During the past five years the Red Cross has been involved in two different internal crises. All of them can be related to trustworthiness and brand image. Why would someone keep donating money to an organization that has been involved in fraud and suspicion of corruption? The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how non-governmental (NGO) and non-profit (NPO) organizations rebuild their brand image and trustworthiness after a crisis. We will look at the problem from both the organization’s and the public’s point of view. The dissertation is based on theories about brand image, trustworthiness and crisis management. For the theoretical framework a model was created from these different theories. This study is conducted as a qualitative case study with a realistic philosophy. The findings and analysis shows that the Red Cross has an elaborated crisis management with a good base that can be adapted to suit each situation. However, there are some miscommunications between the organization and the public. Therefore, we suggest three improvements that can be made: communicate directly to the public, investigate immediately when suspicions occur, communicate the internal functions to the public. The first conclusion is that their form of reactive crisis management is that they have a weak pre-emptive crisis management, which consists of diffuse guidelines. After the crisis, these guidelines are adapted to the crisis. The second conclusion is that the organizations brand image and trustworthiness was affected negatively directly after the crisis occurred. However, today both the brand image and the trustworthiness have become stronger than before the crisis. Recommendation for future research is that it can be conducted in another area and include the behavior aspects of the respondents. In addition, the crisis communication team could be investigated.

Denna studie undersöker problematiken kring attacker mot humanitära biståndsarbetare i konfliktområden. Studien ämnar bidra till detta forskningsfält med ett nytt perspektiv rörande risktagande på individuell så väl som organisatorisk nivå. Studien undersöker ifall detta risktagande kan äventyra biståndsarbetarnas säkerhet. Vidare problematiserar studien det dikotomiska tänkandet om huruvida organisationer bör dra sig ut eller stanna kvar i högriskområden. Detta görs genom att diskutera problematiken utifrån begreppet mänsklig säkerhet i relation till det humanitära uppdraget. Informationen samlades in genom att läsa tidigare litteratur, genomföra intervjuer och genom att  distribuera ett frågeformulär. Studien finner flera olika orsaker och incitament till högt risktagande och kategoriserar dessa som avsiktligt och oavsiktligt risktagande. Vidare uppmanar studien organisationer att beakta risktagandeperspektivet och att de bör hantera det oavsiktliga risktagandet eftersom det påverkar humanitära biståndsarbetares säkerhet negativt.

Problem: Disasters cause massive destruction and their occurrence (even though declining since the last years) is still a topic of high actuality. To mitigate their negative impacts, in particular humanitarian organizations put a lot of effort into helping nations and people to recover from disasters by providing relief commodities. Responding adequately to a disaster is difficult due to its highly complex and uncertain nature. Flexible but efficient supply chains are needed, which makes high demands on procurement operations. Within disaster relief logistics, procurement accounts for 65 % of total expenditures. Despite its significance, literature does not specifically focus on problems related to disaster relief procurement, which creates the need to examine this topic further, from theory as well as from practice. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze sourcing policies, currently applied by the largest humanitarian organizations in the field of disaster relief. Method: This thesis conducted a descriptive and exploratory study of the literature in order to create a framework for a content analysis. During the content analysis, 108 officially published reports of the 14 biggest humanitarian organizations (concerning their annual budget) were investigated concerning their procurement policies in disaster response operations. Hence, this study uses a qualitative approach for a cross-sectional analysis of secondary data. Conclusions: The findings of this paper present an overview of currently applied procurement concepts in disaster response. The compilation of a comprehensive sourcing toolbox allows the classification of sourcing policies. The results show a tendency, that similar procurement policies are applied in the largest humanitarian organizations regarding the area of sourcing or the number of suppliers. A lack of awareness and/or transparency was discovered regarding environmentally friendly procurement policies. The application of ethical procurement (social factors) is however highly emphasized by the organizations. An unexpected discovery was the importance of long-term agreements and the frequent application of tendering processes for supplier selection. Further research opportunities lie in the field of demand tailored sourcing instead of pre-stocking to reduce inventory costs or in the comparison of sourcing practices applied in big and small organizations. To sum up, humanitarian organizations not only focus on quick deliveries, also quality and cost efficiency are increasingly paid attention in the field of disaster response procurement.

To write the motivation of a thesis in the context of humanitarian relief while keeping up to date is like a Sisyphean task. Again, and again new disasters occur on our earth, which gives this topic its particular relevance. This becomes clear just by examining the most devastating natural disasters of the last five years (roughly the period of time in which this dissertation was written): 2015 earthquake in Nepal (8.831 deaths, 5.6 million people affected), Hurricane Matthew in 2016 (595 deaths, 2.4 million affected), 2017 Landslide in Sierra Leone (1.102 deaths, 12.000 affected), 2018 earthquake in Indonesia (4.340 deaths, 209.000 affected), and 2019 Measles in the Democratic Republic of Congo (5.400 deaths, 250.000 affected) (CRED and UCLouvain, 2020). In addition, disasters that occurred even longer ago cast their long shadows on the work of humanitarian actors. The earthquake in Haiti in 2010 with more than 220,000 deaths is exemplary here (CRED and UCLouvain, 2020). Even today, there are still over a hundred different organizations with humanitarian and development activities onsite.

This study examined the relationship between spiritual intelligence (SI), emotional intelligence (EI), coping ability (CA), and burnout (BO) among humanitarian aid workers in Zimbabwe. A convenience sample of 296 (53% males and 47% females) humanitarian aid workers was used in the study. Correlation and multiple regression analyses were used to explore the contribution of SI, EI, and CA to the burnout. Results indicated that SI, EI, and CA are all significantly related to Burnout and its dimensions of emotional exhaustion (EE), depersonalisation (DP) and personal accomplishment (PA) in humanitarian aid workers. CA and EI significantly contributed to the variation of scores in EE and DP whereas SI did not. However, all the three variables significantly contributed to the variation in PA. Gender, age, employment status and tenure in NGO had no significant relationships with EE, DP, or PA whereas contract type, length of service, educational level and nature of work were associated with statistically significant differences in EE, DP, and PA. The research contributed to the understanding of burnout among aid workers in Zimbabwe. Humanitarian organisations can use the findings to come up with scientifically backed recruitment, selection, training, and staff wellbeing policies and programmes that help to reduce the impact of burnout in the humanitarian aid sector. / Psychology / D. Phil. (Consulting Psychology)

En faisant un tour d’horizon des diverses règles de Droit International Public en vigueur, ce travail tentera de faire comprendre à son lecteur l’importance de la protection des droits de l’enfant dans le monde entier. Aujourd’hui encore trop d’enfants meurent chaque jour à cause de conflits, de maladies, de malnutrition…, beaucoup trop sont exploités et n’ont pas la possibilité de suivre des cours dans une école, voyant ainsi leur avenir leur échapper tous les jours un peu plus. C’est contre tous ces problèmes, trop récurrents, que les Etats se doivent d’intervenir en exerçant leur rôle de législateur, tant sur le plan international que sur le plan national. Mais ils doivent aussi assumer celui de sujet de droit en respectant les conventions internationales qu’ils se sont engagés à respecter de leur plein gré. Ce respect les oblige à protéger les enfants afin de leur offrir la possibilité de bénéficier des programmes d’aide mis en place sur le terrain par de nombreuses organisations humanitaires clamant haut et fort que tout le monde doit agir, d’une manière ou d’une autre, pour permettre le développement d’actions de plus en plus variées et de plus en plus efficaces malgré les difficultés. / By making a survey of the several rules of current public international law, this dissertation will try to make the reader undestand the importance of the protection of children's rights all over the world. Nowadays, children die every minute because of conflicts, diseases, malnutrition..., a lot of them are exploited and have no possibilities of going to school, seeing their future escaping them every day a little more. It is against all these too recurring problems that States have to intervene by exercising their legislator's role, both on the international level and on the national level. But they also have to take their role of subject of law by respecting the international conventions which they made a commitment to respect of their own free will. This respect requires them to protect the children by offering them the possibility of enjoying humanitarian aid set up by many organizations loudly proclaiming that everybody has to act, in one way or another, to allow the development of many and various actions in spite of difficulties.