Entries by Kimberly Howe

In following the lives of displaced female youth in South Sudan and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the research team was struck by how central mental health—in particular poor mental health and psychosocial functioning (MHPSS)—was to the lives of the study participants. This briefing paper outlines the general situation of displaced female youth—unmarried, married, divorced, widowed—from a MHPSS lens. The study shows how female youth in displacement are negatively impacted by traumatic experiences coming from…

“As local as possible, as international as necessary” has become the slogan of one of the latest trends in humanitarianism—localization. Since the World Humanitarian Summit of 2016, the localization agenda has been gaining momentum. While there are no internationally agreed upon definitions of localization, it generally refers to putting local actors at the center of the humanitarian system. While humanitarian actors assume that there are benefits to a localized response over those spearheaded by international…