Descriptive Study of the Agility and Resilience of the Canadian Humanitarian Aid Sector in the Time of COVID-19
Abstract as pdf
Corresponding Author:
Stéphanie Maltais
University of Ottawa Canada
smalt006@uottawa.ca
Author(s):
COVID-19 has inevitably had repercussions on the Canadian humanitarian sector, whether at the national level or in its activities internationally. On the national territory, a few examples demonstrate the renewal of humanitarian action, such as the fact that Doctors Without Borders attempted, for the first time, to meet needs on Canadian soil (MSF, 2020); the fact that the Canadian Red Cross has launched a new “humanitarian force reserve” initiative in addition to its usual volunteers (Alalouf-Hall & al, 2020); or that Médecins du Monde (MDM) has transformed its mobile clinics into telemedicine to meet the needs of marginalized populations in Montreal (MDM Canada, 2020), among others. On the international spectrum, Canadian Non-Governemental Organizations (NGOs) have tried to continue their efforts and not abandon their local partners.
Like all organizations in any industry, the COVID-19 pandemic has come to test organizational resilience. Certain challenges (quarantine, stopping commercial flights, uncertainty, etc.) have disrupted the usual activities of NGOs in Canada and elsewhere in the world. They have led to an increased localization of aid by relying more on local personnel to provide humanitarian assistance (Brown, 2021).
NGOs working in the humanitarian field are known to be resilient. In recent years, the humanitarian sector itself has shifted somewhat from the traditional Dunantist humanitarian paradigm (based on humanitarian ethics) to a discourse based on resilience as well as on the localization of aid; and this is due in particular to technological innovations of recent years such as digital payment or the use of drones, which has considerably changed the humanitarian landscape (Hilhorst, 2018). So there was, even before the emergence of COVID-19, an existing tendency to empower local actors to take charge of crisis response.
This descriptive study aims to answer the following question: to what extent have Canadian humanitarian actors demonstrated organizational agility and resilience since the onset of the health crisis in their activities at the national and international levels? To answer this question and document the strategic and operational changes of Canadian NGOs at the international and national level, managers of Canadian NGOs and other actors in the field were interviewed. The data collection was supplemented by a literature review of papers written since the beginning of the pandemic.
Building resilience through organisational learning and innovation: COVID-19, windows of opportunity, and the future of cooperation in crisis management