Download or read book The Humanitarian Enterprise written by Larry Minear and published by Kumarian Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Epilogue discussing the international response to the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the war in Afghanistan * A fundamental text about the future of humanitarianism in the twenty-first century International humanitarian activities have grown enormously in scale over the past decade, and the complex links between humanitarian work and the worlds of politics and military engagement have become increasingly contested. Larry Minear uncovers what international humanitarians--including the UN, national governments, the Red Cross, and many private relief and development agencies--have learned about performing humanitarian work well, and the arguments that remain unresolved.
Download or read book The Charity of Nations written by Ian Smillie and published by Kumarian Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First world governments disburse considerably more humanitarian assistance than NGOs, yet increasingly what is claimed to be charity has more than a tinge of self-interest & commercial enterprise about it. This book highlights the ambiguities & confusion& argues for reform to the humanitarian structure.
Download or read book Humanitarian Ethics written by Hugo Slim and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-09 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarians are required to be impartial, independent, professionally competent and focused only on preventing and alleviating human suffering. It can be hard living up to these principles when others do not share them, while persuading political and military authorities and non-state actors to let an agency assist on the ground requires savvy ethical skills. Getting first to a conflict or natural catastrophe is only the beginning, as aid workers are usually and immediately presented with practical and moral questions about what to do next. For example, when does working closely with a warring party or an immoral regime move from practical cooperation to complicity in human rights violations? Should one operate in camps for displaced people and refugees if they are effectively places of internment? Do humanitarian agencies inadvertently encourage ethnic cleansing by always being ready to 'mop-up' the consequences of scorched earth warfare? This book has been written to help humanitarians assess and respond to these and other ethical dilemmas.
Download or read book Humanitarian Business written by Thomas G. Weiss and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-24 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With some 50 million people living under duress and threatened by wars and disasters in 2012, the demand for relief worldwide has reached unprecedented levels. Humanitarianism is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise, and aid agencies are obliged to respond to a range of economic forces in order to 'stay in business'. In his customarily hard-hitting analysis, Thomas G. Weiss offers penetrating insights into the complexities and challenges of the contemporary humanitarian marketplace. In addition to changing political and military conditions that generate demand for aid, private suppliers have changed too. Today’s political economy places aid agencies side-by-side with for-profit businesses, including private military and security companies, in a marketplace that also is linked to global trade networks in illicit arms, natural resources, and drugs. This witch’s brew is simmering in the cauldron of wars that are often protracted and always costly to civilians who are the very targets of violence. While belligerents put a price-tag on access to victims, aid agencies pursue branding in a competition for 'scarce' resources relative to the staggering needs. As marketization encroaches on traditional humanitarianism, it seems everything may have a priceÑfrom access and principles, to moral authority and lives.
Download or read book Negotiating Relief written by Michele Acuto and published by Hurst & Company. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While humanitarianism is unquestionably a fast-growing subject of practitioner and scholarly engagement, much discussion about it is predicated on a dangerous dichotomy between 'aid givers' and 'relief takers' that largely misrepresents the negotiated nature of the humanitarian enterprise. To highlight the tension between these relationships, this book focuses on the 'humanitarian spaces' and the dynamics of 'humanitarian diplomacy' (both 'local' and 'global') that sustain them. It gathers key voices to provide a critical analysis of international theory, geopolitics and dilemmas underpinning the negotiation of relief. Offering up-to-date examples from cases such as Kosovo and the Tsunami, or ongoing crises like Haiti, Libya, Darfur and Somalia, the contributors analyse the complexity of humanitarian diplomacy and the multiplicity of geographies and actors involved in it. By investigating the transformations that both diplomacy and humanitarianism are undergoing, the authors prompt us towards a critical and eclectic understanding of the dialectics of humanitarian space. Negotiating Relief aims to present humanitarianism not only as a relief delivery mechanism but also as a phenomenon in dialogue with both localised crises and global politics.--
Download or read book Patronage Or Partnership written by Ian Smillie and published by IDRC. This book was released on 2001 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * A refreshing study of capacity building through various local perspectives* Includes studies from Mozambique, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, Haiti, and GuatemalaStrengthening local capacity is more difficult than one might expect; there are significant trade-offs between outsiders providing assistance in the midst of an emergency, and encouraging the building of long-term local skills. By critically examining the dilemma from local perspectives, "Patronage or Partnership" finds genuine hope amidst the prevailing rhetoric and confusion.
Download or read book Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti written by Mark Schuller and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2010 earthquake in Haiti was one of the deadliest disasters in modern history, sparking an international aid response—with pledges and donations of $16 billion—that was exceedingly generous. But now, five years later, that generous aid has clearly failed. In Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti, anthropologist Mark Schuller captures the voices of those involved in the earthquake aid response, and they paint a sharp, unflattering view of the humanitarian enterprise. Schuller led an independent study of eight displaced-persons camps in Haiti, compiling more than 150 interviews ranging from Haitian front-line workers and camp directors to foreign humanitarians and many displaced Haitian people. The result is an insightful account of why the multi-billion-dollar aid response not only did little to help but also did much harm, triggering a range of unintended consequences, rupturing Haitian social and cultural institutions, and actually increasing violence, especially against women. The book shows how Haitian people were removed from any real decision-making, replaced by a top-down, NGO-dominated system of humanitarian aid, led by an army of often young, inexperienced foreign workers. Ignorant of Haitian culture, these aid workers unwittingly enacted policies that triggered a range of negative results. Haitian interviewees also note that the NGOs “planted the flag,” and often tended to “just do something,” always with an eye to the “photo op” (in no small part due to the competition over funding). Worse yet, they blindly supported the eviction of displaced people from the camps, forcing earthquake victims to relocate in vast shantytowns that were hotbeds of violence. Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti concludes with suggestions to help improve humanitarian aid in the future, perhaps most notably, that aid workers listen to—and respect the culture of—the victims of catastrophe.
Download or read book Humanitarianism and Challenges of Cooperation written by Volker M. Heins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-05 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarianism as a moral concept and an organized practice has become a major factor in world society. It channels an enormous amount of resources and serves as an argument for different kinds of interference into the "internal affairs" of countries and regions. At the same time, and for these very reasons, it is an ideal testing ground for successful and unsuccessful cooperation across borders. Humanitarianism and the Challenges of Cooperation examines the multiple humanitarianisms of today as a testing ground for new ways of global cooperation. General trends in the contemporary transformation of humanitarianism are studied and individual cases of how humanitarian actors cooperate with others on the ground are investigated. This book offers a highly innovative, empirically informed account of global humanitarianism from the point of view of cooperation research in which internationally renowned contributors analyse broad trends and present case studies based on meticulous fieldwork. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers in the areas of political science, international relations and humanitarianism. It is also a valuable resource for humanitarian aid workers.
Download or read book The Good Project written by Monika Krause and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-06-19 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NGOs set out to save lives, relieve suffering, and service basic human needs. They are committed to serving people across national borders and without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, or religion, and they offer crucial help during earthquakes, tsunamis, wars, and pandemics. But with so many ailing areas in need of assistance, how do these organizations decide where to go—and who gets the aid? In The Good Project, Monika Krause dives into the intricacies of the decision-making process at NGOs and uncovers a basic truth: It may be the case that relief agencies try to help people but, in practical terms, the main focus of their work is to produce projects. Agencies sell projects to key institutional donors, and in the process the project and its beneficiaries become commodities. In an effort to guarantee a successful project, organizations are incentivized to help those who are easy to help, while those who are hardest to help often receive no assistance at all. The poorest of the world are made to compete against each other to become projects—and in exchange they offer legitimacy to aid agencies and donor governments. Sure to be controversial, The Good Project offers a provocative new perspective on how NGOs succeed and fail on a local and global level.
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 Humanitarian Logistics written by R. Tomasini and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine planning an event like the Olympics. Now imagine planning the same event but not knowing when or where it will take place, or how many will attend. This is what humanitarian logisticians are up against. Oversights result in serious consequences for the victims of disasters. So they have to get it right, fast.
Download or read book Humanitarian Space written by Sarah Collinson and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 4 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Aiding Violence written by Peter Uvin and published by Kumarian Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes statistics.
Download or read book The Need to Help written by Liisa H. Malkki and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Need to Help Liisa H. Malkki shifts the focus of the study of humanitarian intervention from aid recipients to aid workers themselves. The anthropological commitment to understand the motivations and desires of these professionals and how they imagine themselves in the world "out there," led Malkki to spend more than a decade interviewing members of the international Finnish Red Cross, as well as observing Finns who volunteered from their homes through gifts of handwork. The need to help, she shows, can come from a profound neediness—the need for aid workers and volunteers to be part of the lively world and something greater than themselves, and, in the case of the elderly who knit "trauma teddies" and "aid bunnies" for "needy children," the need to fight loneliness and loss of personhood. In seriously examining aspects of humanitarian aid often dismissed as sentimental, or trivial, Malkki complicates notions of what constitutes real political work. She traces how the international is always entangled in the domestic, whether in the shape of the need to leave home or handmade gifts that are an aid to sociality and to the imagination of the world.
Download or read book The Politics of Humanitarianism written by Antonio de Lauri and published by I.B. Tauris. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanitarian intervention has increasingly become the prevalent means of providing protection and aid at a global level. Yet alongside its success concerns have been raised that humanitarianism has increasingly become an economic enterprise and a political tool for controlling territories and governing international relations. In The Politics of Humanitarianism authors from a variety of disciplines provide a comprehensive critique of the humanitarian enterprise. How are those on the end of humanitarian action influenced by different epistemologies and applications of international law? What is the complex relationship between values - what humanitarian action is intended to be - and practice - what happens on the ground? Combining international case studies with critical theoretical evaluations, and including chapters on international aid, refugees, childhood and women's rights, The Politics of Humanitarianism offers a timely and critical analysis of the contemporary humanitarian system.
Download or read book The Golden Fleece written by Antonio Donini and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like Jason and his Argonauts, humanitarians often seem to be looking for the Golden Fleece. This book analyzes humanitarian action over the past century and a half, with a view to understanding how humanitarian endeavors seem to have veered from the values of a past golden age of independence, impartiality and neutrality. As the contributors to this collection show, although humanitarian thinking and practice have evolved significantly over the past 150 years, this golden age is as imaginary as a Greek myth. The problems faced by the humanitarian enterprise today are not new but the appearance of humanitarianism in crisis may simply be owing to an increase in the number of worldwide crises, the vast growth of the humanitarian industry, more intense real-time scrutiny made possible by improved communication technologies, and the conditions, restrictions and expectations that this increased scrutiny has generated in the funding environment. Instead of embarking on a quixotic quest for a mythical ideal, the essays in this book provide historical context and real solutions to real problems that affect the lives of millions. Instead of looking to a mythic past, this collection invites us to look to a promising future.
Download or read book The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention written by Rajan Menon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention rejects, on political, legal, ethical, and strategic grounds, the widespread claim that military force can be used effectively-and on the basis of a universal consensus-to stop mass atrocities. As such, it is an against-the-current treatment of an important practice in world politics.