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 27 - Humanitarianism and Native America - contributed by Barbara Gurr. From the introduction This chapter offers consideration of assimilationist and genocidal tactics harbored under the guise of ‘humanitarianism’ in two distinct but inter-related areas. I begin with the role of religion, and particularly Christianity, in providing what might be understood as humanitarian aid long before the abolition movements that so commonly mark the origin point of humanitarianism as a distinct field of endeavor. The work of missionaries, predominantly Jesuit and Franciscan, to convert the Indigenous peoples of what is now called North America to Christianity directly served imperialist purposes, but was performed under the guise of ‘saving souls’ and, later, providing education and even healthcare. This ...

As a year of multiple crises is coming to a close, I am a bit surprised that we have not heard more about the crisis of Think Tanks.  The UN system is in crisis, global academia and philanthropy for sure as well and listing my collection of “the end of USAID” articles probably deserves its own blog post…so where does that leave global development Thinks Tanks?  At the very least there are some interesting developments in policy-making, academia, media and communication that will likely have an impact on the traditional set-up of how Think Tanks will (share their) work in the future. Many of these developments are not new or  “Trump”-in fact I found an old post from January 2019 that asked Can you imagine a world without Think Tanks?  (the promised follow-up post never materialized though...). But that was also before culture wars and AI... Culture wars and the end of evidence-based policy-making As mind-bogging as the decline of evidence-based development policy-mak...

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 26 - Trafficking in persons, long-term vulnerabilities, and humanitarianism  - contributed by Farhan Navid Yousaf and Muhammad Makki Kakarby. From the introduction  This chapter begins with an overview of a history of humanitarian efforts related to  trafficking, including its inception in organised efforts to rescue white women who were trafficked to colonial outposts – established through military conquests – to sexually serve white men (see Chapter 17 by Adur on Sexuality and humanitarianism in this volume).  We outline the circumstances, including deep inequalities, dislocations due to wars and structural adjustments, and racist/gendered structures, that foster trafficking.  In Section 2, we focus on a variety of humanitarian efforts to rehabilitate and protect vict...

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 25 - Refugee protection and assistance - contributed by Naoko Hashimoto. From the introduction   The chapter begins with a brief overview of the current international institution of providing and promoting legal protection and humanitarian assistance for refugees. It is followed by an outline of a variety of inequalities embedded and emerging in the institution. It includes: the centrality of the notion of inequality and discrimination in the definition of refugees, which in turn results in an unequal access to asylum; unequal ‘burden-sharing’ in hosting refugees particularly between the Global South and Global North countries and their major reasons; the recent neoliberal trend in choosing and admitting only the best and the brightest refugees; glaring and institutional...

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 24 - Climate change, disaster and humanitarian action - contributed by Ilan Kelman and Eija Meriläinen.  From the introduction  Integrating climate change mitigation and adaptation credibly would require a shift toward development (of which climate change mitigation and adaptation are subsets) – while facing and aiming to resolve the social inequalities embedded in climate change, disasters, and humanitarian action.  This chapter surveys how climate change affects humanitarian action. The next section (1) turns to social inequalities, humanitarianism, and climate change. Then, through illustrations of disasters, conflicts, and forced migration, Section 2 applies this framing to climate change and humanitarianism. Section 3 considers future directions and unanswered questions, foll...

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 23 - Linguistic inequality in the humanitarian sector: unravelling English-centric multilingualism - contributed by Maria Rosa Garrido. From the introduction  The humanitarian workers that Footitt et al. (2020) interviewed felt that language was institutionally accorded a low status and that ‘language needs and challenges were not systematically discussed in the context of programme planning, delivery and evaluation’ (p. 97). Limited resources and the imperative to deliver specific project objectives to the donors makes it difficult for Northern humanitarian agencies like Oxfam to adopt multilingual policies.  Thus, many adopt English as a lingua franca internally ( Tesseur, 2021: 262 ) and ad hoc solutions for unplanned linguistic needs in the field (see Section 4.2). Language train...

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 22 – Humanitarian technologies - contributed by Reem Talhouk. From the introduction  This chapter highlights the inequalities that arise as humanitarian technologies premised on notions of coloniality/modernity act upon indigenous and refugee communities’ ways of being. I refer to ways of being as the practices, values, beliefs, and knowledge that constitute peoples’ ways of existing on and with this Earth. The inequalities that this chapter will focus on are how humanitarian technologies designed for humanitarian utility and efficiency contribute to: (1) the erosion of indigenous ways of being and (2) dis-afford refugees agency to re-appropriate technologies. In Section 1, I present the construct of coloniality/modernity in relation to humanitarianism on which arguments in this chapter a...

We are back from an extended summer break!  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 21 - Humanitarianism and pandemics - contributed by Tulani Francis L. Matenga and Lwendo Moonzwe Davis. From the introduction  In this chapter, we start by briefly highlighting some of the world’s most devastating pandemics and discuss the consequences of humanitarian actions in these pandemics, which at times have been negative. We then examine humanitarianism in relation to HIV/AIDS, the disproportionally negative impact that the HIV/AIDS pandemic has had in Sub-Saharan Africa, the challenges the region faces regarding this pandemic, and the long-term negative impacts the pandemic has had, specifically in relation to treatment and other diseases. Next, we review the current COVID-19 pandemic and the ways in which it has also exposed globa...

That’s it. That’s the post…well..almost… The blog has been a bit quite these past few months, mainly because of a general sense of grieving, frustration and sheer disbelief of how any notion of evidence-based development has been thrown under various buses. But one thought has stuck with me for a while now: Nothing gets better without international development, reduced funding and minimized engagement .  Reading about USAID's fire sale in the Atlantic was one of the main triggers for my new post: One of the more surreal knock-on effects of the gutting of USAID is that the U.S. government is now holding a massive fire sale for mosquito nets, water towers, printers, iPads, chairs, generators, defibrillators, textbooks, agricultural equipment, motorbikes, mobile health clinics, and more. Until recently, these items supported the 5,000-plus foreign-aid projects that the Trump administration has now canceled. And reading a recent post on LinkedIn how  “ the real question isn’t “...

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 20 - Media representations of humanitarianism - contributed by Valérie Gorin. From the introduction The twenty-first century has witnessed improvements with the growth of media development agencies and foundation-funded journalism helping independent journalists develop stories on underreported global issues and make them available to broader audiences. These new media outlets, as well as the expansion of citizen journalism and social media, open new lines of inquiry over their potential to disseminate information detached from mainstream media and institutional communication. Meanwhile, gradual attention was given this last decade to (1) criticism of the colonialist, imperialist and orientalist gaze dominant in humanitarian representations; (2) decentralisation of the hegemonic norms to non-W...