Submission ID 131703
| Issue/Objective | The long-standing humanitarian principle of neutrality is being re-examined in the increasingly complex and politically charged environments in which humanitarian healthcare operates. A number of prominent voices in the field have called for a shift from detachment to more politically engaged forms of aid and for solidarity to play a more central role. Despite these shifts, there remains a lack of empirical research on how humanitarian healthcare workers (HHWs) understand these shifts. No empirical studies to date have directly examined how HHWs themselves understand these calls and solidarity, or how they enact solidarity in their work. This study asked: How do humanitarian healthcare workers understand and enact solidarity, and how do they make sense of its relationship to operational effectiveness, worker and mission safety, and access to populations? |
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| Methodology/Approach | This qualitative study employed an interpretivist methodology guided by abductive logic of inquiry. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted with HHWs holding experience in at least one conflict-affected setting, sampled globally across organizations. Interviews were treated as dialogic spaces for co-producing knowledge rather than neutral sites of data extraction. Analysis proceeds through reflexive thematic analysis, with reflexivity functioning as a core epistemological and ethical stance. |
| Results | Preliminary findings from 25 semi-structured interviews reveal that solidarity is understood and enacted in varied ways - across individuals, organizations, and career trajectories. Rather than converging on a shared definition, participants made sense of solidarity through the lens of their broader humanitarian experience, drawing on contexts that extended well beyond conflict-affected settings. This experiential breadth shapes not only how solidarity is conceptualized by participants, but how it is practiced and justified. Participants held divergent views on solidarity's relationship to worker safety and population access. Its relationship to neutrality, however, was more consistently framed. Most participants understood the two as complementary rather than competing, navigating them as principles that require ongoing contextual negotiation rather than a fixed hierarchy. |
| Discussion/Conclusion | If solidarity is lived informally and understood as compatible with neutrality by those on the front lines, reform efforts that frame the two as mutually exclusive risk misrepresenting the ethical realities of frontline practice. By centering the situated knowledge of HHWs - voices rarely included in conceptual debates - this study embodies the sub-theme of equity in action. It demonstrates that grounded, experience-near inquiry is both possible and necessary for a humanitarian system seeking genuine accountability and reform. |
| Presenters and Affiliations | Francisco Mendina University of Western Ontario Elysee Nouvet University of Western Ontario Gail Teachman University of Western Ontario Maxwell Smith University of Western Ontario |
