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A questionnaire study was conducted to investigate the psychological adjustment of people who had been aid workers overseas. Nearly fifty percent of the sample of returned aid workers (n = 145) reported that they had experienced psychological difficulties while they were overseas or following their return to Britain. Most had not received any treatment for their difficulties. People who reported psychological problems had, on average, spent longer as aid workers than those who reported no psychological problems. Compared with a group of people preparing for their first term as overseas aid workers (n = 43), returned aid workers had significantly higher mean scores on measures assessing depression, intrusive thoughts, and, among women, avoidance. Aid workers who invalidated their feelings appeared to be especially vulnerable to developing psychological difficulties. When compared with people who did not intend to become aid workers (n = 71), returned aid workers and people preparing to become aid workers were found to perceive the world as a more benevolent and meaningful place. However, a small proportion of returned aid workers expressed views that the world was malevolent and meaningless; such views were related to the development of psychological problems. This finding was discussed with relation to Janoff-Bulman's (1992) theory of shattered assumptions. Implications of the findings were considered, including implications for the selection, preparation and treatment of aid workers.

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Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

The aim of the study is to examine how well MSB (Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency) prepare the Swedish humanitarian aid workers to face stressful situations, looking at the pre- deployment preparation received. The study investigates how effective and relevant the pre- deployment preparation is in terms of building resilience against stress, according to the humanitarian aid workers’ experience. This study has been conducted with a quantitative online survey, combined with a qualitative open- ended survey. The surveys were based on research models on work-related stress and on resilience- building among humanitarian aid workers. The frameworks point out criteria needed to be fulfilled by an organization in order to build sufficient stress- resilience among humanitarian aid workers in the pre- deployment phase. The results reveal that MSB is able to fulfill most of the criteria set in accordance with the theoretical framework. The one and only criterion MSB fails in providing is an open, in- depth discussion about mental health before the aid worker is deployed. This also corresponds to the aid workers experience of not being provided with this. The aid workers’ experience reveals that resilience against stress is important, however, many seem to build resilience independently from MSB.

Based in New York, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has been working in the Sudan since the 1980s. During this time, this Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) has shown itself to be a leader in its field. Funded by numerous agencies and aiding hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries, IRCs role in Sudan is constantly growing. Poised between the people whom it serves and the Government of Sudan, in whose territory it operates, the NGO roles as advocates and social service providers places them in a challenging position.<p> Since the first international NGOs entered Sudan during the great famine and war in the 1980s, the government has become increasingly suspicious of their actions. More recently, however, NGOs have become more commonplace in Sudan, funding and managing many of the social programmes in the country, including education, health care, water and sanitation and even infrastructure projects. This presence in the country has lent international political clout to NGOs, but has created resentment by the Sudanese government.<p> This situation is not unique. Around the globe many countries are being pressured by NGOs to alter policy direction. The concept of good governance has become prevalent in Western funding departments and donor organisations, calling for its use to encourage governments to become more democratic. In order to access funding, NGOs must therefore shift their focus to a greater emphasis on good governance as well. This is indeed the case of the IRC whose broad mission includes strengthening civil society and enabling good governance in Sudan.<p> The strong presence of NGOs combined with the sheer number of people they serve, the types of services that they provide, and their influence both nationally and internationally has lent credibility to the belief that these organisations are important entities in Sudan. However, the ability to carry out their mandates in times of emergencies and crisis is challenging as they must work within the constructs of the communities in which they serve and with the government of Sudan, which controls several of their activities.

The Thesis is focused on non-traditional application of logistics on humanitarian aid, because it is inseperable part of the foreign policy of each country. The theoretical part is devoted to basic definitions of both sectors. The practical part of thesis presents schemes of supply chains of czech humanitarian aid. The aim is to characterize the process of supply chain in the sphere of humanitarian aid in the Czech republic and out of its territory with two case studies (the flood in Novojičínsko and disaster in Japan). Then the author can compare processes of giving humanitarian aid in the Czech republic and out of it, also the author can suggest recommendation fot better future and underline weaknesses, which this logistics system has.

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This dissertation explores the lasting effects of recurrent temporary medical humanitarian operations through ethnographic research in communities, clinical facilities, nongovernmental aid organizations, and governmental bureaucracies in the northern Somali Region of Ethiopia. First, I found that medical humanitarian aid has altered persons' subjective experiences and expectations of biomedicine, spirit possession, health, and healing. Popular health cultures and conceptions of "biomedicine" as well as "traditional medicine" were changing, in part due to repeated exposures to relief operations. Second, I documented novel social formations to cope with recurrent aid: new labor relations to enable temporary work with international NGOs; new medical migrations to access comparable care and foreign medical commodities at distant private hospitals; and transnational extra-legal economies of medicine to fill gaps in care. Third, a set of racialized narratives have emerged in the interstices of aid that warn of malpractice and abuse by non-Somali Ethiopian clinicians. Such discourses echo Somalis' historical experiences of ethnic-based conflict with Ethiopian groups as well as their contemporary marginalization from Ethiopian sources of power. Accordingly, although aid is designed to improve immediate access to basic healthcare and medications, I find it also exacerbated medical insecurity. Northern Somalis' discursive expressions of medical insecurity have increased, paradoxically alongside steady improvements in their health and nutrition indicators. Finally, health and humanitarian interventions have altered local notions and practices of citizenship. In the last ten years, as Ethiopia has decentralized its health care delivery system, aid has been progressively channeled through Somali Regional State institutions. Accordingly, many Somalis now discuss the diverse ways in which they are increasingly interpolated into regional politics-often in opposition to the Ethiopian government. Medical humanitarian aid has shaped expectations of government as well as biomedicine. I argue that these new forms of citizenship have emerged primarily because of the intimate and profound nature of medical encounters themselves. The narrow humanitarian mission to minister to what social theorists call the "bare life" of victims, in actuality, is neither dispassionate nor removed from sociality and politics. Medical aid potentially provides spaces in which relations of care-giving, trust, and therefore responsive governance structures can develop.