Take part: Help to identify humanitarian archives, records and datasets at risk around the world and map the scale of the Humanitarian Archive Emergency

Across the humanitarian sector, significant bodies of knowledge are under threat. Funding cuts are closing organisations. Armed conflict is destroying offices and storage sites. Cloud subscriptions are lapsing. The result is that operational records, beneficiary data, protection documentation, evaluations, and institutional memory are being lost, often silently and irreversibly. This is the Humanitarian Archive Emergency.  

The loss is not evenly distributed. Collections held by local and national organisations, particularly in fragile and low-income settings, face the greatest risk and receive the least protection.  

Help us identify vital records

As part of the Humanitarian Archive Emergency (HAE) coalition, we have commissioned a census of humanitarian archives, records and dataset. The HAE Discovery Survey is now open for submissions and nominations. If you know about or manage repositories of humanitarian knowledge, please complete the survey, or help us by circulating it across the community.  

You can view and respond to the survey in Arabic, English, French or Spanish. It takes around five minutes to complete.  

Who should complete the survey?

Suitable respondents for the survey could include:  

• Owners / controllers / managers of archives, records and datasets relating to humanitarian needs and responses, especially those relating to global health and social protection.  

• Current or former humanitarian staff who have contributed to repositories of humanitarian knowledge and can help us to identify existing focal points, or archives at risk.  

• Researchers, advocates, journalists or other users of humanitarian and global health information who can direct us towards valuable cross-sector, or sector-specific archives, records and datasets.  

In the survey you will be asked to describe the archive, its status and any risks it faces. A consent question allows you to indicate whether your entry can be included in a public registry or should remain internal to the research team. Sensitive collections can be reported confidentially, and a follow-up contact option is available to protect collections or custodians at risk. ‍

About the Humanitarian Archive Emergency (HAE) Coalition

The Humanitarian Archive Emergency is a coalition of stakeholders working to identify, census, and preserve at‑risk humanitarian and health‑related data. Together with the University of Manchester’s Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), the Institute for Development Studies and Key Aid Consulting, as well as a broader coalition of humanitarians, scholars and archivists, we are working to address the Humanitarian Archive Emergency. This survey is part of our initial steps to build an evidence base on the scale, nature, and consequences of archival risk in the sector.  

The project is funded by Leverhulme Trust and Wellcome Trust.  

For more information about Elrha’s role in the coalition, contact Ian Brightwell [email protected]