ABSTRACT
Recent humanitarian crises in conflict areas such as Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq have been locations for assessing information resources and practices. Post-conflict environments are complex, fast moving, and highly uncertain. This turbulence and its consequences have been analyzed for research conducted during and after war (Barakat et al. 2002) and for information processing within the humanitarian community during protracted war (Benini 1997). The turbulence continues into the post-conflict period. Notably, armed conflicts tend to destroy the kinds of foundational data and baseline information on which research and program monitoring in peaceful environments can depend. Moreover, the post-war humanitarian community itself creates a turbulent organizational field. Its numerous actors construct a “negotiated information order” (Heimer 1985), although this construct usually lacks coherence and timeliness. These basic conditions prevailed in Iraq after April 2003, with the added challenge that
growing insecurity has since made them worse. This chapter sketches the information landscape in Iraq before and after the spring 2003 war. We analyze the challenges of information management through the lens of two major rapid assessments. This analysis leads to some applicable lessons for humanitarian information management in future post-war situations.
