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...