2024

Impacts of early action support on lives and livelihoods in South Sudan: The Life in Bentiu Study – Final impact report

Background South Sudan continues to face severe levels of violent conflict and climatic disasters, and households rely heavily on humanitarian assistance. In Bentiu, IOM and six other UN organizations have provided early action support under the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) to prepare households against the risks of future floods and to mitigate their […]

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Short- and medium-term impacts of small-scale vegetable support on food security: evidence from Syria

Small-scale agricultural and horticultural interventions play a critical role in improving nutrition and food security of vulnerable households in peaceful settings. However, scant rigorous evidence exists on the impacts and sustainability of such interventions in conflict settings. In this paper, we address this knowledge gap by analyzing the short- and medium-term impacts of a small-scale […]

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Cohesion Among Whom? Stayees, Displaced, and Returnees in Conflict Contexts

During the past decades, scholars from diverse social science disciplines have investigated the relationship between violent conflict and social cohesion, producing a remarkable evidence base on this complex topic. Some studies find positive effects of exposure to violence on myriad outcomes such as community engagement, political participation, trust, and cooperation (e.g., Bauer et al. 2016; […]

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Systematic review on the impacts of agricultural interventions on food security and nutrition in complex humanitarian emergency settings

Complex humanitarian emergencies are a main driver of food and nutritional insecurity. Agricultural interventions are key to improving nutrition and food security, and their positive impacts are well-documented in stable developing countries. However, it is unclear if their positive effects on food security hold in complex emergency settings, too. In this paper, we systematically review […]

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Prevalence of Depression and Associated Socio-economic Outcomes during Violent Conflict: A Matched Analysis for Palestine Using Nationally Representative Survey and Conflict Event Data

Mental health risks are high in conflict settings, but mental health research mostly focuses on non-conflict settings. Survey data from active conflict settings often suffer from low response rates, unrepresentative samples, and a lack of detailed information on the roots and implications of poor mental health. We overcome these challenges by analyzing nationally representative evidence […]

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The burden of experience: Remembering life events increases poor people’s rejection of risky but favorable bets

The burden of poverty is caused by both material deprivation and the psychological threat associated with it. Poverty has been found to diminish cognitive ability and cause the poor to forego beneficial programs. In the present study, we examined how exacerbating the psychological burden of poverty through an intervention that asked participants to recall a […]

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The effects of cool roofs on health, environmental, and economic outcomes in rural Africa: study protocol for a community-based cluster randomized controlled trial

Background High ambient air temperatures in Africa pose significant health and behavioral challenges in populations with limited access to cooling adaptations. The built environment can exacerbate heat exposure, making passive home cooling adaptations a potential method for protecting occupants against indoor heat exposure. Methods We are conducting a 2-year community-based stratified cluster randomized controlled trial […]

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COVID-19 Pandemic and Food Insecurity Fuel the Mental Health Crisis in Africa

Objective Providing country-level estimates for prevalence rates of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), COVID-19 exposure and food insecurity (FI) and assessing the role of persistent threats to survival—exemplified by exposure to COVID-19 and FI—for the mental health crisis in Africa. Methods Original phone-based survey data from Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda (12 consecutive cross-sections in […]

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