International Intervention Research Articles

Barriers to the use of trained interpreters in consultations with refugees in four resettlement countries: a qualitative analysis using normalisation process theory

BackgroundIncreasing numbers of primary care practitioners in refugee resettlement countries are providing care to refugees. Access to trained interpreters is a priority for these practitioners, but there are many barriers to the implementation of interpreted consultations in routine care. There is a lack of international, theoretically informed research. The purpose of this paper is to understand barriers to interpreter use in primary care consultations in four resettlement countries using Normalisation Process Theory.MethodWe conducted a cross-sectional online survey with networks of primary care practitioners (PCPs) who care for refugees in Australia, Canada, Ireland and the US (n = 314). We analysed qualitative data from the survey about barriers to interpreter use (n = 178). We completed an inductive thematic analysis, iteratively developed a Normalisation Process Theory (NPT)-informed coding frame and then mapped the emergent findings onto the theory’s construct about enacting interpreted consultations.ResultsIn all four countries, the use of an interpreter presented communication and interaction challenges between providers and patients, which can impede the goals of primary care consultations. Primary care practitioners did not always have confidence in interpreted consultations and described poor professional practice by some interpreters. There was variation across countries, and inconsistency within countries, in the availability of trained interpreters and funding sources.ConclusionThere are shared and differential barriers to implementation of interpreted consultations in a consistent and sustained way in the four countries studied. These findings can be used to inform country-specific and international level policies and interventions focusing on improving skills and resources for interpreted consultations to improve implementation of interpreted primary care consultations.

국제적 개입의 정당화 근거에 대한 고찰 : 롤스와 왈쩌의 사상을 중심으로

이 논문은 롤스와 왈쩌의 국제적 정의론을 중심으로 국제적 개입의 정당화 근거에 대해 고찰한다. 롤스와 왈쩌는 방어 전쟁의 지원, 심각한 인권 침해의 저지를 위한 군사적 차원의 국제적 개입이 정당하다고 주장한다. 하지만 이들이 국제적 개입을 정당화는 근거나 방식에서는 차이점이 있다. 롤스는 계약론적 방식을 통해 국제적 정의 원칙을 이끌어 낸다. 그는 자유주의적 입장에서 국제적 개입의 정당화 근거를 주로 인권의 보호에서 찾고 있지만 그것만으로는 한계가 있기 때문에 이를 보완하기 위해 민족 문화의 보존이라는 공동체주의적 논리도 활용한다. 이에 비해 왈쩌는 역사와 전통, 관행을 바탕으로 국제적 정의 원칙을 이끌어 낸다. 그는 공동체주의적 입장에서 국제적 개입의 정당화 근거를 주로 정치 공동체의 보존에서 찾고 있지만 그것만으로는 한계가 있기 때문에 이를 보완하기 위해 보편적 인권의 보호라는 자유주의적 논리도 활용한다. 국제적 개입을 정당화하기 위해서는 자유주의적 논리나 공동체주의적 논리 어느 하나만으로는 한계가 있으며 두 논리의 상호 보완이 요구된다.

Cooperation of the Western Balkans States: Opportunity to Overcome Security Challenges

The Western Balkans is dominated by its geographical position, which, after the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, was one of the regions that experienced the most difficult transition because this process was accompanied by bilateral and multilateral conflicts, with local and regional wars, with political and ethnic clashes. As a consequence, it was also politically fragmented on its map. The international community actively intervened in the Balkans with various civilian and military missions, respectively during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and North Macedonia (former FYROM). These international interventions have yielded concrete results in the process of overall democratic reforms of the countries of the region, with particular emphasis on the security field, as well as the aspect of integration reforms in both NATO and the EU.
 Fragmentation of the Western Balkans came for many historical, political, economic, military, geopolitical and strategic reasons. This process also had consequences for the integration process of this region. But it is currently fully oriented towards European and Euro-Atlantic structures. No Balkan countries including Kosovo have any other orientations besides these (there are doubts about Serbia). Serbia has stated that it does not want NATO membership, while Russia has tried and is constantly trying to cause chaos in the Western Balkans. How this chaos is caused and how the cooperation of the countries of this region has affected and is influenced is the essence of our work that will draw conclusions about how to act in the future.

Do International Interventions Prolong Civil Conflicts? The Effect of Ex Ante Expectations

Many studies have found that third-party intervention tends to prolong the duration of civil conflict. However, some studies have suggested that mere expectations of external intervention can prolong conflict duration even in the absence of actual intervention. Therefore, the effects of external interventions in prolonging the duration of civil conflicts remain unclear. This study examines the direct effect of third-party intervention on the duration of civil conflict by controlling for the indirect effect of expectations of external intervention. The probabilities of intervention were estimated, and the direct effect of interventions was tested by controlling for the effect of ex ante expectations. The empirical findings were as follows: (1) Third-party intervention has no direct effect of prolonging the duration of a conflict when expectations are controlled for, and (2) Third-party intervention may have an indirect effect of shortening conflict duration, which contradicts the findings of previous studies.

A Sea of Change in the MENA Region: External Intervention in Libya

External interventions by both regional and global powers in Libya have not been a scarcity after the 2011 revolution. With the turn of 2014, however, the nature of external interventions became more of a military one especially with the imposition of Haftar’s rule in the east by several counter-revolutionary regional and global actors. At the point that the same counter-revolutionary alliance attempted to geopolitically strangulate Turkey both via propping up hostile and authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa, and also excluding it from the prospect of exploiting the riches of the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkish intervention materialized in early 2020. This study attempts to explain the various motivations of the major intervening actors in Libya, namely France, Russia, Egypt, and the UAE with a special focus on Turkey. Structural realist perspective is used to elucidate the international interventions to the Libyan civil war. The nature of the uncertainty emanating from the regional transformation motivated the key actors to get militarily involved in the Libyan crisis. The actors with defensive motives are more likely to stick to the conflict despite the risks of escalation.

H-WORK Project: Multilevel Interventions to Promote Mental Health in SMEs and Public Workplaces.

The paper describes the study design, research questions and methods of a large, international intervention project aimed at improving employee mental health and well-being in SMEs and public organisations. The study is innovative in multiple ways. First, it goes beyond the current debate on whether individual- or organisational-level interventions are most effective in improving employee health and well-being and tests the cumulative effects of multilevel interventions, that is, interventions addressing individual, group, leader and organisational levels. Second, it tailors its interventions to address the aftermaths of the Covid-19 pandemic and develop suitable multilevel interventions for dealing with new ways of working. Third, it uses realist evaluation to explore and identify the working ingredients of and the conditions required for each level of intervention, and their outcomes. Finally, an economic evaluation will assess both the cost-effectiveness analysis and the affordability of the interventions from the employer perspective. The study integrates the training transfer and the organisational process evaluation literature to develop toolkits helping end-users to promote mental health and well-being in the workplace.

SARS-Cov-2 trajectory predictions and scenario simulations from a global perspective: a modelling study

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 emerging from Wuhan, China has developed into a global epidemic. Here, we combine both human mobility and non-pharmaceutical interventions (social-distancing and suspected-cases isolation) into SEIR transmission model to understand how coronavirus transmits in a global environment. Dynamic trends of region-specific time-variant reproduction number, social-distancing rate, work-resumption rate, and suspected-cases isolation rate have been estimated and plotted for each region by fitting stochastic transmission processes to the real total confirmed cases reported of each region. We find after shutdown in Wuhan, the reproduction number in Wuhan greatly declined from 6·982 (95% CI 2·558–14·668) on January 23rd, 2020 to 1.130 (95% CI 0.289–3.279) on February 7th, 2020, and there was a higher intervention level in terms of social-distancing and suspected-cases isolation in Wuhan than the Chinese average and Western average, for the period from the shutdown in Wuhan to mid-March. Future epidemic trajectories of Western countries up to October 10th, 2020, have been predicted with 95% confidence intervals. Through the scenario simulation, we discover the benefits of earlier international travel ban and rigorous intervention strategies, and the significance of non-pharmaceutical interventions. From a global perspective, it is vital for each country to control the risks of imported cases, and execute rigorous non-pharmaceutical interventions before successful vaccination development.

Quality assessment of systematic reviews on international migrant healthcare interventions: a systematic review

The significant increase in international cross-border migrations remains a global public health concern; therefore, the need for migrant-specific evidence-based interventions is critical. We assessed the methodological and reporting quality of systematic reviews (SRs) focused on migrant healthcare interventions. We systematically searched in five electronic databases from 2007 to April 2020 to identify SRs on migrant health. Two independent reviewers assessed risk of bias, methodological and reporting quality in included systematic reviews (SRs) using ROBIS, AMSTAR-2 and PRISMA checklist, respectively. We included 57 systematic reviews. The quality in 30 SRs (52.6%) was either low or critically low due to limitations in AMSTAR-2 items 4, 7, 8 and 10–16. The overall risk of bias was high in 23 SRs (40.4%), particularly in domains—data collection and study quality—20 SRs (35.1%), synthesis and findings—19 SRs (33.3%), and study identification and selection 13 SRs (22.8%). The quality of reporting in 36 SRs (63.2%) was moderate, with 19.74 ± 4.67 items fulfilled. While 19 SRs (33.3%) had 10–18 PRISMA items satisfied. Sixteen SRs (28.1%) reported a research protocol and registration. The overall quality of migrant SRs is suboptimal, with critical gaps linked to low protocol registrations, assessment of risk of bias and publication bias, additional analysis of synthesized evidence and available funding. These findings reflect current deficiencies in the development of SR on migrant healthcare.

The Dark Side of Institutional Collaboration: How Peacekeeping-counterterrorism Convergences Weaken the Protection of Civilians in Mali

ABSTRACT Within the field of international peace and security, policy makers and analysts alike commonly treat collaboration and convergence among international organizations and intervention frameworks as a policy objective in itself. Indeed, from the focus on the ‘comprehensive approach’, during the 2000s, to the recent emphasis on multi-dimensional and integrated stabilization frameworks, institutional collaboration is cast as inherently positive and desirable in regard to addressing international collective matters. This article challenges such ‘collaboration bias’. It does so by exploring the empirical effects of increasing collaboration and ‘strategic partnerships’ within the context of the current (re)turn to stabilization interventions. Specifically, focusing on Mali, it unpacks how contemporary stabilization efforts intensify collaboration across counterterrorism and peacekeeping interventions in ways that undercut policy implementation within one of the most central peacekeeping priority areas, namely the Protection of Civilians (PoC). In detailing key aspects on which contemporary peacekeeping-counterterrorism entanglements compromise protection efforts, the article conveys some of the ‘dark sides’ of cooperation regimes. It moreover highlights the need to not only explore regime complexity as a systemic feature of world politics but also unpack how it operates, and to what effect, at the meso and micro levels of policy implementation and practice.

Environmental Justice in the Case of the Chagos Marine Protected Area: Implications for International Social Work

Between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, the British government forcibly removed about 15,000 Chagossians from the Chagos Archipelago. Current legislation based on the declaration of the Chagos-Marine Protected Area (MPA) plays a crucial role in preventing the Chagossians from returning to their homeland. In this particular case study, the article aims to analyze discourses related to the establishment of the Chagos-MPA using an environmental justice framework, to consider the implications for international social work practice. Materials from court rulings, official government reports, and academic/journalist publications on the MPA, as well as from seven semi-structured interviews with key informants from three Chagossian communities based in Mauritius, Seychelles, and the United Kingdom were analyzed using ATLAS-ti 8.4 software. The main findings of the deductive critical discourse analysis are discussed concerning substantive, distributive, and procedural environmental justice for the Chagossian community (This term is used for referring different Chagossian communities from Mauritius, Seychelles, and the United Kingdom as a single homogenous group). This article calls for international social work interventions through transnational alliances between international organizations in challenging the socio-political forces that are having deleterious impacts upon the marginalized and disenfranchised populations and their biophysical environment.

The Clash of Civilizations in the Syrian Crisis

The Syrian crisis may be the beginning of a new conflict of civilizations. Ethnic and religious pluralism is clearly evident in this country: Muslims (Sunnis, Druze, Alawites, Shiites and Ismailis); Christians (Orthodox, Catholics, Maronites, Protestants) and Turkmen and Kurdish ethnic minorities. The Syrian crisis of 2011 seemed to go against the ruling elite (Alawis). With the escalation of the conflict, the country gradually became the scene of a civil war characterized by international dimensions. In this way, the conflict became a multilateral battle in which, on the one hand, the participants in it were the local element in the form of the government of Bashar al-Assad and extremist terrorist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIL and Ahrar al-Sham; and on the other hand, the United States and its European allies, Saudi Arabia and some States of the Persian Gulf; and Iran and the axis of resistance, as well as Russia and China. Due to the presence of diverse cultures and religions, it appears that this will make the Syrian crisis a prelude to a renewed clash of civilizations. This research seeks to answer these questions: What are the basic propositions of the theory of the clash of civilizations and how is it represented in the Syrian crisis? Since, according to Samuel Huntington, the main sources of the clash of civilizations are the foundation of civilizations, religious and cultural antecedents, and cultural and religious identities. Consequently, they are expressions of the clash of civilizations: the war on terrorism, the Syrian crisis, the rise of ISIL and the presence of US military and international interventions, the competition of regional and transnational powers.

Grazhdanskaya vojna i mezhdunarodnaya intervenciya na Russkom Severe: kriticheskoe suzhdenie o knige izrail'skogo istorika

CIVIL WAR AND INTERNATIONAL INTERVENTION IN THE RUSSIAN NORTH: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE BOOK BY AN ISRAELI HISTORIAN

Ot mestnogo separatizma k inostrannomu vmeshatel'stvu: Tripolitaniya v period pravleniya Yusufa-pashi (1795—1832)

Аbstract. The article examines the period of rule of Yusuf Pasha, Governor of Tripoli, a province of the Ottoman Empire. During the thirty-seven years of his rule, the Pasha seemed to have taken the right steps, consistent with his era and the state of the country, aimed at strengthening the sovereignty, centralizing power and strengthening the military potential of Tripoli. However, it was his rule that led to a crisis in the 1830s, culminating in the restoration of direct rule by the Ottoman Empire. The contradictory results of Yusuf Pasha’s rule are related both to the rivalry within the dynasty itself, which led to two stages of civil war, and to increased international intervention in the internal situation in Tripoli.

The Flyer’s dilemma and the Logger’s case for climate justice

The Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change outline mitigation goals by sector. However, this framing is likely to create climate justice issues as it does not explicitly address the contributions of individuals. High emissions from luxury activities like commercial air travel are addressed with voluntary and behavioral change approaches for mitigation while the global rural communities who are dependent on forestry-based livelihoods face carbon credit schemes as well as federal and international conservation interventions despite having a lower per capita carbon footprint. To illustrate this point, the emissions of the average air traveler and several international flights are compared to the average forest user in relation to land use change emissions. In many cases, a single round-trip international flight emits more CO2 per person than the yearly national average of India, Mexico, and Tanzania; all countries with important forestry sectors and indigenous people that depend on forestry-based livelihoods. The disproportionate regulatory burden of forest users in the developing world contrasts their relative contribution to climate change and the unregulated individual behaviors of the global elite. It is time for mandatory offset charges on airline tickets and regulatory framing of mitigation by per capita contributions instead of sector-based approaches.

Assessment of the impact of an international multidisciplinary intervention project on sustainability at the local level: case study in a community in the Ecuadorian Andes

In the community of San Ignacio in the Ecuadorian Andes, an intervention project was carried out with the aim of improving their socioeconomic capacities through different actions designed with the inhabitants in a participative manner. In order to analyze the effect of the actions undertaken, the impact on sustainability before and after the intervention was evaluated using the framework for the evaluation of natural resource management systems (MESMIS). Twelve indicators were selected to measure the project's areas of influence on the performance of the 22 production units and the capacities of their managers. Of the 12 indicators, the perception of empowerment indicator is proposed for the first time within the framework of the MESMIS program as a strategic indicator to explore in depth the factors that influence gender equality. Based on the differences found in these indicators, it could be seen that the intervention had a positive effect on the sustainability of the system, significantly improving the indices referring to functional biodiversity, mainly due to women’s activity, and access to technological innovations. Although the actions did not appear to significantly influence gender equality, the new proposed strategic indicator leads to a greater understanding of gender perspective, which meant that factors such as dread, independence and satisfaction improved after the intervention process. Lastly, a medium- and long-term evaluation is recommended in order to confirm the effects of the intervention project within a suitable timeframe.

Global Transitional Justice Norms and the Framing of Truth Commissions in the Absence of Transition

AbstractAs global transitional justice norms strengthen, governments face increasingly pressure to enact formal transitional justice mechanisms to resolve domestic conflict. This article examines how Bahrain, Morocco, and Sri Lanka attempted to exploit these norms to appease demands and stave off international transitional justice intervention by employing truth commissions. Governments framed truth commissions and their responses to their investigations as sufficient to address the past. To varying degrees, though, domestic audiences and the international community refused to accept this framing. As such, truth commission investigations and their reports failed to resolve the respective conflicts. Rather, they prolonged attention on governments’ past and present misdeeds. For governments, the risk this strategy backfires is higher when human rights violations have been more extensive and extreme, when governments construct a more obviously biased truth‐seeking process and display little interest in enacting recommendations, and when governments have failed to cultivate strong ties with Western powers.

Evaluating approaches to designing effective Co-Created hand-hygiene interventions for children in India, Sierra Leone and the UK.

Effective and culturally appropriate hand-hygiene education is essential to promote health-related practices to control and prevent diseases such as Diarrhoea, Ebola and COVID-19. In this paper we outline and evaluate the Co-Creation processes underpinning a handwashing intervention for young children (A Germ's Journey) developed and delivered in India, Sierra Leone and the UK, and consider the implications surrounding Imperialist/Colonial discourse and the White Saviour Complex. The paper focuses both on the ways Co-Creation was conceptualised by our collaborators in all three countries and the catalysts and challenges encountered. Qualitative data have been drawn from in-depth interviews with five key stakeholders, focus group data from 37 teachers in Sierra Leone and responses to open-ended questionnaires completed by teachers in India (N = 66) and UK (N = 63). Data were analysed using thematic analysis and three themes, each with three constituent subthemes are presented. In the theme 'Representations of and Unique Approaches to Co-Creation' we explore the ways in which Co-Creation was constructed in relation to teamwork, innovative practice and more continuous models of evaluation. In 'Advantages of Co-Creation' we consider issues around shared ownership, improved outcomes and more meaningful insights alongside the mitigation of risks and short-circuiting of problems. In 'Challenges of Co-Creation' we discuss issues around timing and organisation, attracting and working with appropriate partners and understanding the importance of local context with inherent social, economic and structural barriers, especially in low-and-middle-income countries. We consider how theoretical elements of Co-Creation can inform effective international public health interventions; crucial during a global pandemic in which handwashing is the most effective method to control the transmission of COVID-19. Finally we reflect on some of the methodological challenges of our own work and in managing the potentially conflicting goals of the ethical and participatory values of Co-Creation with pragmatic considerations about ensuring an effective final 'product'.

Displaced security? The relationships, routines and rhythms of peacebuilding interveners

This article considers what treating individual international interveners engaged in peacebuilding work as referent objects can tell us about emplaced security. This is important because individual interveners are diverse, embodied agents who can impact the agency, peace and security of conflict-affected populations. It argues that applying an ontological security lens can provide a partial explanation for why interveners develop narratives and perform practices, including why they sometimes identify and behave in counterproductive, and even damaging, ways. The final section considers why an analytical focus on place is valuable, noting that place-based experiences and place-identities are formative of ontological security. It argues that treating interveners as a referent object provides opportunities to rethink the tendency to focus on home as the key site of emplacement in the ontological security literature. Building on this, it argues that examining the emplaced security of interveners invites us to examine the political nature and consequences of interveners’ physical and ontological security-seeking narratives and practices, including their creation of the material and ideational structures of intervention spaces and places.

The chase for legal timber: Developments in the commercial trade of timber in Ghana

The quest for timber and timber resources and its corollary effects on forest degradation has in the last decade contributed to a series of concerted local and international interventions aimed at addressing the situation. These interventions have taken the character of domestic policies, international agreements and pacts and to some extent, domestic legislative reforms. The plethora of interventions have created a horde of laws and agreements with varying scopes and applications, multiple institutions with interlocked and overlapping responsibilities and uncoordinated and often undocumented practice in the commercial trade of timber. The focus of this article is to prod through the domestic and international legal and institutional architecture on the regulation of the trade of timber and timber resources. The article hopes to unearth the challenges in complying with these obligations and propose recommendations on the way forward.

The responsibility of power: shifts in Chinese conceptualisation of the legitimacy of overseas intervention to protect nationals abroad

ABSTRACT The number of Chinese nationals travelling, working, and residing outside of China has reached a historical high and will likely continue to grow. As China’s people and businesses conduct more and more of their activities overseas, domestic demand has increased for the PRC Government to take a more effective role in protecting Chinese nationals abroad. In tandem with larger shifts occurring in China’s conception of its global role including emerging ideas about great power responsibility, the desire to protect of nationals abroad will drive new concepts and approaches to international interventions in China, and may challenge long-held policies of upholding state sovereignty and non-intervention.