Coverage of the recent fires in the US state of Hawaii has come in for some criticism. There have been complaints about “foreign” journalists parachuting in with little knowledge of the circumstances and history, as well as the marginalisation of the experiences of locals in favour of those of wealthy outsiders and tourists.
None of this is new for many in the non-Western world. It has been the stuff of international humanitarian journalism for a long time. Though it may be slowly changing, vestiges remain of a reporting template that privileges the views of Western aid workers and “experts” above the perspectives of locals who actually experience the crisis – the latter relegated to providing a silent backdrop of horrible suffering against which the heroism of the white saviour stands out.
Where did this way of viewing and reporting humanitarian crises come from?
The conventions and ethics that govern both international media and international humanitarianism emerged out of the 18th and 19th centuries. Eurocentric humanitarianism was born in an age of exploration and conquest, into a colonial world of civilising missions and tales of bold white explorers braving the dangers in exotic, faraway lands.
The early humanitarians and the ancestors of today’s foreign correspondents reflected the conceptions of that age with the globe consisting of a strong, enlightened, and privileged West – whose beneficence was the source of values like protection, refuge, and charity – and weak, ignorant precarity everywhere else.
For example, in 1816, as related by Professor Michael Barnett in his Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism, the famous British abolitionist William Wilberforce saw imperialism and colonialism as providing opportunities for Christianity to teach those formerly subject to enslavement to “sustain with patience the suffering of their actual lot” in the hope that they would “soon be regarded as a grateful peasantry”.
Although the first humanitarian agencies were created to deal with the barbarous consequences of conflict in Europe, as post World War II reconstruction projects wound down, many sought new roles propping up imperial domination abroad. And increasingly, it was in these othered spaces that humanitarian crises existed.
This was especially true in Africa – which was constructed as the antithesis of Western competence and modernity – where inability to cope with natural and man-made calamities became an article of faith, with the image of the starving African child emerging as a staple of both news reports and appeals for donations.
Ignoring local aid
Yet this has never really been how crises ever worked. Media reporting has simply tended to misrepresent them.
Why does foreign aid hog the international limelight? The answer to that may lie in the Western conceptualisation of what humanitarianism is.
One 2019 study, for example, concluded that Western-led international humanitarian aid made up less than two percent (yes, you heard that right, 2%) of all the help (money, goods, and other in-kind support both formal and informal) received by people even in the most high-profile crises. The survey, which looked at the resources households used to cope with crises, found that the vast majority of aid is actually local, “including community support mechanisms, remittances from diaspora, government and private sector funding and faith-based giving… and other resources not easily measured or tracked”.
There is no denying that international humanitarian aid agencies do vital work, saving countless lives around the globe. However, given the relatively tiny help they actually provide, why is the foreign aid worker the face of humanitarian response? Why does foreign aid hog the international limelight? The answer to that may lie in the Western conceptualisation of what humanitarianism is.
Professor Barnett notes that “compassion across boundaries” is one of the characteristics of Eurocentric humanitarianism. “In the beginning humanitarianism included both international and domestic action,” he notes. “Precisely when and why the concept of humanitarianism became reserved for border-busting action is unclear.” In essence, when people, communities, and nations do things for themselves, their loved ones, or their countrymen, this does not count. Humanitarianism, as conceived in the West, requires dealing with outsiders, people to whom one owes no obligation.
This is neatly illustrated by a study I came across years ago. When people in one European country (I forget which) were asked what the most moral thing they thought one could do was, many said it was to go to help the starving people of Africa, not the hungry and homeless in their own societies.
Too complicated
Another way in which the reporting of humanitarian crises mischaracterises them is the elimination of complexity.
Because news reports must fit into so many newspaper column inches or minutes in a news broadcast, the most horrible stories and images come to represent the entirety of a community’s lived experience of crisis. Everyone is a victim.
But those who find themselves forced to navigate catastrophes are not necessarily defined by them, nor is their existence reducible to the tragedies they experience.
In my first visit to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in 2010, as part of a team hired by the UN to provide communications support to the AU forces then battling the al-Shabab terror group within the city, I was greatly surprised to find schools, universities, shops, street hawkers, underground parties, and bustling markets in what I only thought of as a war zone. Brought up on a TV news diet of Somalia as a failed state, full of death and despair, my conception of the place was at odds with reality.
Sure, places experiencing humanitarian crises can be dire. There is no shortage of sorrow and death and hurt. But those who find themselves forced to navigate catastrophes are not necessarily defined by them, nor is their existence reducible to the tragedies they experience. Life also happens. People live and love and laugh. This is an important feature of crises that has been largely ignored by “the news”.
However, this is changing
There is growing recognition that humanitarian crises can happen anywhere in the world. The wildfires and heatwaves, drought and floods sweeping across the “Global North” have shown that we are all vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Humanitarian crises persist in even the most powerful nations, such as the United States, where 1 in 10 do not have enough to eat and where the COVID-19 pandemic killed over a million people.
Though there is still a long way to go, how the media covers crises is changing. The parachute journalism decried in Hawaii still exists but, thanks in no small part to the internet, reports by local journalists are now increasingly visible, and international outfits like the BBC are hiring more local reporters.
Ultimately, “decolonising” international journalism and coverage of humanitarian crises is a question of instituting a new global media ethics.
Pushback from globalised audiences online is forcing a revision in the Western-centric and racist language and imagery used to represent crises in other parts of the globe and a proliferation of “decolonised” style guides. News organisations like The New Humanitarian are experimenting with new formats to try and improve understanding of crises. These include the Snapshots series, which lets local journalists and residents tell their stories in visual formats, and Flipping the narrative, which challenges who is an 'expert' on refugee issues.
The New Humanitarian has also recently launched a new platform called The Yemen Listening Project, which offers people living in Yemen an opportunity to share their own stories about life in a crisis, and which has received an overwhelmingly positive response, with one Yemeni describing it as “a chance to humanise the statistics and headlines”. Others are making similar efforts, too. In Kenya, drawing on local tradition of oral storytelling and visual performance, the Baraza Media Lab is experimenting with Pop-Up Magazine-style productions.
Ultimately, “decolonising” international journalism and coverage of humanitarian crises is a question of instituting a new global media ethics. There is little agreement on what that looks like, though independent initiatives like those outlined above help push the needle. No one has all the answers, and there is bound to be much contestation within and among newsrooms and academia.
In future instalments of this column, I will try to map out the debates around media decolonisation; chart the attempts, challenges, and progress made by The New Humanitarian and others; and offer my own two cents on the subject. I would also be happy to hear your thoughts and critiques. You can email them to [email protected].
