Mutual aid in crisis situations (phase 1: research)

Context 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 was highlighted by Groupe URD’s real-time evaluations carried out in Lebanon² (2020) and Ukraine³ (2022).

Origins of the project

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 is at the crossroads of Groupe URD’s long-standing work on crises and vulnerability, the participation of local people in aid programmes and the localisation of aid, and Pablo Servigne’s work on disasters, the risk of collapse and mutual aid.

Phase 1 of the project: research

The project began with an initial phase of six case studies carried out between mid-2023 and mid-2024 as part of the ‘APIC 3 project’ on the subject of mutual aid in times of disaster in France:

• Briançon (reception of migrants)
• Vallée de la Roya (exceptional storm in 2020)
• Reunion Island (hurricanes)
• Ukraine (armed conflict 2022-present)
• Chad (floods in 2022)
• Australia (megafires and mega-floods in 2021 and 2022)

> Research objectives

The aim of these studies is to analyse and document the mechanisms of mutual aid according to the type of crisis, the socio-political contexts in which they take place and, also, according to the temporality of the crisis or disaster (before, after, during). The aim is also to identify people’s perceptions of the crisis and examine the ‘collective memory’. Finally, these studies aim to understand how ‘external’ aid (international and institutional) adapts to the informal logic of mutual aid.
The study targets the following individuals and institutions:

• People living in the villages and neighbourhoods concerned.
• Village associations and citizens’ groups.
• Local authorities from municipal to national level.
• Technical government departments affected by the crisis (Ministry of Health, Ministry of the Interior) at central and decentralised levels.
• Civil security.
• International and national aid agencies.

> Partners

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
2. https://www.urd.org/en/project/real-time-evaluation-of-the-response-to-the-explosion-in-beirut-on-4-august-2020/
3. https://www.urd.org/en/project/real-time-evaluation-in-ukraine/