Ethiopia has a long history of human rights violations and conflicts that have deeply affected the nation. Most recently, the period from 2020 to 2022 saw intense conflict in the Tigray, Amhara and Afar regions with considerable loss of life and allegations of serious violations by all parties to the conflict.

The November 2022 Pretoria Agreement on cessation of hostilities and the subsequent Nairobi Agreement created opportunities to address historical grievances and confront gross rights violations, including the adoption of a comprehensive transitional justice process. However, violence continues in regions like Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella, Sidama and Oromia due to protracted intercommunal conflicts. Climate change and droughts have exacerbated food insecurity, while armed conflict persists in Oromia, where peace talks have not progressed so far, and violence has erupted in Amhara.

Before the Tigray conflict, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed introduced transitional justice initiatives to distance Ethiopia from the abuses of previous regimes. This
included the establishment of the 2018 Ethiopian Reconciliation Commission pursuant to a newly enacted Reconciliation Law and acknowledgment of the pre-2018 regime's violence against the Ethiopian people. Institutions like the Attorney General's Office have initiated procedures to hold past perpetrators
accountable for corruption and other forms of abuses committed before and during the 2018 transition. Amidst the Tigray war, Ethiopia continued transitional
justice efforts. The government shut down the Reconciliation Commission and established the National Dialogue Commission, adding a dialogue process parallel to the transitional justice process. The government also established the Transitional Justice Working Group of Experts (TJWGE), which released a
Green Paper on policy options after the 2023 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement. The TJWGE has undertaken national consultations ahead of drafting a national
transitional justice policy for Ethiopia.

Peace processes often neglect affected communities' perspectives, despite their crucial role in sustaining peace and preventing atrocities. The TJWGE consultations, while important, might not have fully captured the population's diverse views across all regions. To complement this process, the Harvard
Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) in collaboration with the Partnership for Pastoralist Development Association (PAPDA) and local universities, and with support from
the Global Initiative for Justice, Truth and Reconciliation (GIJTR), and the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC), implemented a rigorous,
representative, and methodologically robust consultation to gain a deeper understanding of the population's perceptions about peace and justice. This
comprehensive mixed-method research gathered data from diverse communities across all regions of Ethiopia, including a survey of 6,689 randomly selected adult Ethiopians. Its results are presented in this report.

Objectives: To determine factors associated with adherence to COVID-19 mitigation measures, related symptoms and testing, as well as pandemic-related income loss among Venezuelan refugee and migrant adults in urban and border areas of Colombia.

Design: Phone-based respondent-driven sampling

Setting: Bogotá and Norte de Santander, Colombia.

Participants: 605 adult Venezuelan refugees and migrants residing in Bogotá (n=305) and Norte de Santander (n=300), who arrived in Colombia after 2014 and completed the survey in August and September 2020.

 

Primary and secondary outcome measures: Full COVID-19 compliance (vs incomplete or no compliance), any COVID-19-related symptoms (vs none) and income loss due to isolation measures in Colombia (vs no income change or increase in income).

Results: Older age was associated with lower odds of compliance with physical distancing measures (0.94, 0.90–0.99; p=0.01) for those in Bogotá. Nearly 15% of refugees and migrants in both locations (81 of 605) experienced at least one symptom consistent with COVID-19. Having a health condition was associated with higher odds of experiencing COVID-19-related symptoms in Bogotá (4.00, 1.22–13.06; p=0.02) and Norte de Santander (6.99, 1.95–24.99; p=0.003). Around 8% in both locations (48 of 605) were tested for COVID-19. Around 90% in both locations (537 of 605) had trouble earning an income after the introduction of isolation measures, and the median reported monthly income decreased by half in Bogotá and by 30% in Norte de Santander. A higher level of education (3.46, 1.02–11.75; p=0.05) was associated with higher odds of income loss among participants in Norte de Santander.

Conclusions: Results indicate high compliance with COVID-19 mitigation measures, low testing rates and high pandemic-related income loss among Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Colombia. This study provides insights into a hard-to-reach refugee and migrant population in Colombia; additional study on the effects of the pandemic on hidden populations is warranted.

 

Importance: In 2018 to 2020, the Democratic Republic of the Congo experienced the world’s second largest Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, killing 2290 individuals; women were disproportionately infected (57% of all cases) despite no evidence of differential biological EVD risk. Understanding how gender norms may influence exposure to EVD, intensity, and prognosis as well as personal protective behaviors against the virus is important to disease risk reduction and control interventions.

Objective: To assess whether men and women differ in personal protective behaviors (vaccine acceptance, health-seeking behaviors, physical distancing) and the mediating role of EVD information and knowledge, perceived disease risk, and social relations.

Design, Setting, and Participants: This cross-sectional, multistage cluster survey study of 1395 randomly selected adults was conducted in the Ebola-affected regions of North Kivu from April 20, 2019, to May 10, 2019. Path analyses were conducted using structural equation modeling to examine associations among study variables. Statistical analysis was conducted from August 2019 to May 2020.

Main Outcomes and Measures: The main behavioral outcomes of interest were (1) vaccine acceptance, (2) formal health care seeking, and (3) self-protective behaviors. The primary factor of interest was self-reported gender identity. We also assessed sociodemographic factors.

Results: Among the study’s 1395 participants, 1286 (93%) had Nande ethnicity and 698 (50%) were women; the mean (SD) age was 34.5 (13.1) years. Compared with female participants, male participants reported significantly higher levels of education, wealth, and mobile phone access. There were associations found between gender and all EVD preventive behavioral outcomes, with evidence for mediation through EVD knowledge and belief in rumors. Men reported greater EVD knowledge accuracy compared with women (mean [SE] score for men: 12.06 [0.13] vs women: 11.08 [0.16]; P < .001), and greater knowledge accuracy was associated with increases in vaccine acceptance (β = 0.37; P < .001), formal care seeking (β = 0.39; P < .001), and self-protective behaviors (β = 0.35; P < .001). Lower belief in rumors was associated with greater vaccine acceptance (β = −0.30; P < .001), and greater EVD information awareness was associated with increased adoption of self-protective behaviors (β = 0.23; P < .001).

Conclusions and Relevance: This survey study found gender differences in adopting preventive protective behaviors against EVD. These findings suggest that it is critical to design gender-sensitive communication and vaccination strategies, while engaging women and their community as a whole in any response to infectious disease outbreaks. Research on the potential link between gender and sociodemographics factors associated with disease risk and outcomes is needed.

This report is based on a comprehensive needs assessment carried out remotely by the HHI team in Syria in 2019. The OSF HESP grant was awarded to a larger project to understand the impact of humanitarian emergencies, including armed conflict, on students enrolled in medical and nursing programs. The goal is to produce a needs assessment toolkit to help support professional health care education programs during conflict. In addition to Syria, where the conflict is ongoing, the project examines Colombia, a recent post-conflict setting, and Rwanda, a developed post-conflict setting.