Material Detail

Humanitarian Access and Security is a free, openly accessible learning resource on a reality that is growing more acute: working in the most complex humanitarian crises is increasingly dangerous. Across three richly referenced pages, it examines the threats to humanitarian action and the strategies organisations use to protect their teams and their access to affected populations. It covers the concept of humanitarian space and the forces that shrink it — the politicisation and instrumentalisation of aid, sanctions, counter-terrorism measures and bureaucratic barriers; the record levels of attacks on aid and health workers, the specific violence targeting health care, and the persistent impunity nearly a decade after UN Security Council Resolution 2286; and the core security management strategies of acceptance, protection and deterrence.

Designed for students and early-career professionals in humanitarian and global health, it offers a clear, critical understanding of why humanitarian access is contested and how it is defended. Each page is grounded in academic literature, evaluation reports, and institutional sources, with full citations and references, and includes a companion Gemini/NotebookLM notebook gathering all its sources so learners can ask questions and explore each topic in greater depth.

This will delete the comment from the database. This operation is not reversible. Are you sure you want to do it?

Thank you for reporting a broken "Go to Material" link in MERLOT to help us maintain a collection of valuable learning materials.

If you feel this material is inappropriate for the MERLOT Collection, please click SEND REPORT, and the MERLOT Team will investigate. Thank you!

You are being taken to the material on another site. This will open a new window.

Do not show me this again