A research report submitted to the Faculty of Law, Commerce and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in 50% fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management (in the field of Security). June, 2016 / This study explores civilians’ perceptions on the impartiality of the international humanitarian organization (IHO) Médecins sans Frontières (MSF). This is done through engaging participants from countries where MSF operates and has experienced different challenges in delivering humanitarian aid to civilians. The countries include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Somalia. A basic interpretive approach was used to explore and interpret participants’ perceptions. Interviews were conducted with groups of participants based on their respective countries of origin. The interview questions and guide were developed using indicators of impartiality which the researcher formulated based on varying literature and definition of impartiality, independence and neutrality as the core humanitarian principles that guide the work of MSF together with many other IHOs. Participants expressed their perceptions on the impartiality of MSF through reflecting on associations they made between the IHO and parties they considered to have vested interests in humanitarian crises. These parties included Western countries, the military and persons perceived to have discriminatory and colonial intentions. Upon analysis of these perceptions, it becomes clear that MSF, as an IHO that holds itself to operate according to the humanitarian principles of independence, neutrality and impartiality, needs to reflect on how it builds its identity in order to mitigate perceptions that may have potential to hinder its ability to access and assist civilians affected by humanitarian crises. / MT2016

Africa has been seeing a steady increase in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems deployed in health care institutions. This is evidenced by the funding that has been going into health information systems from both the government and the donor organisations. Large numbers of national and international agencies, research organisations, Non- Governmental Organisations(NGOs) etc continue to carry out studies and develop systems and procedures to exploit the power of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in public and private health institutions. This uncoordinated mass migration to electronic medical record systems in Africa has created a heterogeneous and complex computing environment in health care institutions, where most of the deployed systems have technologies that are local, proprietary and insular. Furthermore, the electronic infrastructure in Africa meant to facilitate the electronic exchange of information has a number of constraints. The infrastructure connectivity on which ICT applications run, is still segmented. Most parts of Africa lack the availability of a reliable connectivity infrastructure. In some cases, there is no connectivity at all. This work aims at using Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) to address the problems of interoperability of systems deployed in Africa and suggest design architectures that are able to deal with the state of poor connectivity. SOA offers to bring better interoperability of systems deployed and re-usability of existing IT assets, including those using different electronic health standards in a resource constrained environment like Africa. / Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Technology: Information Technology in the Faculty of Informatics And Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology 2014

No description available.