental health services for refugees and internally displaced populations (IDPs) generally lack measures of effectiveness, and the gap between research and practice is significant (1). The Syrian Crisis has been described by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) as “the great tragedy of this century” (2). The UNHCR reports at le...

The Kosovo refugee crisis in the Macedonia in 1999 was unique in terms of its unprecedented magnitude against its short duration (sharp increase and sudden decrease in refugee population), its high visibility in the world media, and attention received by donors. In the late March 1999, after the launch of the NATO air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, refugees from Kosovo beg...