GCRF: RECAP - Research capacity building and knowledge generation to support preparedness and response to humanitarian crises and epidemics

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RECAP will focus on acute and protracted humanitarian crises related to armed conflict, natural disasters, forced migration, and epidemics. Humanitarian crises and their impact on health and related sectors can pose major obstacles to international development and the achieving the SDGs. Effective decision-making by humanitarian actors is essential in humanitarian response. Accurate and timely information and evidence is essential in achieving effective decision-making. For example, through setting evidence-based standards and performance measurement against those standards, assessing needs and effectiveness in meeting those needs, ensuring value for money, and supporting accountability to recipients of humanitarian programmes and those programmes. Yet current interventions are impeded by limited data, capacity, guidance, and ethical preparedness with consequent implications for accountability. Work on protection is central to supporting accountability through seeking to ensure authorities and other humanitarian actors respect their obligations and the rights of individuals and vulnerable populations.RECAP's vision is to strengthen research capacity and capability to generate knowledge on how to improve decision-making and accountability to help support preparedness and response to humanitarian crises. RECAP will focus on the sectors of health and protection through overlapping research and capacity building activities. For the research, there are 6 interconnected, interdisciplinary research Objectives/work-packages. These research objectives will also act as platforms for capacity building through applied research methods training. The capacity building activities will be realised through 4 capacity building Objectives on: training on specific research methods linked to the RECAP research; building institutional capacity for a sustainable and supportive research environment; supporting individual researcher capability and career progression; and building UK capability in multi-disciplinary research on health and protection in humanitarian crises. It will be a four year programme.RECAP's strategy to grow research capacity and capability is to establish a unique network of leading academic and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working on health and protection in the context of humanitarian crises. RECAP will be led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and includes the University of Sierra Leone (USL), the American University of Beirut (AUB), the Refugee Law Initiative at the School of Advanced Study (SAS) in London University, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). NGOs are the front line actors in humanitarian preparedness and response and so are vital to RECAP. The RECAP NGO partners are Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Save the Children UK, and BRAC. They will assist through logistics, technical and other forms of support in the RECAP countries.RECAP will use a hub-and-spoke model; with hubs of the UK, Sierra Leone, and Lebanon for capacity building and research; and spokes of further research sites in NGO partner programmes in ODA countries affected by humanitarian crises (most likely to be Myanmar, South Sudan, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, subject to security and logistical issues).The expected outcomes of RECAP will be: strengthened research capacity and capability among university and NGO partners; the development of a new research network through regional hubs of research and training excellence in the UK, Sierra Leone and Lebanon; research and capacity-building outputs (including open access software platforms and research and training guidelines); and impact through contributions to humanitarian guidelines, programmes and policies. These will strengthen decision-making and accountability in humanitarian crises to improve health, protection and broader development outcomes.