Sex and gender are important considerations within refugee studies. Risks to health and wellbeing may manifest differently for refugee women and men, as may the use of health and social services and responses to interventions. Since the 1980s, increased attention has been paid to the experience of girls and women in refugee and humanitarian research, however, much less attention has been paid to boys and men. The purpose of this systematic scoping review was to investigate whether there is a gender bias in refugee and humanitarian research on refugee trauma. Findings demonstrate that since 1988, fully 95% of gender focused refugee research addressed women’s issues, while only 5% addressed the experience of refugee men. This article offers possible explanations for this gap and discusses its ramifications for both research and clinical practice.

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This article explores the ongoing impact of the genocide in Rwanda on marital relationships. Its specific focus are genocide related factors that generate relational trauma and the consequences of this trauma for the everyday lives of spouses affected by it. The qualitative study that informs this article was conducted within the context of a community based sociotherapy programme. The factors found to be contributing to traumatic marital conflict are categorised as those related to genocide perpetration and its consequences, refugeehood, victimisation by genocidal violence and its consequences, intermarriages, and being a descendant of a genocide survivor or a genocide perpetrator. Study participants give a relative high prevalence to factors regarding genocide perpetration, while they assume that the prevalence of traumatic marital conflict among the second generation may continue unless sufficient preventive measures are taken.

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Frequently, community based strategies include engagement with local faith leaders. However, there have been few systematic attempts to document how faith leaders themselves define their roles in these initiatives. This study examined local faith leaders and their spouses, in flood affected areas of Malawi, who had been oriented to child protection issues through World Vision workshops aimed explicitly at relating protection concerns to religious teachings. Many participants reported that attending a workshop had been transformational in terms of their perspectives regarding the protection of children. The key child protection issues identified by participants included child marriage, lack of attendance at school, child labour (including forced labour), harsh physical punishment and sexual abuse. Many faith leaders − and their wives − became active in addressing child protection issues as a result of the programme, although the form of this action varied widely and was significantly influenced by their varied status and capacities.

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Socio-ecological interventions assume that there are ‘links’ between the individual process that determines disaster mental health and the social context one lives in. However, there is insufficient empirical basis for this claim. This paper summarises the main findings from a research programme, in which two advanced statistical techniques on data from two floods were applied, respectively Uttar Pradesh, India 2008 and Morpeth, England, 2008. By means of multilevel structural equation modelling it was found that individual psychosocial resources (coping behaviour and social support) are employed more parsimoniously and effectively when disaster affected individuals can rely on a trustworthy and effective social community. Additionally, using multilevel confirmatory factor analyses to address screening outcomes yielded two methodological problems: nested variance due to the disaster context and poor construct validity. These can be illustrated, but not dismissed without applying advanced statistical analyses. The findings strongly suggest that community interventions promoting social context and individual interventions not only share the same objective, but also impact mental health via the same individual mechanisms.

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This paper explores the effects of war in Iraq in the period between 1991 and 2003, with a focus on the effect of economic sanctions on mental health services. The authors, Iraqi psychiatrists with direct contact with patients and events during this period, review literature and reports published contemporaneously. They describe how the mental health system in Iraq was deteriorated, not only by war, but also by United Nations imposed sanctions during the period between the first and second Iraq war.

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In 2008, Taliban forces killed four aid workers in Afghanistan. Immediately afterwards, expatriate and national field staff undertook crisis management activities on the ground. While this was a devastating event, field and headquarters staff agreed that the organisational response to the crisis was positive. Nine months later, 19 expatriate staff members involved in the crisis response participated in an evaluation to reflect on personal and organisational factors that contributed to their post crisis resilience. Results suggest that clear security protocols, crisis simulation preparedness training, team cohesiveness, strong leadership, staff mobilisation, well timed psychological support and support from managers may all contribute to staff resilience in high stress environments. Recommendations are offered to the international nongovernmental organisation community seeking to support staff following critical incidents.

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Interventions on mental health and psychosocial wellbeing have been largely implemented in low and middle income countries. In order to adapt the support offered, an increasing number of applied research projects in mental health and psychosocial support have been conducted. However, while challenges arising can be related to the specificity of the mental health and psychosocial sector, within a broader perspective they are also strongly linked to difficulties of access to beneficiaries, security and protections issues, and competence of staff. Research priorities and guidelines have the objective of providing recommendations to ensure a framework of best practice for research during emergencies. Therefore, this article presents and discusses operational and ethical challenges of research conducted during an emergency, as implemented by the international nongovernmental organisation Action Contre la Faim.

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