Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality - Chapter 32 - The Latin American experience: inequality’s role in shaping humanitarianism

March 03, 2026

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 32 - The Latin American experience: inequality’s role in shaping humanitarianism – contributed by Oscar A. Gómez, Simone Lucatello and Rodrigo Mena.

From the introduction
This chapter explores the possible connection between two basic facts about inequality and humanitarianism in Latin America. The first, seemingly incontrovertible fact is how Latin America is one of the world’s most unequal regions. Inequality in the region has been repeatedly highlighted in the development studies literature concerning income and other human development dimensions – i.e., education and gender. Such inequality has been linked to colonial legacies in the distribution of political and economic power, as well as social structures (see Chapter 2 by O’Leary McNeice on Humanitarianism and colonialism in this volume), but underlying factors expand well beyond colonialism after two centuries of independence and many local and planetary transformations (Bértola and Ocampo, 2010).
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The second fact, still open to debate, is the limited role of international humanitarian action in Latin America. Here we understand humanitarianism in the narrow sense of response to crises of large scale, oftentimes driven by international funds, agencies, and structures (Davey et al., 2013). From this perspective, the region is usually at the periphery of the international humanitarian system’s attention. In the Global Humanitarian Assistance Reports produced by Development Initiatives since the year 2000, Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras have occasionally appeared among the more affected countries – Venezuela has become a source of concern lately. Development Initiatives (2016) reports Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela as part of the forgotten crises identified by the European Commission; lately, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico have also been mentioned concerning violence-related problems. Additionally, Latin American countries have never appeared among the 12 countries with the highest risk in the INFORM report. Mexico appears among those with the highest values in the hazard and exposure category. We have suggested this is a long-term characteristic of the region related to the timing of its independence, the impact of the Monroe Doctrine, the nature of the region’s state-building projects, and the local approaches and frameworks that the region has produced to attend to its own crises (Lucatello and Gómez, 2022). We argue that these two facts are not independent and, thus, explore their interconnections in this chapter.

Note on contributors
Oscar A. Gómez is associate professor at the College of Asia Pacific Studies, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. His main interest is in global governance and the practice of human security ideas, particularly in relation to crises. He was Research Fellow at Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Research Institute for five years and helped drafting several papers for UNDP Human Development Reports (2014, 2016, 2020, 2022). Recent publications include edited books and papers on human security and humanitarianism in East Asia and Latin America.

Simone Lucatello is a full-time researcher at Instituto Mora, a public research centre based in Mexico City, Mexico. He holds a joint BA in History from the University of Venice Cá Foscari, Italy, and University College London (UCL), an MA in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a PhD in Governance for Sustainable Development from Venice International University (VIU), Italy. His research interests deal with disaster relief, climate change, humanitarian action, and sustainability.

Rodrigo Mena is Assistant Professor of Disasters and Humanitarian Studies at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and Board member of the International Humanitarian Studies Association and the Expertise Centre Humanitarian Communication.
His research focuses on humanitarian responses and risk reduction to disasters, their interaction with other crises, and on the ethical, safety, and security aspects fieldwork research. Before his current positions he worked with multiple NGOs, the UN, ministries, and as international consultant.

Overviews are already available for the following chapters:

Introduction: humanitarianism and inequality – a re-orientation

Humanitarianism and colonialism

Humanitarianism and the global Cold War, 1945–1991

Humanitarianism and the new wars: humanitarianism, security, and securitisation

Humanitarianism, development and peace: a southern perspective

Localisation and the humanitarian sector

Human rights and humanitarianism

Humanitarian organisations: behemoths and butterflies

Faith actors in humanitarianism: dynamics and inequalities

Diaspora assistance

Political solidarity movements and humanitarianism: lessons from Catalonia, Spain (1975–2020)

Subversive humanitarianism

Citizen’s groups and grassroots humanitarianism

Humanitarianism and the military

Race, racialisation, and coloniality in the humanitarian aid sector

Humanitarian organisations as gendered organisations

Sexuality and humanitarianism: colonial ‘hauntings’

Class matters in humanitarianism

Humanitarianism and disability