Coronavirus and Conflict: The Security Sector Response

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This USIP event, which took place on April 15, 2020, looked at creative solutions on how to respond to the confluence of coronavirus and conflict. USIP President and CEO Nancy Lindborg shared lessons from her experience responding to Ebola in West Africa and discussed why COVID-19 is a unique challenge to conflict-affected regions. This was followed by a panel discussion with experts from around the world on how security sectors are responding to coronavirus, how…

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The role of community peacebuilders in a pandemic: what we learnt from the Ebola crisis

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Comparing the current situation with the Ebola crisis, Janet Adama Mohammed from Conciliation Resources argues that a deep-rooted mistrust towards the government had been one of the main reasons for the rapid spread of this disease and that this is where local peacebuilders have an extremely important role as bridgebuilders between communities and government institutions. Read more

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Religion and COVID-19: Four Lessons from the Ebola experience

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Ebola and COVID-19, two devastating infectious diseases that spread rapidly through populations, crossing boundaries of all sorts, put local, national, and international health systems to crucial tests. They also try religious communities, locally and globally. The authors of this guest post, Katherine Marshall, Olivia Wilkinson and Dave Robinson, argue that we are learning vital lessons from both experiences. First, religion and science must combine their strengths. For this, religious voices must be at the medical…

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South Sudan: Trends in Communication Preferences and Modalities

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To inform COVID-19 risk communication outreach strategies, REACH put together this brief to summarize key findings on trends in communication preferences and modalities from past REACH assessments.   Download

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Anticipating the impacts of COVID-19 in humanitarian and food crisis contexts

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Although the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on short- and long-term food security is difficult to predict, particularly at this early juncture, some risk factors can be identified. Lessons from previous pandemics or global crises indicate that food security could be rapidly and dramatically affected, particularly in fragile countries and, within them, the most vulnerable populations have a lot to lose. While the COVID-19 pandemic is devastating lives, public health systems, livelihoods and economies all…

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Four Lessons from Outbreaks in Africa for the Age of Coronavirus

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As the coronavirus pandemic continues and new behavioral practices—from social distancing to avoiding handshakes and hugs—become expected norms overnight, there are crucial policy lessons to be learned from struggles against previous outbreaks of disease in Africa. Despite widespread poverty, weak infrastructure, and relatively few health professionals, there is an encouraging, long record of African countries—often with significant international assistance and cooperation—eventually managing to overcome dire health challenges. For non-African countries already facing large numbers of…

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Epidemics, pandemics and humanitarian challenges: Lessons from a number of health crises

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For more than 20 years, Groupe URD has been evaluating humanitarian response and crisis management, which almost always has a ‘health’ component. In all of these contexts, from Afghanistan to Colombia, by way of the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean, they have observed how health systems react to crises, whether it be in terms of war and disaster medicine, regular public health systems, or the management of major health crises, such as cholera and…

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ePROTECT Respiratory Infections

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All personnel responding to outbreaks of Acute Respiratory Infections (ARIs) need to have the basic knowledge and skills to mount an effective response. They need to understand what ARIs are, how they are transmitted, how to assess the risk of infection and to understand basic hygiene measures to protect themselves. This learning package consists of 4 modules with videos and downloadable presentations. Visit site

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Operational Guidance for Appropriate Interaction with Armed Actors in the Context of the COVID-19 Response v1.0

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Armed actors are or will likely be involved in an affected government’s response to COVID-19 in a number of ways. This operational guidance by OCHA provides practical approaches to navigating humanitarian operating environments where domestic armed actors are responding to COVID-19 as part of the government’s efforts, where peacekeeping forces and/or foreign armed actors (military and/or police) may possess unique capacity to support humanitarian requirements, or where a combination of the above is observable. The…

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Covid-19: five lessons from Ebola

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Humanitarians are sounding the alarm about the likely impact of Covid-19 on countries and communities already grappling with crises. Death rates – estimated at 1% in high-income countries with well-equipped hospitals – will likely climb when the virus spreads to South Sudan, Syria or Yemen, where health systems have collapsed and many hospitals lack even the most basic equipment. So how should humanitarian actors respond? Research by the Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) on the humanitarian…

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