Investigating the Role of Non-Governmental Organizations in the Resilience of Informal Settlements of Urmia against Covid-19 Pandemic

- COVID-19 has revealed gaps in health management along with a high rate of infectious diseases in informal settlements.
- We focused on three components and eight indicators of resilience to evaluate the performance of NGOs in the control of the COVID-19 outbreak.
- The vulnerability of informal settlements in the city of Urmia, Iran to COVID-19 was based mainly on economic-livelihood components.

In recent years, the global crisis of the coronavirus pandemic has placed cities and urban management in difficult conditions. Plenty of evidence and research emphasizes that the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 was severer in informal settlements due to the low quantitative and qualitative characteristics of these areas. These settlements are always encountered with many problems such as poverty and unemployment, lack of security and various social damages, socio-economic injustice, health-environmental problems, and lack of concern from the municipality. Furthermore, people living in these settlements face greater risks due to the high population density, improper waste management and low-quality drainage systems, and very poor health conditions and high rates of transmission of infectious diseases. In recent years, therefore, it has turned into one of the most important challenges for urban managers in these areas to examine the ways to address and control the spread of this pandemic disease and increase the resilience of informal settlements against it. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the promotion of the resilience of informal settlements in Urmia against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Plenty of research investigates various indicators of resilience. This research is focused mainly on the explanation of the components and indicators of social resilience. Based on the theoretical framework, the three main components of social resilience include the socio-cultural, socio-economic, and environmental-physical components. In the following, the effective indicators for promotion of societal resilience in informal settlements are explained.
Elimination of the panic caused by problems. When a crisis occurs, residents of an informal settlement should not feel that they are alone, and it is necessary for government institutions and NGOs to support them.
Increase in the level of knowledge. Through a rise in the level of knowledge and information of the residents of informal settlements, appropriate conditions can be provided to control crises and increase their resilience.
Provision of education to everyone. In many cases, the conditions required for facing a crisis can be provided with inclusive, targeted education, especially upon social, economic, physical, and health crises.
Enhancement of participation. An important achievement of NGOs is to enhance public participation and increase social capital, which can establish a powerful link between the society and government.
Enhancement of coordination between people and executive institutions. A specific effective role of NGOs is to function as an intermediary between the government and society.
Financial and subsistence aid. The social, economic, physical, and health crises that occur in an informal settlement often lead to severer poverty and deprivation, where many families need direct financial and subsistence aid.
Employment. Assisting administrative bodies, NGOs are considered as appropriate trustees for the implementation of job preparation, vocational training, entrepreneurship, and marketing and creation of a business environment.
Public health. Through improvement of public health in an informal settlement, the quality of the environment can be raised, and the spread of infectious and pandemic diseases can be reduced.
The quality of the environment. The quality of the residential environments in these settlements is often low, and many citizens living in these areas do not have proper access to services, facilities, infrastructures, and public spaces.

This is a descriptive-analytical study with a quantitative approach. The research population includes all NGOs in the city of Urmia, Iran that are active in the field of countering COVID-19. The simple random sampling method was adopted using a lottery. The data were analyzed using descriptive mean statistics and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Friedman tests in SPSS.

The results demonstrate that the activity of NGOs to improve the resilience of informal settlements in Urmia against COVID-19 in the socio-cultural component is above average, with a score of 3.66. Moreover, the economic-livelihood component exhibits an average of 2.95, which is equivalent to average and below, and the environmental-physical component shows an average of 3.11, which is evaluated as a moderate score.
Hence, it can be stated that the NGOs in Urmia have failed to provide a balanced, coordinated, fair approach with respect to the socio-cultural, economic-livelihood, and environmental-physical components due to the lack of coherence and integrated management in the face of unexpected crises such as the COVID-19 disease. The similarity of this research to others lies in the unified, integrated, coordinated management of government and local institutions upon crisis. Moreover, most researchers emphasize the management authority and social power of NGOs. Generally, it should be stated that NGOs must be equipped with effective financial, support, and educational tools in order to increase the resilience level of the residents of the settlements against crises. They should be strengthened to facilitate institutions’ provision of financial services, economic empowerment, and job creation.

Overall, we conclude that NGOs have performed appropriate activities to improve the resilience of informal settlements in Urmia against the COVID-19 disease. However, their performance has been different in a comparative analysis of components and indicators. The results of the Friedman test on the indicators demonstrates that the NGOs in the informal settlements of Urmia have exhibited effective activities on most socio-cultural and environmental-physical indicators (such as essential skills against COVID-19, provision of sanitary products, prioritization of disadvantaged people, encouragement of the benefactors to help the poor, disinfection of the environment, and encouragement of residents to help clean their neighborhoods). However, most economic indicators have failed to function effectively. Finally, we suggest that NGOs focus on attraction of financial and economic support from the governmental institutions, because this study shows that this pandemic disease has the most tangible impact on the economy of residents of informal settlements. It is also necessary to pay particular attention to provision of incentives and financial support packages to protect the health and economic and social security of people living in these settlements.