Humanitarian response and stress in Kenya: gendered problems and their implications

ABSTRACT

Stress-related conditions such as burnout and post-traumatic stress disorder are a growing concern in the humanitarian sector. Aid workers themselves report not only that mental health problems are common, but that the support they receive from their employers is insufficient. Problematically, the experience of the international aid worker – particularly those who are white and from the global North – is often foregrounded in explaining what constitutes stress and related mental health problems. This indicates a wider problem of what is required of ‘the perfect humanitarian’ – a personality that is gendered and racialised – and how this influences the different experiences and treatment of national and international staff from aid agencies. This article explores the organisational culture and working conditions of humanitarian settings and their impact on the mental health and well-being of staff. It argues that there is a structural dimension to stress that is less to do with external security threats and more to do with the specific infrastructure, policies, and practices of humanitarian operations, with implications for aid workers which cut across dimensions of race, gender, and nationality.

Les problèmes liés au stress comme le burnout et le syndrome post-traumatique font l’objet d’une préoccupation croissante dans le secteur humanitaire. Les travailleurs humanitaires eux-mêmes signalent que non seulement les problèmes de santé mentale sont courants, mais que le soutien qu’ils reçoivent de la part de leurs employeurs est insuffisant. Ce qui est problématique, c’est que l’expérience des travailleurs humanitaires internationaux – en particulier les Blancs originaires de l’hémisphère nord – est souvent au premier plan des explications de ce qui constitue le stress et les problèmes de santé mentale associés. Cela indique un problème plus large lié à ce qui est requis du « parfait humanitaire » – une personnalité sexospécifique et racialisée – et en quoi cela influe sur les expériences et le traitement différents des membres du personnel national et international des organismes d’aide. Cet article examine la culture organisationnelle et les conditions de travail des contextes humanitaires et leur impact sur la santé mentale et le bien-être du personnel. Il soutient que le stress a une dimension structurelle qui est moins liée aux menaces de sécurité externes qu’aux infrastructures, politiques et pratiques spécifiques des opérations humanitaires, avec des implications pour les travailleurs d’aide qui traversent les dimensions de race, de genre et de nationalité.

En el sector humanitario existe una preocupación creciente por las condiciones relacionadas con el estrés, como el agotamiento y el trastorno ocasionados por el estrés postraumático. Los propios trabajadores de ayuda informan que no solo son comunes los problemas de salud mental, sino también que el apoyo que reciben de sus empleadores es insuficiente. La vivencia del trabajador de asistencia internacional, en particular de los blancos y del norte global, a menudo se pone en primer plano a la hora de explicar qué es el estrés y los problemas de salud mental relacionados con este. Esta tendencia hace referencia a un problema más amplio en términos de lo que se requiere de “el humanitario perfecto”, es decir, una personalidad basada en cierto género y cierta raza. Lo anterior repercute en la forma en que la contratación de personas que responden a estas características influye en las diferentes experiencias y en el trato brindado al personal nacional e internacional de las agencias de ayuda. El presente artículo analiza la cultura organizacional y las condiciones de trabajo existentes en los entornos humanitarios, además de su impacto en la salud mental y el bienestar del personal. Al respecto, argumenta que existe una dimensión estructural del estrés, vinculada menos a amenazas a la seguridad externa y más a la infraestructura, las políticas y las prácticas específicas de las operaciones humanitarias, que conlleva implicaciones para los trabajadores humanitarios; dichas implicaciones trascienden las dimensiones de raza, género y nacionalidad.

KEYWORDS:

• Humanitarian response
• international aid worker
• national aid worker
• mental health
• well-being
• gender
• race
• Kenya

Notes on contributor

Gemma Houldey recently completed her PhD in International Development at the University of Sussex. She has worked extensively on human rights and humanitarian programmes, for international and local NGOs, mainly in East Africa and the Middle East. Postal address: c/o The Editor, Gender & Development. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1. In its report, Staff Wellbeing and Mental Health in UNHCR (Suzic et al. 2016), findings are disaggregated according to specific socio-demographic variables such as gender, international/national status, and type of contract. However, these are largely treated separately, and without further disaggregation within categories such as international/national to clarify country or region of origin.

2. People in Aid and Interhealth's Approaches to Staff Care in International NGOs, for instance, focuses primarily on likely psychological factors affecting staff pre- and post-deployment and when they return home and experience ‘culture shock’ (Porter and Emmens 2009). The Headington Institute's online resources for aid workers (Headington Institute n.d.) also focus on the stress associated with being in unfamiliar environments, including ‘social and cultural dislocation’, and the risks of traumatic stress to those travelling from the ‘developed world’ to the field. See, for instance, Understanding & Coping with Traumatic Stress (McKay 2007).

3. The claims that there have been increased attacks and security threats against humanitarian workers has been disputed (see Smirl 2015).

4. Concern Worldwide, for instance, refers to its ‘humanitarian heroes’ who ‘risk their lives to help others’ (see www.concernusa.org/feature_story/our-humanitarian-heroes/, last checked 9 January 2019).

5. See, for instance, The Telegraph, ‘Aid workers are too often the unsung heroes’, which tells the story of a British health worker named William Pooley, who contracted the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone and whose voluntary work as a nurse there was, according to the article, ‘motivated not by the desire to be well known, but by selfless sacrifice’ (see www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11055233/Aid-workers-are-too-often-the-unsung-heroes.html, last checked 9 January 2019).

6. In making this claim I also recognise that there are huge class and socioeconomic differences among aid workers from the global North, which also have implications for their ability to gain the required education for, and foothold within, the humanitarian sector. Nevertheless, their proximity to universities and aid agency headquarters which are the key domain of humanitarian ideas and policies presents a stark contrast to people in the global South wishing to pursue a humanitarian career.