Download or read book Humanitarianism in Question written by Michael Barnett and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Years of tremendous growth in response to complex emergencies have left a mark on the humanitarian sector. Various matters that once seemed settled are now subjects of intense debate. What is humanitarianism? Is it limited to the provision of relief to victims of conflict, or does it include broader objectives such as human rights, democracy promotion, development, and peacebuilding? For much of the last century, the principles of humanitarianism were guided by neutrality, impartiality, and independence. More recently, some humanitarian organizations have begun to relax these tenets. The recognition that humanitarian action can lead to negative consequences has forced humanitarian organizations to measure their effectiveness, to reflect on their ethical positions, and to consider not only the values that motivate their actions but also the consequences of those actions. In the indispensable Humanitarianism in Question, Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines to address the humanitarian identity crisis, including humanitarianism's relationship to accountability, great powers, privatization and corporate philanthropy, warlords, and the ethical evaluations that inform life-and-death decision making during and after emergencies.
Download or read book The Politics of Aid to Burma written by Anne Decobert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-28 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over sixty years, conflict between state forces and armed ethnic groups was ongoing in parts of the borderlands of Burma. Ethnic minority communities were subjected to systematic and widespread abuses by an increasingly complex patchwork of armed state and non-state actors. Populations in more remote and disputed border areas typically had little to no access to even basic healthcare and education services. As part of its counter-insurgency campaign, the military state also historically restricted international humanitarian access to civilian populations in unstable border areas. It was in this context that "cross-border aid" to Burma had developed, as an alternative mechanism for channelling assistance to populations denied aid through more conventional systems. Yet by the late 2000s, national and international changes had significant impacts on an aid debate, which had important political and ethical implications. Through an ethnographic study of a cross-border aid organisation working on the Thailand-Burma border, this book focuses on the political and ethical dilemmas of "humanitarian government". It explores the ways in which aid systems come to be defined as legitimate or illegitimate, humanitarian or "un-humanitarian", in an international context that has witnessed the multiplication of often-conflicting humanitarian systems and models. It examines how an "embodied history" of violence can shape the worldviews and actions of local humanitarian actors, as well as institutions created to mitigate human suffering. It goes on to look at the complex and often-invisible webs of local organisations, international NGOs, donors, armed groups and other actors, which can develop in a cross-border and extra-legal context ¿ a context where competing constructions of systems as legitimate or illegitimate are highlighted. Exploring the history of humanitarianism from the local aid perspective of Burma, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asian Studies, Anthropology of Humanitarian Aid and Development Studies.
Download or read book The politicization of humanitarian aid and its effect on the principles of humanity impartiality and neutrality written by Thorsten Volberg and published by diplom.de. This book was released on 2007-02-22 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inhaltsangabe:Abstract: The past two decades have seen a significant increase in frequency and intensity of complex emergencies and natural disasters, leading to a rapid transformation in the policy and the institutional context of humanitarianism. Humanitarian assistance, which once covered a very narrow set of basic relief activities carried out by a small group of relatively independent actors, has expanded significantly to an ever-widening and much more complex range of rehabilitation work. This includes the definition of aid as being a starting-point for addressing poverty or being a tool for peace-building in internal conflicts. A growing diversity of non-humanitarian actors in the field, such as various profit agencies, governmental and non-governmental armed forces, also changed the picture of humanitarian aid and the perception of its character. This transformation has created a broad variety of standards for performance in the field, and led to increasing uncertainties on the quality of humanitarian responses and its accountability. Humanitarian catastrophes, like the Rwandan genocide, finally forced humanitarian agencies to think beyond traditional relief assistance based on the delivery of food, shelter or basic health care, and take a deeper reflection on how they actually perceive their own role and accountability in the humanitarian sphere. In 1997, the Sphere project was launched to develop inter alia a so-called Humanitarian Charter , which tries to put relief aid on a legal basis provided by international law. It emphasizes humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality and expresses agencies commitment to act in accordance with them. These principles provide an ethical framework, which defines and delineates the humanitarian space within which NGOs are supposed to operate. Sphere and its commitment to these traditional principles have both supporters and critics within the humanitarian system, especially when it comes to its usefulness in addressing the complexity of political factors surrounding an emergency situation. Humanitarian assistance has always been a highly political activity, as it involves engaging authorities in conflict-affected countries or relying on financial support that can be driven by a donor s political considerations. Nowadays, relief organizations seem to remain even less in control of their working environment due to expanding peacekeeping and military-led missions of the [...]
Download or read book Syria and the Neutrality Trap written by Carsten Wieland and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-05-20 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Syrian war has been an example of the abuse and insufficient delivery of humanitarian assistance. According to international practice, humanitarian aid should be channelled through a state government that bears a particular responsibility for its population. Yet in Syria, the bulk of relief went through Damascus while the regime caused the vast majority of civilian deaths. Should the UN have severed its cooperation with the government and neglected its humanitarian duty to help all people in need? Decision-makers face these tough policy dilemmas, and often the “neutrality trap” snaps shut. This book discusses the political and moral considerations of how to respond to a brutal and complex crisis while adhering to international law and practice. The author, a scholar and senior diplomat involved in the UN peace talks in Geneva, draws from first-hand diplomatic, practitioner and UN sources. He sheds light on the UN's credibility crisis and the wider implications for the development of international humanitarian and human rights law. This includes covering the key questions asked by Western diplomats, NGOs and international organizations, such as: Why did the UN not confront the Syrian government more boldly? Was it not only legally correct but also morally justifiable to deliver humanitarian aid to regime areas where rockets were launched and warplanes started? Why was it so difficult to render cross-border aid possible where it was badly needed? The meticulous account of current international practice is both insightful and disturbing. It tackles the painful lessons learnt and provides recommendations for future challenges where politics fails and humanitarians fill the moral void.
Download or read book Disaster and Development written by Neil Middleton and published by Pluto Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical account of the politics of aid-giving.
Download or read book Everybody s War written by Jehan Bseiso and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In February 2012, in its first public position on the unfolding armed conflict in Syria, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) published a series of testimonies gathered from Syrian doctors working in the country. The testimonies described the challenges and horrors facing doctors trying to treat wounded patients and protesters injured by Syrian authorities (MSF 2012). In its report, MSF denounced the use of "medicine as a weapon of persecution" in Syria and called on the government to "re-establish the neutrality of healthcare facilities" (Ibid.) In a press release published a year later, MSF further decried that aid was not being distributed "equally" between government- and opposition-controlled areas and argued that "areas under government control receive nearly all international aid, while opposition-held zones receive only a tiny share." (MSF 2013) In an opinion piece, two MSF staff members criticized humanitarian actors working with the authorization of the Syrian government and called on those aid agencies to recognise "the de-facto partitioning of the state" (Weissman and Rodrigue 2013). Such calls from humanitarian actors, which on other occasions claimed neutrality, played into the polarization of the Syrian conflict. The Syrian government actively controlled aid delivery and distribution from Damascus, with the support of Russia and Iran. Aid from Damascus was distributed by the United Nations, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent society, and a handful of other organizations working in government-controlled areas. Meanwhile, aid was delivered across the borders from neighboring countries by opposition groups, civil society activists, and Western humanitarian actors"--
Download or read book The Politics of Protection written by Elizabeth G. Ferris and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past decade, humanitarian actors have increasingly sought not only to assist people affected by conflicts and natural disasters, but also to protect them. At the same time, protection of civilians has become central to UN peacekeeping operations, and the UN General Assembly has endorsed the principle that the international community has the "responsibility to protect" people when their governments cannot or will not do so. Elizabeth Ferris explores the evolution of the international community's understandings of protection, with a particular emphasis on the humanitarian community. "Protection" is a noble word, with positive connotations, but what does it actually mean in practice? Does providing assistance to vulnerable people protect them, for example? Does monitoring the number of rapes protect women? Does increased engagement in protection activities by humanitarian agencies jeopardize the cornerstone humanitarian principles of neutrality and impartiality? In The Politics of Protection, Ferris examines inconsistent ways in which protection is defined and applied. For example, why do certain groups receive international protection while other equally needy groups do not? Her case studies, ranging from Iraq to Katrina, illustrate the challenges—and limitations—of protecting vulnerable populations from the ravages of war and natural disasters. Ferris argues that the protection paradigms currently in use are inadequate to meet the challenges of the future, such as climate change, protracted displacement, and the changing nature of warfare.
Download or read book Politics and Humanitarian Aid written by Devon Curtis and published by Overseas Development Institute (ODI). This book was released on 2001 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Humanitarianism written by Antonio De Lauri and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarianism: Keywords is a comprehensive dictionary designed as a compass for navigating the conceptual universe of humanitarianism.
Download or read book Contemporary States of Emergency written by Didier Fassin and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new form of "humanitarian government" emerging from natural disasters and military occupations that reduces people to mere lives to be rescued. From natural disaster areas to zones of political conflict around the world, a new logic of intervention combines military action and humanitarian aid, conflates moral imperatives and political arguments, and confuses the concepts of legitimacy and legality. The mandate to protect human lives--however and wherever endangered--has given rise to a new form of humanitarian government that moves from one crisis to the next, applying the same battery of technical expertise (from military logistics to epidemiological risk management to the latest social scientific tools for "good governance") and reducing people with particular histories and hopes to mere lives to be rescued. This book explores these contemporary states of emergency. Drawing on the critical insights of anthropologists, legal scholars, political scientists, and practitioners from the field, Contemporary States of Emergency examines historical antecedents as well as the moral, juridical, ideological, and economic conditions that have made military and humanitarian interventions common today. It addresses the practical process of intervention in global situations on five continents, describing both differences and similarities, and examines the moral and political consequences of these generalized states of emergency and the new form of government associated with them.
Download or read book The Politics of International Humanitarian Aid Operations written by Eric A. Belgrad and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1997-06-30 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theories and case studies examined in this volume constitute a thorough study of foreign intervention in civil conflicts for the purpose of rendering humanitarian aid. The classical paradigm of the ethics of intervention forbids the violation of territorial sovereignty. Public international law and the UN charter also mandate nonintervention within the territorial boundaries of a state. Nevertheless, in recent years, as a result of brutal civil conflicts and their violent and inhumane consequences—as in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia—international aid interventions have become an accepted practice. Still, international humanitarian aid involves unsettled, controversial issues—dilemmas concerning donors, recipients, and international organizations. These issues, as well as the concepts of sovereignty, human rights, coercive interventions, and peacekeeping, are critically evaluated in this volume, which will be of interest to scholars and policymakers in international relations, human rights, and military affairs.
Download or read book The Politics of Humanitarian Technology written by Katja Lindskov Jacobsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a detailed exploration of three examples of humanitarian uses of new technology, employing key theoretical insights from Foucault. We are currently seeing a humanitarian turn to new digital technologies, such as biometrics, remote sensing, and surveillance drones. However, such humanitarian uses of new technology have not always produced beneficial results for those at the receiving end and have sometimes exposed the subjects of assistance to additional risks and insecurities. Engaging with key insights from the work of Foucault combined with selected concepts from the Science and Technology Studies literature, this book produces an analytical framework that opens up the analysis to details of power and control at the level of materiality that are often ignored in liberal histories of war and modernity. Whereas Foucault details the design of prisons, factories, schools, etc., this book is original in its use of his work, in that it uses these key insights about the details of power embedded in material design, but shifts the attention to the technologies and attending forms of power that have been experimented with in the three humanitarian endeavours presented in the book. In doing so, the book provides new information about aspects of liberal humanitarianism that contemporary critical analyses have largely neglected. This book will be of interest to students of humanitarian studies, peace and conflict studies, critical security studies, and IR in general.
Download or read book The Ethics and Politics of Humanitarian Intervention written by Stanley Hoffmann and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1995 the Kroc Institute at the University of Notre Dame hosted the first of the Theodore M. Hesburgh Lectures on Ethics and Public Policy. Stanley Hoffmann delivered two lectures on the problems of humanitarian intervention in international relations. This volume presents these lectures.
Download or read book The Politics of Humanitarian Intervention written by John Harriss and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1995 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Amid the criticism of the UN's apparent failure to intervene in humanitarian disasters there has been little scholarly consideration of the real issues. The nature of human rights, sovereignty, UN organisation and the practice of humanitarian action are some of the themes that are addressed in this volume which combines a theoretical approach with empirical analysis from those with practical experience in the field of international humanitarian assistance."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book The Politics Of Humanity written by John Holmes and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Holmes was the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs from 2007 until 2010. His work took him to some of the most troubled areas of the world: to Sri Lanka, Darfur, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, among other places, and exposed him to the harsh realities of humanitarian aid. Frequently he found that the UN's humanitarian programmes in these hotspots were tolerated but consistently undermined and mistrusted by both sides in any conflict, and its efforts to protect civilians and provide humanitarian relief frustrated by people working for purely political ends. Clear-eyed about the realities of development aid, Holmes realised early on that his role was to be a voice to the voiceless. THE POLITICS OF HUMANITY exposes, in often depressing detail, how difficult this job is, as well as analysing and exploring in great depth the wider policy questions of his role.
Download or read book The Politics of Humanitarian Technology written by Katja Lindskov Jacobsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a detailed exploration of three examples of humanitarian uses of new technology, employing key theoretical insights from Foucault. We are currently seeing a humanitarian turn to new digital technologies, such as biometrics, remote sensing, and surveillance drones. However, such humanitarian uses of new technology have not always produced beneficial results for those at the receiving end and have sometimes exposed the subjects of assistance to additional risks and insecurities. Engaging with key insights from the work of Foucault combined with selected concepts from the Science and Technology Studies literature, this book produces an analytical framework that opens up the analysis to details of power and control at the level of materiality that are often ignored in liberal histories of war and modernity. Whereas Foucault details the design of prisons, factories, schools, etc., this book is original in its use of his work, in that it uses these key insights about the details of power embedded in material design, but shifts the attention to the technologies and attending forms of power that have been experimented with in the three humanitarian endeavours presented in the book. In doing so, the book provides new information about aspects of liberal humanitarianism that contemporary critical analyses have largely neglected. This book will be of interest to students of humanitarian studies, peace and conflict studies, critical security studies, and IR in general.
Download or read book Famine Crimes written by Alexander De Waal and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is responsible for the failures? African generals and politicians are the prime culprits for creating famines in Sudan, Somalia and Zaire, but western donors abet their authoritarianism, partly through imposing structural adjustment programmes.
