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Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the literature about participatory approaches in humanitarian research, with a focus on Colombia, DRC, and Pakistan. It asks what participatory practices are in place, how these align with feminist approaches, and how they lead to changes in humanitarian action.

Paper long abstract:

Doing participatory research with people directly affected by humanitarian crises is becoming more common in humanitarian research and action. Similarly to specific marginalized groups, more humanitarian workers and organizations have been advocating for people’s participation and engagement in designing programs and interventions, as well as involving them in research about their needs in humanitarian situations. In the last years, participatory approaches have also been part of the discussions and practices of localisation and accountability within the humanitarian arena, and this participation can take different forms; from information exchange to public involvement and decision-making negotiations (Hilhorst et al. 2021a: 368-69; Ormel et al. 2020: 1-2; Carruth 2018).

Participatory approaches usually align with feminist critics about unequal (gendered) power relations and extractivist practices in the research processes and outcomes. But these can still be reproduced within participatory methodologies, especially when participatory approaches are adopted in one phase of the project but not integrated more carefully throughout implementation. More research is needed to understand how to work directly with the people most affected by injustices and/or by humanitarian crises, without reproducing the same power relations that create them in the first place. For this, this paper seeks to explore the available literature about participatory approaches to gender and sexuality in humanitarian research, with a special focus on Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Pakistan. It asks what participatory practices are already in place, how these align with feminist approaches, and how they lead to changes in decision making and implementation of humanitarian action.