Domestic fires have heavily affected Bukavu in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), causing deadly humanitarian crises with multiple effects. In 2024 alone, the DRC Humanitarian Observatory (DRC H-O) reported at least 59 cases of domestic fires leading to at least 21 deaths, 2706 houses, 5 schools and 4 churches were burnt, while at least 15,945 people were affected.

Humanitarianism has long been in crisis, but since early 2025, the sector has been experiencing an unprecedented organizational, institutional, normative, and political collapse. In this blog, Kristin Sandvik from the University of Oslo calls on scholars active in the broad, inter-, and multidisciplinary field of humanitarian studies to try to understand and analyze the impact of this collapse and address