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Public health and conflict early warning are evolving rapidly in response to technology changes for the gathering, management, analysis and communication of data. It is expected that these changes will provide an unprecedented ability to monitor, detect, and respond to crises. One of the potentially most profound and lasting expected change affects the roles of the various actors in providing and sharing information and in responding to early warning. Communities and civil society actors have the opportunity to be empowered as a source of information, analysis, and response, while the role of traditional actors shifts toward supporting those communities and building resilience. However, by creating new roles, relationships, and responsibilities, technology changes raise major concerns and ethical challenges for practitioners, pressing the need for practical guidelines and actionable recommendations in line with existing ethical principles. Adapted from the source document.

This report presents the results of a large-scale population-based survey about peace, justice, and social reconstruction in northern Uganda intended to capture community views on matters that affect ordinary people and the recovery after twenty years of conflicts. The survey was carried out between April and May 2010 in four districts (the Acholi districts) of northern Uganda: Amuru, Gulu, Kitgum, and Pader. The findings are based on a total of 2,498 interviews with adults in various locations, including home villages, resettlement sites, and former camps. They provide results that are representative of the adult population in those four districts. This is the third large-scale survey conducted in this region by the Initiative for Vulnerable Populations at the University of California, Berkeley's Human Rights Center. The previous surveys were conducted in 2005, while the war with the LRA continued, and in 2007 when peace negotiations were underway. This survey was designed to allow comparison with earlier surveys among the Acholi districts. It also responds to the post-conflict context by including more questions about development and reconstruction. Interviews were conducted anonymously and confidentially, using a standardized questionnaire about respondents' demographic profiles, their current priorities, their access to services and information, their concerns about resettlement, and their views on social cohesion, security, violence, peace, justice and accountability. Detailed results provided in the report reveal a picture of communities in a time of transition, optimistic about the future, concentrated on rebuilding their lives and renewing livelihood activities, and demanding more accountability from government. At the same time, people have not forgotten the war and are concerned about holding perpetrators (including government forces) accountable, reintegrating combatants, and assisting victims. It also reveals that many of these close-knit communities in northern Uganda remain isolated, with little access to news and information (although this is somewhat improved from 2007), little engagement in government programs that affect them, and little contact with authorities or communities outside of their locales.

On 13 October 2005, the International Criminal Court unsealed warrants of arrest for five senior leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) for the forced conscription of children and other war crimes in northern Uganda. We compiled a database of 25,231 children and youth who had been registered by receptions centers in northern Uganda after their return from the LRA. Most of the LRA returnees were thirteen to eighteen years old (37 percent) and nineteen to thirty years old (24 percent). Twenty-four percent of the LRA returnees were female and 76 percent were male. The average length of abduction was 342 days, and the median number of days of abduction was ninety-two days. Among women aged nineteen to thirty years old, the average length of abduction was four and one half years. At the multivariate level, gender, age, and the interaction between them were associated with length of captivity (F-Statistic = 229.8, p-value = 0.0001). Using triangulation methods, we estimate the LRA abducted 54,000 to 75,000 people, including 25,000 to 38,000 children, into their ranks between 1986 and 2006.

AbstractTransitional justice is a conspicuous feature of responses to mass atrocities. Rooted in accountability and redress for victims, transitional justice mechanisms influence and are influenced by collective memory of conflicts. This article looks at the dynamics between memory, trauma and forgiveness in Cambodia. Thirty years after the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodians expressed limited knowledge of the past, a strong desire for the truth, and lingering feelings of hatred. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) created or renewed demand for truth, along with some desire for harm to come to the wrongdoers. Although the ECCC was set up several decades after the mass atrocities, the data suggest that the ECCC and the civil society movement associated with it may have had positive outcomes on addressing the legacy of the violence.

Hurricane Katrina, which landed just east of New Orleans, Louisiana on the morning of August 29, 2005, displaced hundreds of thousands of citizens, caused over 1,800 fatalities, and left much of the city in ruins. In its aftermath, the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Labor lifted certain labor and wage restrictions for a period of time in an attempt to accommodate survivors who had lost security documents as well as expedite the rebuilding process. As clean up efforts got underway, reports of abuse—coupled with the easing of labor regulations, virtually no monitoring of construction sites, and the city's lack of adequate housing and healthcare—suggested that unscrupulous contractors could easily be exploiting their workers. The International Human Rights Law Clinic and the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley collaborated with the Payson Center for International Development and Technology Transfer at Tulane University to conduct a study of the situation of construction workers in New Orleans. The study took place in March 2006 and examined both documented and undocumented workers using three research methods: key informant interviews, targeted sampling, and random sampling. Researchers interviewed 25 key informants including legal advocates, social service providers, community activists, representatives of minority and immigrant groups, and representatives of federal, state, and local government agencies in Louisiana and Mississippi, among others. Researchers also used targeted sampling to interview 148 Latino workers in different sites in New Orleans and Kenner, with the goal to determine the needs of Latino workers as they represent the largest group of undocumented workers. In addition, a random sampling of 212 workers of all origins working in Orleans parish was conducted to provide quantitative information on workers' experiences.

For nearly two decades, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has waged a war against the people of Northern Uganda. The group's conflict with government forces has received little international attention, even though as many as 1.6 million civilians have been displaced and now languish in dozens of squalid camps throughout the countryside. In recent years, several researchers have conducted qualitative studies of the factors influencing peace and justice considerations in the north, primarily comprising interviews with Ugandan government officials, humanitarian workers, traditional and religious leaders, former LRA members, and others. These studies have contributed greatly to our understanding of the challenges policymakers face in their efforts to end years of war. Yet most research has not included population-based data that represent the spectrum of attitudes and opinions of those most affected by the violence. This report seeks to fill that void. The report presents the findings of a study conducted by researchers from the Human Rights Center (HRC), University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), Payson Center of Tulane University and Makerere University Institute of Public Health. The findings are based on the preliminary analysis of quantitative data collected from cross-sectional survey of 2,585 individuals residing in the four selected directs in northern Uganda—Gulu and Kitgum (both Acholi districts), and Lira and Soroti (both non-Acholi districts)—between April 20 and May 2, 2005. The specific objectives of the survey were to: 1) Measure the overall exposure to violence as a result of war and human rights abuses in Northern Uganda since 1987; 2) Understand the immediate needs and concerns of residents of towns, villages, and internally displaced person (IDP) camps in Northern Uganda; 3) Capture opinions and attitudes about specific transitional justice mechanisms, including trials, traditional justice, truth commissions, and reparations; and 4) Elucidate views on the relationship between peace and justice in Northern Uganda.

Twenty-one years of war, destruction, and the displacement of over 1.5 million people have turned northern Ugandan into a humanitarian disaster. One of the war's principal perpetrators has been the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). A significant shift in the war occurred in late 2005 when the LRA withdrew its forces to the southern Sudan and then crossed the Nile, assembling in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the summer of 2006, peace talks between the Government of Uganda and the LRA commenced in Juba, and a first Cessation of Hostilities Agreement was signed on 26 August 2006. With the withdrawal of the LRA to the Congo, security in northern Uganda has improved considerably. Some displacement-camp residents have moved to new settlement sites closer to their villages. Yet others fear leaving the relative safety of the camps until a final peace agreement has been signed and the LRA fighters have been demobilized. This is a delicate stage of the conflict, and a deeper understanding of the needs and desires of affected populations will be crucial to a long-term resolution. This report presents the findings of a population-based study conducted by the Human Rights Center, University of California Berkeley, Payson Center for International Development, Tulane University, and the International Center for Transitional Justice. The research was based on a cross-sectional survey of 2,875 individuals, supplemented by in-depth qualitative interviews, in eight districts of northern Uganda most affected by the conflict from April to June 2007. The study capture attitudes about peace, justice, and social reconstruction while peace talks were taking place between the Ugandan government and the LRA in Juba, south Sudan.

Abstract
The Central Sahel region has one of the world's fastest-growing populations of internally displaced persons (IDPs). To better understand the risk factors associated with displacement, this study utilized respondent-driven sampling to recruit otherwise hard-to-reach IDPs in remote and urban areas in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. From August to October 2021, 4144 IDPs were surveyed, and nine targeted vulnerability profiles were measured across the domains of gender, health, and protection. The study revealed a high prevalence of risk factors and vulnerability among IDPs, with notable geographic differences. The majority of IDPs fell into at least one category of vulnerability, with health vulnerabilities being the most common. Internally displaced persons reported overlapping vulnerabilities in health, particularly chronic illness, mental health issues, and disability. Women had higher odds of vulnerability than men. Statistically significant associations were site-specific, and some were inconsistent across contexts, highlighting the cross-cutting and pervasive nature of vulnerability among IDPs.

Abstract
Successive sampling population size estimation (SS-PSE) is a method used by government agencies, aid organizations, and researchers around the world to estimate the size of hidden populations using data from respondent-driven sampling surveys. SS-PSE addresses a specific need in estimation, since many countries rely on having accurate size estimates to plan and allocate finite resources to address the needs of hidden populations. However, SS-PSE relies on several assumptions, one of which requires the underlying social network of the hidden population to be fully connected. We propose two modifications to SS-PSE for estimating the size of hidden populations whose underlying social network is composed of disjoint clusters. The first method is a theoretically straightforward extension of SS-PSE, but it relies on prior information that may be difficult to obtain in practice. The second method extends the Bayesian SS-PSE model by introducing a new set of parameters that allow for clustered estimation without requiring the additional prior information. After providing theoretical justification for both novel methods, we then assess their performance using simulations and apply the Clustered SS-PSE method to a population of internally displaced persons in Bamako, Mali.

BACKGROUND: The 2018–2019 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in North Kivu and Ituri provinces in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is the largest ever recorded in the DRC. It has been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The outbreak emerged in a region of chronic conflict and insecurity, and directed attacks against health care workers may have interfered with disease response activities. Our study characterizes and quantifies the broader conflict dynamics over the course of the outbreak by pairing epidemiological and all available spatial conflict data. METHODS: We build a set of conflict variables by mapping the spatial locations of all conflict events and their associated deaths in each of the affected health zones in North Kivu and Ituri, eastern DRC, before and during the outbreak. Using these data, we compare patterns of conflict before and during the outbreak in affected health zones and those not affected. We then test whether conflict is correlated with increased EVD transmission at the health zone level. FINDINGS: The incidence of conflict events per capita is ~ 600 times more likely in Ituri and North Kivu than for the rest of the DRC. We identified 15 time periods of substantial uninterrupted transmission across 11 health zones and a total of 120 bi-weeks. We do not find significant short-term associations between the bi-week reproduction numbers and the number of conflicts. However, we do find that the incidence of conflict per capita was correlated with the incidence of EVD per capita at the health zone level for the entire outbreak (Pearson's r = 0.33, 95% CI 0.05–0.57). In the two provinces, the monthly number of conflict events also increased by a factor of 2.7 in Ebola-affected health zones (p value < 0.05) compared to 2.0 where no transmission was reported and 1.3 in the rest of the DRC, in the period between February 2019 and July 2019. CONCLUSION: We characterized the association between variables documenting broad conflict levels and EVD transmission. ...

The coronavirus 2019-2020 pandemic (COVID-19) poses unprecedented challenges for governments and societies around the world (1). Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) have proven to be critical for delaying and containing the COVID-19 pandemic (2–6). This includes testing and tracing, bans on large gatherings, non-essential business and school and university closures, international and domestic mobility restrictions and physical isolation, and total lockdowns of regions and countries. Decision-making and evaluation or such interventions during all stages of the pandemic lifecycle require specific, reliable and timely data not only about infections, but also about human behavior, especially mobility and physical co-presence. We argue that mobile phone data, when used properly and carefully, represents a critical arsenal of tools for supporting public health actions across early, middle, and late-stage phases of the COVID-19 pandemic.