This study documents the inspiring organisational transformations of six National Red Cross Red Crescent Societies: Afghanistan, Honduras, Mali, Somalia, Ukraine and Yemen. Located in fragile, complex, protracted conflict and violence-affected contexts, each National Society made National Society Development (NSD) investments to strengthen their neutral, impartial and independent services, locally-led principled humanitarian action, and organisational structures. In doing so, they became better able to reach communities that often no other organisations could reach.

The study was commissioned by a global task force to better document good practice and the challenges surrounding NSD investments in difficult contexts. The task force, convened and led by the British Red Cross, is comprised the American Red Cross, Australian Red Cross, Canadian Red Cross, Danish Red Cross, German Red Cross, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). 

The overall premise of the study was to better understand:

• which Movement-wide NSD investments and strategies have yielded the highest returns in building organisational characteristics that deliver principled assistance and increase wellbeing in targeted communities
• how sustainable capacities were strengthened to promote neutral, impartial and independent locally-led humanitarian action
• how weaknesses in Movement NSD practices in fragile, complex, conflict and violence-affected environments were addressed, and how strengths were leveraged to overcome them.

Scroll down to download the full study report as well as the six individual country case studies.