Aidnography

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 07 - Human rights and humanitarianism - contributed by Bandana Purkayastha. From the introduction This chapter examines the convergence and divergence of human rights and humanitarian visions and actions. Both human rights and humanitarianism emphasise the humanity of all people and broadly intend to support human beings’ ability to survive with material resources and freedoms that enable them to build lives of human dignity. Yet, the relationships between the action to sustain human rights and humanitarianism are both complementary and contradictory since safeguarding human rights has also been used as rationale to justify actions that generate significant humanitarian crises. The chapter focuses on the rhetoric and the realities, and discusses how inequalities arise and are sustained, despi...

The other day a friend asked me about recommendations for development-themed Substacks and rather than responding to him directly, I decided to share my favorite "blogs-send-out-as-newsletters" resources on the blog... For many years a group of German media entrepreneurs has been awarding the Goldenen Blogger and one category they had for many year was "bloggers without a blog"-this is a bit how I feel about Substack and the concept of (mostly) long newsletters instead of traditional blogs. So which are some of my favorite writers and concepts then? An Africanist Perspective Ken Opalo is a towering figure in the #globaldev Substack community-his posts, fully developed essays really, set the standard for long-form post-blogging... Disability Debrief I am so grateful to learn every week something new about (dis)ability & development thanks to Peter Torres Fremlin's newsletter! Suvojit's Newsletter "I currently live in Nairobi, and write regu...

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024.  This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 06 - Localisation and the humanitarian sector - contributed by Rita Stephan and Claudia E. Youakim From the introduction Over the past 15 years, the humanitarian crises have grown sixfold. Despite these alarming and swelling trends in humanitarian aid demand, a greater number of people who are affected by conflict and disaster ‘are unreached or underserved by the humanitarian sector’ ( Robillard et al., 2021 ; Girling and Urquhart, 2021 ). The humanitarian financing gap is growing whilethe availability of qualified and willing staff to meet the needs of people in crisis is becoming increasingly challenging ( UNHCR, 2016 ). Some observers suggest that one way to ‘fix’ the formal system is to improve donors’ effective engagement with local actors. Empowering local actors will not only addres...

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024.  This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 05 - Humanitarianism, development and peace: a southern perspective - contributed by Priya Singh and Paula Banerjee. From the introduction There has been a significant increase in emergencies caused by conflicts and deeply entrenched development issues over the last decade in many parts of the world, especially in the Global South. New conflicts, probability of renewed conflicts, failures of peace agreements, an alarming increase in global forced displacement with most refugees finding shelter in low-and middle-income states with shared borders, are added onto earlier rounds of humanitarian crises such as partitions of countries by colonial powers (e.g. Murshid, 2014 ) and multi-country wars. Added to these are crises related to climate change ( Jolly and Ahmad, 2019 ) and other ‘natural’ ...

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 04 - Humanitarianism and the new wars: humanitarianism, security, and securitisation - contributed by Michael Magcamit and Anastassiya Mahon. From the introduction This chapter demonstrates and probes the idea of ‘humanitarian securitisation’ propelled by humanitarianism amidst the emergence of new wars linked to inequality. Humanitarian securitisation is defined here as the process of securitising the humanitarian crises brought about by the new wars – specifically, internal conflicts and terrorism – to justify the use and implementation of humanitarian intervention in the target states. As the foremost authority on ‘new wars’, Mary Kaldor ( 2016: 147 ), describes these phenomena as the ‘combination of political violence, organised crime and massive violations of human rights’ happening in di...

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 03 - Humanitarianism and the global Cold War, 1945–1991 - contributed by Margot Tudor. From the introduction During the twentieth century, international humanitarian organisations were shaped by the geopolitical pressures and demands of the global Cold War, shifting to adapt to evolving conflicts and disasters whilst navigating complex ideological alignments. A term popularised by historian Orne Arne Westad, the ‘global Cold War’ refers to the expansive, world-spanning implications of the Cold War ( Westad, 2005 ). As an approach, it sheds light on and encourages a more expansive approach to the ways in which existing domestic or regional tensions and hierarchies were exacerbated by the superpower conflict and spanned the globe ( Krepp et al., 2020 ). It also enables historians to trace and ide...

“ I feel good seeing myself dancing after receiving the money. It makes me appreciate the moment my life changed and reminds me of when I was able to send my son to school .” (Resident of Nakapiripirit, Uganda) “ It might seem strange to carp over a few good deeds filmed for YouTube clicks. After all, even if this Gen Z mode of philanthropy is brash and narcissistic, some lives are being changed for the better. Yet at the same time, Donaldson is exploiting less fortunate people’s problems to shape his image of decency, while reinforcing the aid illusion that has blown so much money and achieved so little over the past half century .” (Ian Birrell, UnHerd ) “ As people have noted, if you watch the video in total isolation, it's maybe not that bad? Mr Beast is good at this. And he's not obviously mocking or manipulating these people. Then again, the TV commentators in the Hunger Games fawned over Katniss. That wasn't the issue .” (Justin Sandefur, Center for Global Developmen...

As a brand new book on The Rise and Fall of the Department for International Development hits virtual & physical bookshelves these days, my colleague Pascal Corbé of CorbeComs shares some interesting reflections about the future of the German aid structure that I am re-posting here as a guest post. Will the last OECD-DAC member lose its independent ministry for development cooperation as discussions of a merger with the Foreign Office gain momentum? Or will the ministry weather yet another storm as it may be needed as a political bargain chip after the next federal elections in 2025? Well, things can't possibly be turn as bad as under the leadership of Dirk Niebel, the only minister for development cooperation who was featured twice here on the blog in 2011 when I wrote his endorsement of an arms deal with Saudi-Arabia and the broader militaristic mindset during his tenure... The BMZ still has its official headquarters in Bonn, in the building of the former West German cha...

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 02 - Humanitarianism andcolonialism - contributed by Aoife O’Leary McNeice . From the introduction There are many moments that have been identified as the birth of modern humanitarianism: the popular anti-slavery movement of the late-eighteenth century; the foundation of the Red Cross in 1863; the emergence of professional NGOs in the twentieth century ( Barnett, 2011 : 1–5; Haskell, 1985a ; 1985b ). However, scholarship has largely moved away from traditional narratives that identify a single episode marking the birth of Western humanitarianism. Rather, Western humanitarianism is conceived as having emerged incrementally as part of modern European colonialism; the two projects were co-dependent ( Baughan and Everill, 2012 : 727; Skinner and Lester, 2012 : 732). Early-modern humanitarianism ...

Writing a “popular” book about global development and humanitarian topics, a book that appeals to an interested general readership without immediately turning away experts, is rather difficult. They often meander between manifesto-style “how to save the planet” approaches, are often far more academic than the academic who wrote the text thought they would be or generalize a place, (part of) a career or a topic to the point where I get itchy in my reading chair.  Jean-Martin Bauer’s The New Breadline-Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century is one of those rare books that you, the academic, should read, your students on different levels could enjoy and even family members who are still struggling to understand what your Ph.D. research was about will most likely find interesting and enlightening. Bauer approaches the topic of humanitarianism and hunger from a unique vantage point: He has been potpourri of war zones and crises, worked for the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN ag...

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 01 - Introduction: humanitarianism and inequality – a re-orientation - contributed by Silke Roth, Bandana Purkayastha, and Tobias Denskus. The full chapter is available open access . From the introduction At the time of writing the introduction to this Handbook (May 2023), the war in Ukraine was still going on, the UN Human Rights Council was discussing the conflict in Sudan, while cyclone Mocha landed in Myanmar and Bangladesh affecting millions of people including refugees in the Rohingya refugee camps. Meanwhile, after short intensive media coverage, the earthquake that occurred at the Turkish-Syrian border in February 2023, one of the deadliest in the early twenty-first century costing over 50,000 lives, was hardly mentioned in international news anymore. While we were correcting the c...

Twenty years ago, Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures was published. The catchy title ensured that the book became one of the first modern classics of aid worker literary endeavours, mixing autobiographical anecdotes, a bit of fiction and an unfiltered view of what it is really like to be a humanitarian. Mustafa Marwan’s Guns and Almond Milk is a contemporary answer to the question of how we ended up in a hospital in Yemen’s port city of Aden with a lot less sex and a whole lot more desperate measures… But let’s start at the beginning, perhaps even a bit before… When I first saw Marwan’s book, I expected something a bit more light-hearted. After all, “almond milk” has become a trope in aid worker social media circles after someone posted a question about the availability of non-dairy drinks in Lebanon in a large and well-known global aid Facebook group. “Almond milk” turned into a meme for privileged Western expectations of life in “the field”. We are not in Solferino anymore...