In a world where insecurities, violence and disasters seem to be increasing on a daily basis, compassion, a moral sentiment of co-suffering and motivation to alleviate it, plays an important role, especially in humanitarian action. However, compassion is not a constant feeling, and our emotions and compassion towards tragedies do not always resonate with egalitarian principles. This thesis seeks to explore the potential relationship between field experience, in humanitarian action, and compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue. Departing from two contrasting hypotheses, grounded in theories of compassion, it investigates the factors, relating to field experience, that affect this moral sentiment, in a single case study of the Network on Humanitarian Action (NOHA). Through a quantitative survey design, combined with semi-structured interviews, the study finds that there exists no isolated correlation between field experience and compassion fatigue or satisfaction. However, the study concludes that compassion is affected by several intervening variables, relating to field experience, which can result in either compassion fatigue or satisfaction, resonating with both hypotheses.

In the wake of climate change to provide timely information is a must to ensure that the most vulnerable people are protected, and development gains secured. Particularly in agriculture and food security, providing information on time is vital to secure people’s livelihoods. Many actors in the development and humanitarian field have therefor adapted seemingly neutral technologies in their programs to ensure localised and timely information. However, passive technologies are actively implemented into intersecting local power dynamics. Gender among race, class, ethnicity and caste is an essential determinant of the access to power and resources. In India, women contribute up to 80 per cent of the work in rural settings if accounting for care work and unpaid labour on the family farm. However, women are also significantly less likely to own and operate a smartphone or generally benefit from the digitalisation process as they lack digital skills. This study explores the root causes of this disadvantage, detangling economic and social drivers through qualitative expert interviews. Primarily, it investigates the importance of social norms as the main driver. The interviews were analysed through thematic coding with the program Atlas.ti. The results strongly indicated that gender norms lead to the minimisation of women’s contributions in the rural economy while reverting their existences to their reproductive functions. Economic barriers, such as economic dependency, meanwhile can be primarily attributed to strict social norms rather than being own determents of inequality. The financial dependency then again leads to structural imbalances which consequentially solidifies already existing marginalisation’s. While India in recent decades has not needed mayor humanitarian interventions, the learnings from this study are equally applicable in the humanitarian setting as technology important. Technology is not neutral or passively adapted. Only when interventions combine their work with gender-sensitivity measures, it can reach the ones most in need. On the other hand, if programs lack to consider these implications, their programs the interventions are not gender-neutral but solidified inequalities and power imbalances. In the last sections, I, therefore, provided recommendations on how to make a technology-based intervention more gender-inclusive. These recommendations are easily adaptable and applicable to other fields of intervention.

In this thesis we look further into Oxfam and Action Against Hunger’s use of the concepts of accountability and participation, how the concepts are informing the programming of humanitarian interventions as well as their materialization in the implementation of the programs in Chad. The study is based on a literature review with secondary sources as the basis of the research material. Scholars debating the concepts provide for the point of departure and the case study is based on the project and program proposals from the organizations themselves. The thesis attempts to demonstrate Oxfam and Action Against Hunger’s degree of fulfilment of the frameworks relating to accountability and participation currently available, in regards of two ongoing interventions in Chad. The result of the research positively demonstrates that the organization uphold their commitments on paper, and to some extent invites the reader to understand the practical action used to adhere to the concepts. It further indicates a lack of insight into what level of accountability and participation which is upheld prior to the identification of activities and the methodology uses in the needs assessment.

The inclusion of sexual and gender minorities (SOGI minorities) in humanitarian action has until quite recently been a neglected topic within the humanitarian sector. This paper zeroes in on the growing discussion surrounding this issue by analyzing and problematizing ”non-local” humanitarian actors' advocacy for SOGI inclusive humanitarian efforts in ”SOGI hostile” states. The thesis can be divided into three parts. I firstly account for how four ”non-local” humanitarian actors’ have advocated for SOGI inclusion in humanitarian action in ”SOGI hostile” settings. After this, I problematize the discussed advocacy using postcolonial concepts. I lastly come with suggestions regarding how the identified problems can be remedied. The study has shown that humanitarian actors engage in advocacy for SOGI inclusion in various ways. Some of the actors seem comfortable with directly pushing the idea of SOGI inclusivity onto humanitarian workers in ”SOGI hostile” states, while others take a more relaxed approach. Regarding the problems with the advocacy discussed in the paper I have argued that the advocacy does not take postcolonial concerns into a sufficient account, and that it often seems to be rooted in western understandings of sexuality. One of the actors also appears to undermine the risks that can come with advocating for SOGI inclusion in certain settings. To remedy the mentioned problems I suggest that aspects of a Culturally specific advocacy approach should be implemented when ”non-local” humanitarian actors advocate for SOGI inclusion in ”SOGI hostile” states, since such an approach would consider the impacts of colonialism. I also implore the discussed humanitarian actors to look beyond ”identity-centric” and ”LGBTI-centric” understandings of gender and sexuality. I lastly assert that the advocacy should recognize that inclusion may be unsafe in some contexts.

Although growing scientific evidence has highlighted beneficial effects of religion and spirituality on mental health and psychosocial well-being, the integration of religious and spiritual needs with mental health and psychosocial support in humanitarian contexts has been identified as a gap. Accordingly, this can be linked to a lack of official related guidelines of how to address these concepts in the humanitarian sector. This issue becomes particularly relevant in contexts where religion and spirituality play a crucial role. This study explores this problem in the context of Indonesia which due to commonly occurring natural disaster is targeted by humanitarian responses, while also being a religious and spiritual country. The purpose of this study therefore responds to this background by discovering the integration of religion and spirituality in mental health and psychosocial support provided by humanitarian organisations in Indonesia and formulating recommendations on the same. This was operationalised through a qualitative approach, and more specifically an embedded single-case study design. Further, the material consists of information retrieved through interviews and documents, from humanitarian organisations selected through snowball sampling. Analysed with the support of the ADAPT model, an adapted version, the IASC MHPSS Guideline, and the additional Faith-Sensitive Guideline, this study concludes that humanitarian organisations operating in Indonesia, either mainstreamed or not, work with mental health and psychosocial support, and thereby also include approaches which consider religion and spirituality. However, while well aware of the contextual needs, in particular the latter is not formally integrated. Accordingly, this study suggests organisational capacity building on the integration of religion and spirituality in MHPSS, based on existing guidelines and institutional knowledge and capacity, in order to ensure and improve proper humanitarian responses.

After more than 50 years of internal armed conflict, Colombia has entered into a stage of postconflict after a peace agreement was signed in 2016. This process will be challenging for the country, as the conflict has created increased poverty and segregation as well as a lack of opportunities for those that have been affected by the conflict. This thesis collects perceptions of international humanitarian actors working in the Colombian context, and their perception on how humanitarian action can be used to strengthen the Colombian post-conflict process. Through a theoretical standpoint of Institutionalization Before Liberalization (IBL) theory by Roland Paris (2004), the findings were collected. Key findings include the need to recognize the humanitarian needs in Colombia despite the conflict ending, the importance of building knowledge in society about the peace agreement and make room for transition of experience and knowledge from the humanitarian field to the government and development actors. Analysing the findings, it shows that Colombia’s current peace transition would be furthered by strengthening the nation’s institutions and making long-term strategies on how to create electoral and societal systems that would unite and reconcile the population. It also shows that while the IBL theory is applicable to the Colombian post-conflict process, it fails to capture educational components that are deemed essential by the interviewed organizations. The thesis concludes that humanitarian organizations should be viewed as pivotal actors for the implementation of the Colombian peace agreement and that the Colombian government and international donors needs to put aside long-term resources and time to create a post-conflict society that will foster guarantees of the armed conflict not returning to Colombia.

Disaster survivors, facing many aspects of mental distress, sometimes are forced to stay in temporary housing for years. Their psychosocial needs have changed after the traumatic event, but existing temporary housing designs do not respond to their real needs, nor acknowledge the capacity within the community as a whole.  This thesis aims to answer the question of how post-disaster temporary housing contributes to psychosocial aspects of community resilience building.  Based on the literature review of existing studies on post-disaster temporary housing, discussions on key factors of community psychosocial resilience and the psychosocial impact of temporary housing were conducted in this thesis. These discussions were followed by a comparative case study on the implementation and follow-up actions of two post-disaster temporary housing projects in China and Japan.  The analysis of these two topics and the case study reveal gaps between humanitarians and architects, when they work together to develop temporary housing, as well as aspects that can be improved for temporary housing to better meet the needs of its inhabitants and empower them for improved recovery.  The results indicate that temporary housing has a psychosocial impact on its inhabitants. By designing the built environment of temporary housing that strengthens shared community identity and promotes mutual help from community members, community resilience can be better fostered. Achieving this will require better coordination between humanitarians and architects, as well as the involvement of other interdisciplinary professionals.

Humanitarian action faces challenges in engaging with LGBTQI+ people. Research has shown that humanitarian response to LGBTQI+ people are solely studied on the issues around resettlement, migration and legal protection of LGBTQI+ people. This study aims to provide a critical analysis to engagement practices of humanitarian actors with LGBTQI+ people in Hatay, Turkey. In order to explore this engagement, this study asks the role of humanitarian actors in identifying the LGBTQI+ community, the strategies used by the humanitarian actors to support the LGBTQI+ community, the consequences of humanitarian professions’ actions in Hatay, Turkey. This research is based on empirical findings of six semi-structured interviews conducted with LGBTQI+ people and humanitarian professionals. The most significant finding of this study is that humanitarian organizations refrain particularly from engaging with LGBTQI+ people because of the existing primary frameworks between LGBTQI+ people and Syrian community, and also between the Government of Turkey and humanitarian organizations. This leads to increased invisibilities, re-stigmatization and dissociation of LGBTQI+ people from the society.

Nuclear weapons pose a threat to humanity and a disaster waiting to happen; should tragedy occur the humanitarian sector will undoubtedly be among the first to respond to the needs of the victims. The scale and scope of a nuclear disaster is bound to be far beyond the capability and capacity of states to adequately address, let alone humanitarian organizations. The thesis therefore explores actions available to the humanitarian sector in the form of advocacy in favour of nuclear disarmament and seeking the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. To achieve this the present work suggests a collective statement supported by humanitarian organizations globally. It describes a novel concept in the form of a posture of peace as possible indicator or descriptor of any actor’s intention based on content of explicit or implicit behaviour. It finds that knowledge around nuclear weapons is well enough established that action, or lack thereof, comes from a lack of political will which here is seen as obstacle that may be addressed by a collective statement by the humanitarian sector. A collective statement is here seen as a course of action that may spur governing actors to abolish nuclear weapons without creating tensions that may lead to further conflicts as well as being one of the few ways the humanitarian sector can, in a sense, protest.

While both localisation and gender were major topics at the World Humanitarian Summit of 2016, they have largely been considered in isolation. Yet, the underlying issue in both cases are power inequalities, which this research seeks to highlight through an intersectional feminist perspective. Based on a qualitative case study on Oxfam Canada, this research thus aims to understand how social locations based on gender and their intersections with other social locations are integrated into Oxfam Canada’s discussions around a feminist approach to localisation. Based on a thematic analysis, this paper evaluates the main proposition that Oxfam Canada’s feminist approach to localisation is largely based on a conceptualisation of gender as a binary and as an isolated category. This was largely confirmed by the empirical findings that revealed that Oxfam Canada’s focus clearly lies on “local” (presumably cis-gender heterosexual) women. Nevertheless, the empirical analysis also showed burgeoning aspects of intersectional feminist perspectives such as the focus on power analyses that at times span across different levels (i.e. household, community, societal, and global), their emphasis on the importance of acknowledging their own positionality, as well as their commitments to coherence between their objectives and ways of working.