The United Nations and the Global Ebola Response. The UN emergency health mission UNMEER

Master's Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject Politics - Topic: International Organisations grade: no grade yet University of Aarhus course: International Studies language: English abstract: The unprecedented scope and implications of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa has confronted the international community with challenges in responding to the crisis. On 19 September 2014 the first-ever UN emergency health mission United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER) was established. UNMEER was set up as a temporary mission to bring together UN agencies and capabilities in the response and closely collaborate with governments NGOs Member States and other relevant actors with the main strategic objective to stop the Ebola outbreak.This thesis investigates the effects of UNMEER on the global Ebola response as a whole and assesses whether the establishment of the mission was the right decision to make from the UN side in response to the outbreak. In this regard the context in which UNMEER was established is scrutinized by examining the challenges faced in the outbreak and how these were approached by the international community. The analysis is predominantly based on qualitative primary data collected through individual semi-structured interviews with respondents who are or have been directly involved in the Ebola response as well as on secondary data.Findings show that UNMEER had a positive impact on the response in various respects. The exceptional decision from the UN side to establish the first-ever emergency health mission increased worldwide awareness of the outbreak and catalysed a high-level political and financial international engagement in the response. Furthermore there seems to be a positive attitude towards UNMEER's role in bringing together UN agencies under a single structure in the response as well as the logistics support provided by UNMEER to UN agencies and other partners working in the response. However due to a