International Conference on Ethics & Humanitarian Research

Disasters and conflicts lead to crises that call for humanitarian responses. Evidence is being sought to ensure these responses are effective and the best use of available resources. Such evidence-generating activities often involve human participants and thus raise ethical issues. Practical tools and decision-making aids are needed to help researchers and others gathering data in humanitarian settings to address the ethical issues. Consequently, researchers, policy-makers, and ethicists have recently started to engage in a new field of inquiry concerning the ethical implications of humanitarian research. This conference invites abstract submissions for paper presentations and/or posters that consider the ethical challenges encountered in research and other evidence-generating activities in humanitarian settings. The conference will include a structured conversation on ethical issues in humanitarian health research as part of The Ohio State University’s 2019 series of events on research ethics and integrity. This will allow active discussion between humanitarian researchers, policy-makers and ethicists.

The Post-Research Ethics Analysis (PREA) project has been examining ethical issues in humanitarian research since 2016. Funded by R2HC/Elrha, it has reviewed the ethical issues published in the literature and conducted interviews with researchers conducting humanitarian research in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Nepal and South Sudan. These have contributed to a practical tool to help research teams reflect on and learn from the ethical issues encountered in humanitarian research. The results of this research and the tool will be presented at this conference, along with other oral presentations, and structured panel conversations between humanitarian researchers, ethicists and policy-makers.

Others will be added as confirmations are received.

• Tine Van Bortel, Ph.D.,
  Professor of Global & Mental Health, University of East London, UK;
  Deputy Director of the Institute of Health & Human Development.
• Matthew Hunt, Ph.D.,
  Associate Professor and Director of Research, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada
  Co-Director of the Humanitarian Health Ethics Network
• Elysée Nouvet, Ph.D.,
  Assistant Professor, The Africa Institute, Western University, Ontario, Canada;
  conducted research in West Africa on the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak