Abstract
There remains a critical gap in understanding challenges faced by humanitarian workers who may be key in providing assistance during complex emergencies. This study examines self-reported views by humanitarian workers working in Palestine concerning three concepts: resilience, generalized self-efficacy, and importance of workplace empowerment. Aid workers in Palestine face unique obstacles placed on economic, social, and political autonomy imposed by Israeli policy. Data obtained from 46 humanitarian workers recruited using snowball sampling methodology hint at a complex relationship between the three concepts. Firstly, a hypothesized positive relationship between resiliency and generalized self-efficacy was supported. Secondly, an unexpected negative relationship was found between resiliency and workplace empowerment. Finally, counter to our hypothesis, no significant relationship was found between self-efficacy and workplace empowerment. Gender differences also highlight disparities between the experience of women and men in the non-profit workplace in Palestine. This study adds to our knowledge regarding unique stresses on humanitarian workers and enhances a growing base of literature focused on national staff and volunteers.
Highlights
Following a natural, man-made, or technological disaster, local disaster relief and development staff workers act as vital linkages in the disaster relief chain
Bivarate correlations Bivariate correlations were conducted in order to measure the strength of the relationship between the three scales employed in the current analysis
Do not support our second hypothesis. Scores on both empowerment scales demonstrated a moderately significant negative correlation with Self-Assessment of Resiliency and Anxiety (SARA) values (impact, r(41) = −.41, p = .006; meaningfulness, r(39) = −.36, p = .02). These results suggest that as resiliency scores increase, scores measuring the importance of workplace empowerment within the organization decrease
Summary
Man-made, or technological disaster, local disaster relief and development staff workers (referred to as humanitarian workers) act as vital linkages in the disaster relief chain. In 2015, a technical paper facilitated by UNISDR suggested amending the definition to read, “a serious disruption of the functioning of the community or society due to hazardous events interacting with conditions of vulnerability and exposure, leading to widespread human, material, economic and environmental losses and impacts” (emphasis added) (UNISDR 2015). In both of these definitions, humanitarian workers play a prominent role, both as critical community resources that can be called upon in emergencies, and as a source of vulnerability should those workers not be provided sufficient physical, emotional, or technical support. Their inclusion represents the value of the whole community in emergency response, including individuals, the private sector, non-governmental and non-profit organizations, faith-
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