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 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...