Mutual aid in crisis and disaster situations

Context and origins of the project

The frequency, intensity and nature of crises is changing. The major, and often interconnected, changes that are happening, whether related to the climate, politics, geopolitics, health, etc., have raised questions about the capacity of traditional aid organisations to take action. The countries who thought they were protected from these crises, or at least prepared for them, are beginning to see that their emergency services and institutions are not ready for the systemic risks that they now face.

At the same time, the affected populations, who often are not prepared or trained to cope with these changes, help each other and self-organise during crises, based on spontaneous, endogenous and informal processes. The COVID pandemic has left a lasting impression, highlighting the potential for citizens and local actors to organise when faced with an unprecedented situation. The same dynamics are regularly observed in crisis contexts, and have been highlighted, for example, in our evaluations, and in the work of several social scientists¹.

However, in our numerous evaluations of humanitarian responses, we have shown that external actors do not always take this potential into account, and as a result, they can weaken local dynamics. This is due, notably, to a lack of understanding of the local mechanisms that regulate mutual aid. Based on case studies of specific crisis contexts, the aim of this study is therefore to improve understanding of the processes involved in order to make operational recommendations for individuals and organisations involved in the response.

This project came into being following discussions between the Groupe URD team and Pablo Servigne, at the Autumn School on Humanitarian Aid in 2019 on “Climate change, multiple crises and collapse: what can the aid sector do to anticipate and adapt to the major changes ahead?” and in 2021 on “Local solidarity, mutual assistance and citizenship: the forgotten side of crisis response?”

The project combines:

• The work that Groupe URD has carried out for many years on crises and fragilities, the participation of local people in aid programmes (‘Bénéficiaires ou partenaires : quels rôles pour les populations dans l’action humanitaire ?’ Groupe URD, Éditions Karthala, 2005 ; and the ‘Participation Handbook for humanitarian field workers’, ALNAP & Groupe URD, 2009) and the challenges of aid localisation.

• Pablo’s work on crises, the risk of collapse and mutual aid  (‘How everything can collapse’, 2015, ‘Mutual Aid : The Other Law of the Jungle’, 2017, and ‘Another End of the World Is Possible’, 2018).

The evaluations that we have carried out recently, in Lebanon two weeks after the explosion in the Port of Beirut in August 2020, in the Roya valley five days after storm Alex in autumn 2020 and in Ukraine in the summer of 2022 have all underlined, once again, the importance of the response by citizens during a crisis.

Objectives of the research

Several case studies will analyse and document endogenous mutual aid mechanisms in crisis contexts and will seek to understand how they articulate with institutional aid operations. They will focus on different contexts/continents and different types of crisis (natural disaster, conflict and population displacement) in order to cover the wide range of practices and behaviour that exist among affected populations. In each country, two case studies will be carried out. These will involve two specific crisis situations and will focus on a specific territory (a village or neighbourhood).

More specifically, the aim will be to :

• analyse endogenous mutual aid strategies depending on the type of crisis and the socio-political context;
• analyse mutual aid dynamics and how these evolve depending on the phase of the crisis or the disaster (before, during or after);
• understand how the population perceives the crisis and analyse ‘collective memory’;
• understand how ‘external’ (international and institutional) aid adapts itself to informal, mutual aid approaches.

The study findings are aimed at individuals and organisations involved in responses, with a view to preparing for risks and improving operations, particularly in terms of the interaction between external actors and crisis-affected communities.

The following individuals and institutions will be targeted by the study:

• The inhabitants of the villages and neighbourhoods concerned.
• Village associations and citizen-based collectives.
• Local authorities, from the municipal to the national level.
• State technical services concerned by the crisis (Ministry of Health and Interior Ministry) at the central and decentralised levels.
• Civil protection forces.
• International and national aid organisations.

The aim will then be to promote awareness of these forms of spontaneous action, of preparation and of citizens’, inhabitants’ and actors’ capacity to take action within a given territory. The results of the study will be widely disseminated via different formats (videos, events and different forms of communication). And different tools, such as a handbook, workshops and training courses, will be developed.

This operational research project is part of, ‘Learning and Innovating to Improve Crisis Response – phase 3’ (2022 – 2025). This project, which aims to help structure the NGO sector, is funded by the French Development Agency, Fondation de France, the Principality of Monaco and the Auvergne Rhône Alpes Region.

1. See: Revet Sandrine, Anthropologie d’une catastrophe. Les coulées de boue de 1999 au Venezuela, Paris, Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2007 ; Desportes Isabelle, Craindre le politique : la réponse humanitaire aux catastrophes dites « naturelles » en Birmanie (2015), Éthiopie (2016) et au Zimbabwe (2016-2019), Cahiers d’Outre Mer, 2022 ; et Corbet Alice, Les différentes dimensions de la mémoire du séisme de 2010 en Haïti, Entre pratiques du quotidien et tentatives de mises en mémoire officielle, L’Espace Politique (2020