There are seven authors on this project, all of whom are connected to research institutes or universities. The project was primarily written by individuals associated with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which has a good reputation.
The article highlights large gaps in existing research concerning violence against health care workers in environments were the political and cultural atmosphere affects security in complex and unstudied ways. The article argues that the lack of research is partly due to discrepancies between public opinion, government opinion, and academic review makes understanding the causes of violence and risks to health workers challenging. The article suggests that an effort on the part of aid organizations to make their data easily accessible along with greater funding and academic interest the motives behind violence against health workers could be better understood.
The main argument is supported through the existing research, which is minimal, as well as expert interviews, focus groups, and information from the Aid Worker Security Database.
The data used to support the claims of the article were from existing sources such as the Aid Worker Security Database, as well as from the interviews and focus groups help by the authors. It is important to note that the methods used to support the argument depended on data that may be incomplete, from questionable sources, or biased due to the lack of research and dependable data gathering for this topic.
Emergency response is addressed in terms of aid workers involved in a long term aid project for war torn or poverty stricken communities. The article focused on the risks that these health workers take due to the greater likelihood of violence against health workers in these environments when compared to the average city hospital.
The article has been referenced a few times since it was published, however the recent publication, lack of research being done on this topic, or the lack of definitive results from this paper have prevented it from being referenced extensively.
The large number of sources in the bibliography show that the article was produced with a thorough literature review of existing research on the topic as well as using data taken from independent databases.
I looked into the aid organization Medicins Sans Frontieres and the incident mentioned in the article where the organization was forced to abandon their operations in Somalia. The multiple mentions of a lack of data available on violence against aid workers led me to research the Aid Worker Security Database in order to better understand the system for which data was organized. Finally, I was surprised by the mention of government supported violence against aid workers and decided to look into that. There was a significant amount of news concerning government plots and political violence but very little appeared to be reliable or could be corroborated.
There were 7 so I did a few:
Suyoun Jung - Researches fragile states, and security, developement and Korea. These places are highly at-risk for disasters and at-risk for difficulties controlling disasters once they occur.
Gulzhan Asylbek Kyzy is working on the impact evaluation of the epacebuilding programme in Kyrgyzstan. These kind of programs could help address less developed countries' infrastructure and systems weaknesses, and if one proves successful, it could be used as a model for future efforts.
Nerina Weiss has a PhD in Social Anthropology and researches Violance and conflict, gender, political anthropology, migration, and torture and social suffering. He work is also very related to what we focus on in developing countries struggling to manage their populations and political atomosphere.