Hazel Partington

Leaving no one behindLeaving no one behind is the main transformative promise of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It encapsulates the 21st-century mission of inclusionInclusion. This chapter introduces the main mission of this book: leaving no one behindLeaving no one behind in research. It provides the context for all the chapters that follow by explaining what it means to leave no one behind in research, how the protection-inclusionInclusion dilemma for vulnerable groups and individuals is generated, and how risksRisk and mistrust in research might be reduced. The book was written in collaboration with two groups who are traditionally labelled as highly vulnerable and are therefore often excluded from research: the South African San community and an impoverished sex worker community in Nairobi. Working closely throughout all research stages with the two communities, including co-authorship of this book, we prioritised research-participant needs over researcher needs, aiming for minimally risky and minimally burdensome research, as well as increased trustTrust in researchers. This involved foregoing the collection of personal dataPersonal data and obtaining all research input through community researchersCommunity researchers. It led to a potential alternative to exclusionExclusion from research, namely research led by vulnerable groups for vulnerable groups.

Open access. This open-access book discusses vulnerability and the protection-inclusion dilemma of including those who suffer from serious poverty, severe stigma, and structural violence in research. Co-written with representatives from indigenous peoples in South Africa and sex workers in Nairobi, the authors come down firmly on the side of inclusion. In the spirit of leaving no one behind in research, the team experimented with data collection methods that prioritize research participant needs over researcher needs. This involved foregoing the collection of personal data and community researchers being involved in all stages of the research. In the process, the term ‘vulnerability’ was illuminated across significant language barriers as it was defined by indigenous peoples and sex workers themselves. The book describes a potential alternative to exclusion from research that moves away from traditional research methods. By ensuring that the research is led by vulnerable groups for vulnerable groups, it offers an approach that fosters trust and collaboration with benefits for the community researchers, the wider community as well as research academics. Those living in low-income settings, in dire situations that are summarized with the term ‘vulnerability’ know best what their problems are and which priorities they have. To exclude them from research for their own protection is a patronizing approach which insinuates that researchers and research ethics committees know best. The team from this book have shown that minimally risky and minimally burdensome research tailored towards the needs of highly marginalized and stigmatized communities can be scientifically valuable as well as inclusive and equitable. I congratulate them. Prof. Klaus Leisinger, President Global Values Alliance, Former personal advisor to Kofi Annan on corporate responsibility.

The PREPARED Code is a risk-based, values-driven framework that integrates research ethics and research integrity and is designed for a global audience. Developed over two years, this ambitious initiative required a collaborative, multidisciplinary effort led by an international team. The PREPARED team employed a range of methods to develop the code, including literature searches, scoping reviews, empirical studies, targeted consultations, ethical and legal analyses, and public consultation. This chapter explores the processes and methods used to develop the PREPARED Code, highlighting how real-world challenges in research ethics and research integrity during crises were identified, analysed and validated by stakeholders. It describes how these challenges were aligned with universally recognised moral values and grouped as risks, and how the risks were transformed into a clear, focused and jargon-free code of conduct. It also details the final stages of development, which involved iterative refinement of the code from Version 1 to Version 13, through extensive consultation and review.

The Indigenous San peoples, often referred to as South Africa’s “First Peoples”, experienced a violent history of displacement and genocideGenocide. Modern-day San still suffer from the intergenerational traumaIntergenerational trauma inflicted by colonists as well as discriminationDiscrimination, marginalisationMarginalisation and impoverishment. In addition, the South African San are collectively labelled as a vulnerable group, whose inclusionInclusion in research should be reduced to a minimum if one follows traditional protection mechanisms from research ethics. The purpose of this chapter is to let the San define “vulnerability” for themselves through workshops and community-administered surveysSurvey. It became clear that San representatives did not perceive the word “vulnerable” to be pejorative per se. On the contrary, it served as a useful umbrella term to cover a vast range of issues and problems. However, it also became clear that the term is perceived as negative when external actors block research—in a potentially patronisingPatronising manner—that could be beneficial to the community. Equitable research partnershipsEquitable partnerships between researchers and South African San community members, facilitated by the South African San CouncilSouth African San Council and guided by the San Code of Research EthicsSan code of research ethics, can lead to rich data that have the potential to assist the community in finding ways out of vulnerability. Externally labellingLabelling them as “vulnerable” as a group and blocking access to research cannot be the solution.

Engaged researchEngaged research, which strengthens research teams through community researchersCommunity researchers, offers many opportunities and challenges. From better access to community members who are hard to reach, to the collection of more meaningful and authenticAuthentic data, and greater trustworthiness of research findings, the benefitsBenefits for research are manifold. However, research has also shown that community researchersCommunity researchers might be overtly biased, only collect superficial data or lack the confidenceConfidence to probe deeply enough, among other challenges. Simultaneously, the literature on community researchersCommunity researchers is heavily biased towards high-income countries, and there is very little to be found on experiences from low-and middle-income countries that goes beyond assistance in obtaining informed consentInformed consent. This chapter starts to close that gap by presenting a case study involving 12 community researchersCommunity researchers from the South African San community. Collecting no personal dataPersonal data and obtaining all research input through community researchersCommunity researchers shows that research led by vulnerable groups for vulnerable groups is possible. It is one way of ensuring that the San, and wider research communities, have access to research they can trustTrust.

This concluding chapter summarises how we challenged the protection-inclusionInclusion dilemma in order to avoid leaving people behind in research unnecessarily. The fact remains that individuals from highly impoverished, stigmatised groups in lower-income settings face a high likelihood of being harmed and exploited in research. However, excluding them from research is not the answer and can also be seen as a patronisingPatronising interference in the lives of people who might benefitBenefits from research and might welcome long-term relationshipsLong-term relationships of trustTrust with researchers. Achieving long-term relationshipsLong-term relationships of trustTrust requires research methods that strive to be minimally burdensome and minimally risky. In the context of working with the South African San and the Nairobi sex workers, this means that we had to avoid all personal dataPersonal data collection. It also required community involvement at all stages of the research. A key consideration, often lacking from the wider literature, is how community researchersCommunity researchers are identified, trained and supported. In our work, this involved trusted community members leading the trainingTraining, and the use of storytelling, humourHumour and SocraticSocratic methods to encourage reflexivityReflexivity, compassionCompassion and sensitivity. Notable findings generated from our work include that ‘vulnerability’ is not lost in translation, even though the English term is not readily translatable into relevant other languages, or where the main stressors—such as the stigmatisationStigmatisation, discriminationDiscrimination, marginalisationMarginalisation and abuseAbuse besetting the sex worker community—cannot simply be subsumed under “vulnerability”, because they involve specific individual actors who bring about hardship. Our work identifies an approach for leaving no one behindLeaving no one behind in research that can stimulate a deeper understanding of how equitable research partnershipsEquitable partnerships with highly marginalised groups can be achieved.

What do ethics codes and guidelines tell us about who is vulnerable in research? To what are they vulnerable? And how might this vulnerability be addressed? These questions guided our analysis of 57 research ethics codes and guidelines that mention the involvement of vulnerable persons in research. The chapter draws upon the findings from this analysis to help explain how and why some people might be excluded from research unnecessarily. The investigation is also informed by the findings from an empirical study into the perspectives of 22 researchers who have extensive experience of undertaking research with vulnerable individuals. Their encounters with research governance measures, including research ethics approvalEthics approval and research ethics codes, expose challenges that can exacerbate unnecessary exclusionExclusion from research. We learn from the researchers and the research ethics codes that governance measures intended to protect the vulnerable from exploitationExploitation in research can lead to unfair exclusionExclusion when applied in a blanket fashion. Research governance guidelines and processes must encourage a more nuanced understanding of what it means to be vulnerable in research to ensure that people are not left behind unnecessarily.

Sex work is one of the most stigmatised professions in many parts of the world. In Kenya, where it is also illegalIllegal, sex workers can even face rapeRape and abuseAbuse at the hands of law enforcement agents when it becomes known how they earn a living. As a result, sex workers rarely disclose their profession to familyFamily members, let alone outsiders. This means that the involvement of Kenyan sex workers in research over the years has been highly risky, as most research efforts collect personal dataPersonal data. This chapter describes a four-stage investigation into how sex workers define vulnerability for themselves. The approach was community-driven, community-led and, in the main, community-analysed. Importantly, no personal dataPersonal data was collected, and all engagement was undertaken by trusted facilitators and a sex worker community researcherCommunity researchers. Findings showed that structural vulnerabilities are intersectionalIntersectional and stigma-aggravated. At the root may be povertyPoverty, but the stress created by being stigmatised can lead to mental healthMental health problems which, in turn, can aggravate povertyPoverty and stigmaStigma. The KiswahiliKiswahili term mnyongeMnyonge may capture the essence of vulnerability, expressing a sense of weaknessWeakness without the ability to defend oneself.