Evacuation of International Volunteers Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study of Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers

In March 2020 international aid agencies decided to evacuate their volunteers from host countries as part of their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 15 in 2020, the Director of the US Peace Corps announced the evacuation of all volunteers from their posts. At that time, approximately 7,000 Peace Corps volunteers worked in 62 countries. In the case of the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (hereafter, JOCV), more than 2,000 volunteers all over the world were also evacuated. The evacuation of all international volunteers at the same time due to the pandemic was thus a situation that had never been experienced before. In light of this, the present study explores the evacuated JOCV volunteers’ experiences, while also focusing on analyzing what motivated volunteers to keep alive their hopes for a reassignment. Based on the semi-structured interview data, the flow of their experiences is derived and analyzed in four phases: (1) before the evacuation, (2) during the evacuation, (3) during their stay in Japan, and (4) after returning to the host country. This study also explores how the evacuation experience changed the mindset of volunteers in terms of being international volunteers.