Aidnography

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