The Localization Tide: An Assessment of Power & Money Dynamics among Community-Based Organization in Nakivale Refugee Settlement During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Year: 2022
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally shifted the humanitarian landscape. Like never before, health workers from higher-income countries have been weighing the risks of contracting the virus abroad, where health care is limited. What has followed has been the massive withdrawal of international organizations from refugee camps, including international humanitarian organizations, from UN agencies to Médecins Sans Frontières as well as mid-sized non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. The operational capacities of pillar organizations such as the World Food Programme and International Organization for Migration have been slashed – workers have been laid off, food distribution has become sparser, and stipends for refugees in camps have been cut (Pincock & Betts, 2020). Unlike higher-income countries (HICs), which have suffered from far more COVID-19 cases than most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the predicament that humanitarian settings in LMICs are encountering is not necessarily the virus itself. Rather, it is a structural problem that is playing out very clearly in this new crisis, which shines a light on institutional power through which organizations at the top of the humanitarian hierarchy are responding (or not responding) to the virus, leaving operational gaps in their absence. In addition to monitoring how the ability of CBOs to serve as implementing partners in Nakivale has shifted through the pandemic, this thesis also tracks how humanitarian aid money and health resources have been channeled into Nakivale over the past 18 months. In doing so, I will compare these current practices with financial and human resource investments before the pandemic. Finally, the thesis will investigate how small CBOs have remained resilient amidst extraordinary uncertainty in their financing and how they have found adaptive ways to fund themselves when long held financial partners have withdrawn or their commitments expired.
Author: Nair, Shuait
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7134450174