Mutual aid in times of crisis collection: Global Report “Recognising and Strengthening the Bonds That Save Us”

07/07/2026

When a crisis strikes, and all the more so when relief services are overwhelmed, a massive and systematic phenomenon emerges: the people affected help one another spontaneously. Seventy years of research confirm it, and yet it remains invisible in the doctrines, plans and training courses that organise crisis management. This report documents it from six case studies (La Roya, Chad, Australia, Ukraine, Briançon, La Réunion) and six webinars, together with a body of nearly 300 academic references. Its main findings: mutual aid always emerges, whatever the crisis; it comes before institutional relief. It can take various forms depending on residents’ relationship with institutions and on how prepared they are; and over time it either grows more structured or wears itself out, according to the quality of the pre-existing ties between residents and how well these connect with the institutions. The institutions, for their part, by leaving these mutual-aid dynamics unnamed, can neither see them nor anticipate them, nor even draw on them, and so tend to push them to the margins, which leads to damaging outcomes. This diagnosis leads to a proposal: to develop a genuine culture of mutual aid. The concept would rest on two pillars cultivated in ordinary times: bonds and shared meaning. The new posture this implies for institutions is neither command nor withdrawal, but what we call scaffolding, that is, support without absorption. For residents, the culture of mutual aid counters the narrative of individual retreat with one that is less dangerous and truer to the facts: faced with shared danger, people organise quickly, spontaneously and intelligently.