Download or read book Caring in Crisis Humanitarianism the Public and NGOs written by Irene Bruna Seu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-26 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on an original UK-wide study of public responses to humanitarian issues and how NGOs communicate them, this timely book provides the first evidence-based psychosocial account of how and why people respond or not to messages about distant suffering. The book highlights what NGOs seek to achieve in their communications and explores how their approach and hopes match or don’t match what the public wants, thinks and feels about distant suffering

Download or read book A Bed for the Night written by David Rieff and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timely and controversial, A Bed for the Night reveals how humanitarian organizations trying to bring relief in an ever more violent and dangerous world are often betrayed and misused, and have increasingly lost sight of their purpose. Humanitarian relief workers, writes David Rieff, are the last of the just. And in the Bosnias, the Rwandas, and the Afghanistans of this world, humanitarianism remains the vocation of helping people when they most desperately need help, when they have lost or stand at risk of losing everything they have, including their lives. Although humanitarianism's accomplishments have been tremendous, including saving countless lives, the lesson of the past ten years of civil wars and ethnic cleansing is that it can do only so much to alleviate suffering. Aid workers have discovered that while trying to do good, their efforts may also cause harm. Drawing on firsthand reporting from hot war zones around the world -- Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo, Kosovo, Sudan, and most recently Afghanistan -- Rieff describes how the International Committee of the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee, CARE, Oxfam, and other humanitarian organizations have moved from their founding principle of political neutrality, which gave them access to victims of wars, to encouraging the international community to take action to stop civil wars and ethnic cleansing. This advocacy has come at a high price. By calling for intervention -- whether by the United Nations or by "coalitions of the willing" -- humanitarian organizations risk being seen as taking sides in a conflict and thus jeopardizing their access to victims. And by overreaching, the humanitarian movement has allowed itself to be hijacked by the major powers, at times becoming a fig leaf for actions those powers wish to take for their own interests, or for the major powers' inaction. Rieff concludes that if humanitarian organizations are to do what they do best -- alleviate suffering -- they must reclaim their independence. Except for relief workers themselves, no one has looked at humanitarian action as seriously or as unflinchingly, or has had such unparalleled access to its inner workings, as Rieff, who has traveled and lived with aid workers over many years and four continents. A cogent, hard-hitting report from the front lines, A Bed for the Night shows what international aid organizations must do if they are to continue to care for the victims of humanitarian disasters.

Download or read book New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity written by Michael Mascarenhas and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-22 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An excellent addition to courses on development, inequality, public policy, and globalization, and it could . . . be read by an audience beyond sociologists.”—American Journal of Sociology Soaring poverty levels and 24-hour media coverage of global disasters have caused a surge in the number of international non-governmental organizations that address suffering on a massive scale. But how are these new global networks transforming the politics and power dynamics of humanitarian policy and practice? In New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity, Michael Mascarenhas considers that issue using water management projects in India and Rwanda as case studies. Mascarenhas analyzes the complex web of agreements ?both formal and informal?that are made between businesses, governments, and aid organizations, as well as the contradictions that arise when capitalism meets humanitarianism. “Insightful . . . provides a scathing critique of the new humanitarianism.” —University of Chicago Press Journals

Download or read book Caring for Those in Crisis written by Holly A. Williams and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Health in Humanitarian Emergencies written by David Townes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 509 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive, best practices resource for public health and healthcare practitioners and students interested in humanitarian emergencies.

Download or read book Global Humanitarianism written by Daniel Robert DeChaine and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Global Humanitarianism: NGOs and the Crafting of Community, author Rob DeChaine explores a narrative common to the nongovernmental organization community about the promise and confusion of living together in post/modern times. Palpable in their affective admixture of idealism, fear, hope, anger and uncertainty, the protagonists of the story are humanitarian social actors, engaged in a vivid social drama. Their audience, as made apparent by DeChaine's excellent scholarship, is intimately engaged in the drama as well. According to DeChaine, the action takes shape in a multivocal polyphony of solidarity and, at times, cacophony of protest and dissent, with actors mobilizing symbolic resources in the service of uniting a public who would join with them in the cause. A major source of the actors' labor is symbolic, consisting in the successful rallying of formative energies in and around a cluster of key related terms, words and phrases, in order to dramatize and publicize the exigency of the crisis at hand. DeChaine argues that crises are embodied in the form of an intensifying hegemonic struggle over the articulation of 'community' in a global/ized world. The struggle brings into tension local and global priorities, national governments and civil society, and state-centered forms of identity and allegiance and a broad-based vision of global citizenship and belonging. DeChaine demonstrates that the crisis of community is one of the defining themes of our contemporary era, one that we ignore at our peril. This book is not only important to the NGO community but represents cutting edge analysis in rhetoric, cultural studies, semiotics, sociology and social organizations.

Download or read book Caring for Those in Crisis written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Humanitarian NGOs In Security and Identity written by Andrea Schneiker and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasingly humanitarian NGOs operate in the context of armed conflicts where the security risks are higher than in contexts of natural disaster. Working in Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka is particularly dangerous for humanitarians. This existential threat affects the physical existence of aid workers and the implementation of humanitarian programs, and the core beliefs of humanitarians and the underlying principles of humanitarian action. For NGOs it is difficult to accept that they are attacked despite their good intentions, sometimes even by the very communities they seek to help. For these reasons, humanitarian NGOs have to change their approaches to security by not only adapting their policies, procedures and structures to the changing environment, but also reviewing the underlying principles of their work. This book contributes to debates by demonstrating how issues of (in)security affect humanitarian NGOs and the humanitarian identity, situating the structural changes within the humanitarian NGO community in the context of conflict aid governance and explains how non-state actors establish their own governance structures, independent from state-sponsored solutions, and contributes to the emerging literature on the redefinition of the concept of epistemic communities.

Download or read book Humanitarian Crises written by Jennifer Leaning and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late 1980s the international relief community has seen its resources stressed beyond capacity by humanitarian crises. Covering topics from emergency public health measures to the psychological trauma of relief workers, this volume presents a seasoned assessment of current practice and proposals for improving operational efforts.

Download or read book Discourses of Care written by Amy Holdsworth and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together scholars from film and television studies, media and cultural studies, literary studies, medical humanities, and disability studies, Discourses of Care collectively examines how the analysis of media texts and practices can contribute to scholarship on and understandings of health and social care, and how existing research focusing on the ethics of care can inform our understanding of media. Featuring a critical introductory essay and 13 specially commissioned original chapters, this is the first edited collection to address the relationship between media and the concept and practice of care and caregiving. Contributors consider the representation of care and caregiving through a range of forms and practices – the television documentary, photography, film, non-theatrical cinema, tabloid media, autobiography, and public service broadcasting - and engage with the labour, as well as the practical and ethical dimensions of media production. Together, they offer an original and wide ranging exploration of the various ways in which media forms represent, articulate and operate within caring relationships and practices of care; whether this is between individuals, communities as well as audiences and institutions.

Download or read book Britain and Africa in the twenty first century written by Danielle Beswick and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Britain and Africa in the twenty-first century offers the first book-length study of how Britain’s relationship with Africa has fared since the fall of the 1997-2010 New Labour government.

Download or read book Helping Familiar Strangers written by Louise Olliff and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-06 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who helps in situations of forced displacement? How and why do they get involved? In Helping Familiar Strangers, Louise Olliff focuses on one type of humanitarian group, refugee diaspora organizations (RDOs), to explore the complicated impulses, practices, and relationships between these activists and the "familiar strangers" they try to help. By documenting findings from ethnographic research and interviews with resettled and displaced persons, RDO representatives, and humanitarian professionals in Australia, Switzerland, Thailand, and Indonesia, Olliff reveals that former refugees are actively involved in helping people in situations of forced displacement and that individuals with lived experience of forced displacement have valuable knowledge, skills, and networks that can be drawn on in times of humanitarian crisis. We live in a world where humanitarians have varying motivations, capacities, and ways of helping those in need, and Helping Familiar Strangers confirms that RDOs and similar groups are an important part of the tapestry of care that people turn to when seeking protection far from home.

Download or read book Supporting Local Health Care in a Chronic Crisis written by Program on Forced Migration and Health, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2005-11-23 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing medical support to the local population during a chronic crisis is difficult. The crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which is characterized by high excess mortality, ongoing armed violence, mass forced displacement, interference by neighboring countries, resource exploitation, asset stripping, and the virtual absence of the state, has led to great poverty and a dearth of funds for the support of the health system. International nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have stepped in to address the dire humanitarian situation. This study looks at four organizations that support local health care in the eastern DRC: the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Malteser, Medical Emergency Relief International (Merlin), and the Association Régionale d'Approvisionnement en Médicaments Essentiels (ASRAMES). The study makes a comparison of the management and financing approaches of these four organizations by collecting and comparing qualitative and quantitative data on their interaction with the (remaining) local health providers and the local population. Specific objectives of the study are: 1. To identify which management and financing approaches, including the setting of fees, are used by the four NGOs supporting healthcare in the eastern DRC. 2. To determine how these financing approaches affect utilization rates in the health zones supported by the four NGOs. 3. To assess how these utilization rates compare with donor and humanitarian standards. 4. To determine at what level fees must be set to allow for cost recovery or cost sharing in health facilities. 5. To identify the managerial problems confronting the four NGOs. Many epidemiological and public health studies focus on the interaction between health providers and target groups. Supporting Local Health Care in a Chronic Crisis: Management and Financing Approaches in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo concentrates more on how the relationship between the supporting NGOs and the local health system actually develops. In addition, a common aspect of many of the epidemiological and public health studies is the search for an optimal, or at least appropriate, management and financing approach.

Download or read book The Crisis Caravan written by Linda Polman and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2010-09-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A no-holds-barred, controversial exposé of the financial profiteering and ambiguous ethics that pervade the world of humanitarian aid A vast industry has grown up around humanitarian aid: a cavalcade of organizations—some 37,000—compete for a share of the $160 billion annual prize, with "fact-inflation" sometimes ramping up disaster coverage to draw in more funds. Insurgents and warring governments, meanwhile, have made aid a permanent feature of military strategy: refugee camps serve as base camps for genocidaires, and aid supplies are diverted to feed the troops. Even as humanitarian groups continue to assert the holy principle of impartiality, they have increasingly become participants in aid's abuses. In a narrative that is impassioned, gripping, and even darkly absurd, journalist Linda Polman takes us to war zones around the globe—from the NGO-dense operations in "Afghaniscam" to the floating clinics of Texas Mercy Ships proselytizing off the shores of West Africa—to show the often compromised results of aid workers' best intentions. It is time, Polman argues, to impose ethical boundaries, to question whether doing something is always better than doing nothing, and to hold humanitarians responsible for the consequences of their deeds.

Download or read book A Field Manual for Palliative Care in Humanitarian Crises written by Elisha Waldman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-11 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As humanitarian aid organizations have evolved, there is a growing recognition that incorporating palliative care into aid efforts is an essential part of providing the best care possible. A Field Manual for Palliative Care in Humanitarian Crises represents the first-ever effort at educating and providing guidance for clinicians not formally trained in palliative care in how to incorporate its principles into their work in crisis situations. Written by a team of international experts, this pocket-sized manual identifies the needs of people affected by natural hazards, political or ethnic conflict, epidemics of life-threatening infections, and other humanitarian crises. Later chapters explore topics including pain management, skin conditions, non-communicable diseases, palliative care emergencies, the law and ethics of end of life care, and more. Concise and highly accessible, this manual is an ideal educational tool pre-deployment or during fieldwork for clinicians involved in planning and providing humanitarian aid, local care providers, and medical trainees.

Download or read book Public Health Humanitarian Responses to Natural Disasters written by Emily Ying Yang Chan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-10 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The pressure of climate change, environmental degradation, and urbanisation, as well as the widening of socio- economic disparities have rendered the global population increasingly vulnerable to the impact of natural disasters. With a primary focus on medical and public health humanitarian response to disasters, Public Health Humanitarian Responses to Natural Disasters provides a timely critical analysis of public health responses to natural disasters. Using a number of case studies and examples of innovative disaster response measures developed by international agencies and stakeholders, this book illustrates how theoretical understanding of public health issues can be practically applied in the context of humanitarian relief response. Starting with an introduction to public health principles within the context of medical and public health disaster and humanitarian response, the book goes on to explore key trends, threats and challenges in contemporary disaster medical response. This book provides a comprehensive overview of an emergent discipline and offers a unique multidisciplinary perspective across a range of relevant topics including the concepts of disaster preparedness and resilience, and key challenges in human health needs for the twenty-first century. This book will be of interest to students of public health, disaster and emergency medicine and development studies, as well as to development and medical practitioners working within NGOs, development agencies, health authorities and public administration.

Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Humanitarian Action written by Roger Mac Ginty and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Companion on Humanitarian Action addresses the political, ethical, legal and practical issues which influence reactions to humanitarian crisis. It does so by exploring the daily dilemmas faced by a range of actors, including policy makers, aid workers, the private sector and the beneficiaries of aid and by challenging common perceptions regarding humanitarian crisis and the policies put in place to address these. Through such explorations, it provides practitioners and scholars with the knowledge needed to both understand and improve upon current forms of humanitarian action. The Companion will be of use to those interested a range of humanitarian programmes ranging from emergency medical assistance, military interventions, managing refugee flows and the implementation of international humanitarian law. As opposed to addressing specific programmes, it will explore five themes seen as relevant to understanding and engaging in all modes of humanitarian action. The first section explores varying interpretations of humanitarianism, including critical historical and political-economic explanations as well as more practice based explorations focused on notions needs assessments and evaluation. Following this, readers will be exposed to the latest debates on a range of humanitarian principles including neutrality and sovereignty, before exploring the key issues faced by the main actors involved in humanitarian crisis (from international NGOs to local community based organizations). The final two sections address what are seen as key dilemmas in regards to humanitarian action and emerging trends in the humanitarian system, including the increasing role of social media in responding to crises. Whilst not a ‘how to guide’, the Companion contains many practical insights for policy makers and aid workers, whilst also offering analytical insights for students of humanitarian action. Indeed, throughout the book, readers will come to the realization that understanding and improving humanitarian action simultaneously requires both active critical reflection and an acceptance of the urgency and timeliness of action that is required for humanitarian assistance to have an impact on vital human needs. Exploring a sector that is far from homogenous, both practitioners and scholars alike will find the contributions of this book offers them a deeper understanding of the motivations and mechanics of current interventions, but also insight into current changes and progress occurring in the field of humanitarian practice.