Rethinking Humanitarianism | In conversation with Heba Aly

Melissa Fundira

For more than 40 episodes, the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast has explored the key questions facing the aid sector and the big ideas that can help us answer them. It was launched in late 2020, at a time when the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic forced the humanitarian sector to take a look in the mirror. It felt like a moment of change for the sector, and today’s episode acknowledges a different kind of change – one that hits closer to home. 

 

Since 2007, Heba Aly has worked with The New Humanitarian, and IRIN News before, in many different roles. It’s a journey she started as an intern, and recently finished as the CEO. During that time, she hosted every episode of this podcast. But for the very first time, Heba joins us today as a guest. In this season finale, Heba joins us to reflect on her career, the humanitarian sector, the future of aid, and the role of media in the humanitarian space.

 

From Toronto, Canada, I’m Melissa Fundira. This is Rethinking Humanitarianism, a podcast about the future of aid in a world of rising crisis

 

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So Heba, this might be a little bit weird for you, but I'm going to read a short bio, because I think it'll help the listener understand where your reflections are going to come from today. And I can't tell you how hard it was to summarise your illustrious career, but I gave it a shot. So here we go. You first joined The New Humanitarian in 2007. Back when it was known as IRIN News, and it was a project of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs – that’s UN OCHA. In that time, you covered humanitarian and development issues across West Africa. You were one of the few journalists reporting out of Sudan in 2008 2009, until you were expelled after inquiring about domestic arms production. And after joining IRIN full-time in 2011, as its Middle East editor, you reported on the Arab Spring and aid dynamics in the Middle East, among many other critical stories in the region. In 2014, when the UN decided to stop funding IRIN, you decided to stick around, and you helped IRIN spin off into an independent newsroom, which later rebranded as The New Humanitarian. As Director and CEO of The New Humanitarian, you've contributed to some key conversations about the humanitarian sector itself. A lot of it happens on this very podcast: conversations about decolonisation, equitable global governance, sustainable aid financing, and locally-led response, to name just a few. 

 

Heba Aly, welcome to the podcast.

 

Heba Aly

Thank you very much.

 

Melissa Fundira

Okay Heba, I want to start at the beginning. You started your journalism career in Canadian media, working on many different beats as so many early career journalists do. Take me back to that moment or that fork in the road that led you to become the journalist we know you to be today, meaning a journalist who focuses on humanitarian crises.

 

Heba Aly

I came home one day from my job at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where I had started as a traffic reporter, and my dad had put a pamphlet on my desk about a UN kind of fellowship program that a Canadian organisation ran to help place Canadians in the UN. And there was an internship at this humanitarian reporting outfit that I had never heard of with a very funny name. And I thought that that was the exact intersection of my interests. I had studied journalism and human rights in university. So I went to Senegal for a six-month internship. And that was the beginning of that.

 

Melissa Fundira

So, I didn't get curious. I went on The New Humanitarian website, I clicked on your name, and I scrolled back to the very first article that was ever published under your name. It came out August 10, 2007, and it was about female genital mutilation practices in West Africa. Of course, since then, you went on to publish dozens more articles covering humanitarian crises and the sector. What drove you to keep reporting on humanitarian issues all of these years?

 

Heba Aly

I guess just the basic human imperative that all of our suffering counts equally and that we, as a human species, should care about each other’s suffering. At its core, I think that's my value set that keeps me in this space.

 

Melissa Fundira

A lot of people care about human suffering and believe that, you know, all humans are as valuable or are valuable. But not everybody chooses to go about trying to change that suffering, by reporting on it, and by doing so for 15-plus years. So is there something more there, really, that drives you?

 

Heba Aly 

I think that I grew up in a family, and frankly, in a religion… I was raised Muslim and a big part of the tenets of Islam – people don't often realise this – is social justice. And a lot of the religion’s requirements is that Muslims should help people who are less privileged than they are. And that was just part of our ethos as children. And my mother, in particular, really pushed that on us that if we have privilege, then we are, in a way, required to do something to help those who don't. So I think it's just been part of my worldview from very early on.

 

Melissa Fundira

Was there a moment, or an article maybe, where you felt like your journalism was actually successfully helping people care about other human beings?

 

Heba Aly 

One of the challenges that we face as journalists is that we don't always get immediate gratifications, or signs that our work is having the impact that we hoped for. And that's a really high bar to meet. For me, it's always been a bit more subtle than that, where it's a body of work rather than a particular article that changes the tide on a topic. So rather than just getting people to care in general, in our case, at least at The New Humanitarian, it's about getting the right people to care, or the right people to take action, and often that's policymakers. One of my favourite pieces was an interview I did with the then – this was in 2005 – the then UN Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Stephen O'Brien, who many listeners will remember with a bit of a chuckle. He was at the time steering a multimillion-dollar reform process known as the World Humanitarian Summit. And I asked him about his vision for how the international aid apparatus should evolve. 

 

Heba Aly (2015): As other actors, other than the UN play a more and more important role in responding to crises, the UN appears to be losing its role as the primary custodian of humanitarian response. What's your vision for how the international emergency aid system has to change to be able to better respond?

 

Heba Aly 

And he said: 

 

Stephen O’Brien (2015): Well, I think the premise of your question, actually, is not correct…

 

Heba Aly 

“Well, the premise of your question is actually not correct. The UN doesn't have to change.”

 

Stephen O’Brien (2015): “The UN doesn't have to change what has to do, we have to build on all this fantastic track record and build on the best. And yes, then change to add, and to bring in more innovation, more skills…”

 

Heba Aly 

So that was, as I think one person described it, him with his pants pulled down, and the interview ended up triggering a lot of response by donor governments who are frustrated at the UN's reluctance to meet demands for reform. So I think it's stuff like that. It's it's incremental, it's bits and pieces, but I hope they do add up.

 

Melissa Fundira

And as you point out, along with trying to portray what's happening on the ground accurately, part of what journalists like yourself have done at IRIN, and then later on at The New Humanitarian is to hold the sector accountable. And I actually want to play you a question from someone on that topic. You've crossed paths with many people on your journey throughout the new humanitarian. And I want to play you a question from one of those people right now.

 

Obi Anyadike: “Hi, my name is Obi Anyadike, Africa editor for The New Humanitarian. My question for you, Heba, is: The aid industry talks about accountability a lot. Is there discernible progress, or at the end of the day, is it just lip service?”

 

Heba Aly

Obi probably knows the answer to that better than I do. My sense is that the conversation has evolved. And I actually had just come across an article, a whole series of articles that then IRIN had published in 2012 around accountability, and it was all about complaints mechanisms and feedback loops. And I think, today, the conversation is much more sophisticated than that, and it's about: does this system actually serve people? You know, the topics that we know all too well on the podcast around some of the colonial or imperial roots of the aid system. So I think, at least at an intellectual level, the conversation has evolved pretty significantly. And at a technical level, I think there are a lot more mechanisms in place to try to achieve the goal of accountability. And it's taken for granted much more that it needs to be part of the way aid measures its success. So I would say yes, I think there has been movement. Always more to go, obviously, but we're in a different place now than we were when I started.

 

Melissa Fundira

Of course, at some point, as you were reporting with IRIN News, a big transition took shape around 2014 when the UN decided to pull the plug on IRIN News as a project. What happened there exactly? It's a big question.

 

Heba Aly 

It had been building up for some time. The idea of an editorially independent news service within the UN was always ambitious, and to the UN's credit, worked for quite some time, although within certain commonly accepted boundaries, but started not working when certain conflicts really put into question the UN's role, and, in many of them, the UN’s failure. In particular, Sri Lanka, Iraq, and Syria became stories where the reporting that we were doing was increasingly critical of the UN, and increasingly causing tension between IRIN and the UN, to the point that we had many articles that they asked us never to publish. At the same time, they were facing budget cuts and looking for places where they could make some savings. There were many cases where things that we would write would prompt critiques from the member states to the UN saying, ‘Why's your news outlet saying X or Y?’ And the UN claimed – although I often wondered how much credibility this particular assertion had – that our reporting put their staff at risk. So it all kind of came to a head in 2014, when they made the decision? And I think for some of us internally, I certainly at least always felt that IRIN could, not only exist, but actually be even more interesting and more powerful as an independent newsroom. 

 

Melissa Fundira

The sense was that your editorial independence had been eroding over time, which implies that you had more independence in the earlier days of IRIN. So what was changing within the UN system that led them to sort of backtrack on giving you the freedom to report things as they were?

 

Heba Aly

Well, I'd say two things. I'm not sure that we had more editorial independence. I think, perhaps we became bolder and bolder over the years and started pushing a little bit harder in the kinds of stories we wanted to tell. And simultaneously, conflicts were becoming more and more politicised and political. And so in the early days, where you might have been reporting about AIDS or famine, on a conflict like Syria, the UN was in a very difficult predicament and it was a lot harder to report on such a complex politicised conflict without starting to talk about the UN and how it functioned and, and the limitations of that setup. 

 

Melissa Fundira

So back to this transition that you decided to embark on. I think this is a good time for me to bring in my next guest question. This one comes from Sara Pantuliano, who is the CEO of ODI the Overseas Development Institute. 

 

Sara Pantuliano: “Heba, you've demonstrated remarkable leadership and courage as the visionary leader behind the transformation of IRIN news into The New Humanitarian. And I've seen that firsthand having shared that transition journey with you. Can you tell us about some of the key challenges you faced during that transformation? And what lessons you would share with other humanitarian leaders? I think, ultimately, it is that vision and grit that is we need to steer the humanitarian system towards the meaningful transformation.”

 

Melissa Fundira

I think before you answer that, it's worth clarifying what ODI’s connection was to IRIN at that time.

 

Heba Aly

Well, ODI hosted us as something of an incubator when we had spun off from the UN, because the decision to shut IRIN down was made in April, and the funding was going to get cut in December. So we had eight months to kind of get up and running in our new incarnation, and it wasn't enough time to do all that we needed to do. So Sara and ODI generously offered to host us until we could set up a separate legal entity. And I laugh when she asks that question because she was with us in the trenches when we went through a few of the more significant challenges in that journey, one of which was somewhat public, but we had received funding from a Malaysian billionaire that ended up in the midst of the largest financial scandal of the 21st century and had [a] very difficult process of disentangling ourselves from that funding at great risk. It was the vast majority of our money at the time. But we, I think, took the bold decision, and early on, to walk away on the basis that it was better we didn't exist than to accept money from places that didn't align with our values. And I think that that’s one of the lessons for the sector that growth shouldn't be at any cost. And since then, we've made, I think, some pretty unique steps in developing guidelines on who we accept funding from and how we try to grapple with the ethical concerns around funding, of which there are many and it's very, you know, it's a very messy space because no money is perfectly clean, but just to be as transparent and principled as we can. Sara used the word grit, and I think that's absolutely part of what allowed us to succeed, that we just didn't give up. And at the time, I think the idea of developing a spin-off was just seen as wishful thinking. And yet, we proved that if you just keep pushing, you can make things happen. And I think for a lot of the changes that are needed in this sector today, that kind of mentality will go a long way, to just keep your eye on the ball and keep pushing.

 

Melissa Fundira

I mean, I found myself wondering, as I was researching the story, did it ever occur to you that you wouldn't succeed? There seemed to be just a blind faith that the spin-off was going to happen, and you were ready to really, you know, go all out to see it through.

 

Heba Aly

I mean, we almost folded so many times. So, I think it wasn't so much that we didn't think failure was an option, but just that we had little to lose and we were ready to give it our all. You know, I remember when we hired people in those early days, the first thing I told them was, ‘There is no guarantee you're gonna have a job in a few months. And if you join us, it's because you're ready to go on an adventure and take some risks, and we'll go as long as we can.’ And in the end, it worked. But I think we all went into it open-eyed and conscious that there was a chance it wouldn't work. But, I think people, I think people overestimate impossibility. And I think there's so much in this world that is much more possible than we think it is. If only we try.

 

Melissa Fundira

I mean, Heba, to be honest, like on a personal level, I also just find myself thinking about how young you were when all of this was happening. I'm so sorry to put your age out there, but you were probably in your very, very early 30s as this was happening. I'm sure a lot of the people that you were hiring during this precarious time were quite young themselves. You could have looked for work elsewhere and tried to cover humanitarian crises for a different outlet. Why was it so important that IRIN, in particular, stick around?

 

Heba Aly

We were very unique. We are very unique until today. You know, there aren't that many options out there for people who want to do this work. And I think those of us who fought to keep this thing alive felt that it plays an important role and that we want to maintain that space for people to do this kind of journalism. But also, you know, this was the thing that we had all been part of, and had seen the value of, and didn't want to see disappear. So it was also a question of, you know, keeping alive the mission that we had all grown attached to over the years of doing this work. But I will just say, for the record, that Wikipedia seems to have added 10 years on to my age. So, don't assume everything you read on the internet is true.

 

Melissa Fundira

Just a little decade over. But I think it's only right that we talk about the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast. As I mentioned in the intro, you've hosted just over 40 episodes, if my calculations are correct. 

 

Heba Aly

Yeah, I was shocked to hear that number. 

 

Melissa Fundira

Oh yeah, and that represents more than 75 guests over the last four seasons. Which ones have stood out to you the most? Which ones have stayed with you?

 

Heba Aly

It's funny, actually, our very first episode is one of the ones I remember, in part because we had to record it twice, because we had a technical problem the first time around. But also because I think the vision that Danny Sriskandarajah, who was then the CEO of Oxfam GB, painted of what an international NGO can be in the future, remains… it has stuck with me, and it remains, I think, one of the few models I have heard that is forward-looking and can stand the test of time. And that is one of a global solidarity network that moves away from operational delivery and towards being a bridge between these different social justice movements around the world. 

 

Danny Sriskandarajah: “I often look at other international entities, especially in the corporate world, and see how they’ve evolved. Take a Coca-Cola, for example – founded in Atlanta, operated through direct country operations in much of the Global South but increasingly operates through franchises. Or if you look at the PWCs or the McKinseys of the world – tremendous growth in Southern entities that have come in as equal members of the network, if you will. So one forcing function in some ways, I think, is that the world is changing around us. Just as sort of economic and geopolitical balances are shifting, I hope so too will the sort of the civil society landscape in terms of where money and power is held.” 

 

Heba Aly

So that I found really helpful in kind of conceptualising the future of international NGOs. This one is a bit predictable, but at the end of Season 2, we had an interview with the UN's aid chief, Martin Griffiths, which was interesting on a number of fronts, but in particular because he said that he hoped he'd be the last Briton in the role of UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs. And of course, we've talked a lot about the system that puts certain nationalities into certain senior UN posts. 

 

Martin Griffiths: “This is too… how can I say this without being immodest? This is too crucial a job to be left to favouritism. That's the proposition, isn't it? I hope we move in that direction. But it's a bigger issue than the humanitarian job. It's the way our world seems to work.”

 

Heba Aly

And actually, after that episode, I heard a lot of critique of Martin in saying, ‘Yeah, it's easy to say so but why did you take the job?’ But I do think that that kind of a statement from someone in that kind of position does start to create, or normalise, a certain way of thinking that is becoming dominant in the sector. 

 

Heba Aly 

And then I loved, I really loved season three, because I feel like so often in the humanitarian sector, discussions are so insular, and to be able to take a step back and look at the broader picture of why humanitarian aid needs to exist in the first place, and how, at a global governance level, changes could reduce humanitarian needs significantly. I just thought it was fascinating, and there were episode upon episode that really stuck with me. But I did really love the reparations one in particular, in part because I think Uzo Iweala’s kind of insistence when he kept saying, like, ‘just give us the money’, you know, at the end of the day, a lot of these things that we discussed, they don't have to be that complicated, Like, ‘Just give us the money!

 

Uzo Iweala: “Again, just think about it in very simple terms. You come into my house. You steal $100 from me. I'm like: ‘Hey, man, you took $100 from me. Can I have my $100 back?’ You didn't know what I was going to use that money for in the first place. I could want to light that money on fire. Maybe not the most productive use, but it's my money to light on fire. Right? So now you're like, ‘Ah, homie, I don't think I can give this back to you, you want to light it on fire.’

Heba Aly: I get that argument, but does that money belong to the government? Does it belong to the people? It does get complicated.

Iweala: Yes, I understand that. And I said earlier that this thing is more nuanced than what I'm saying. But you have to break it down in these simple terms, otherwise, people will try to distract you with all this foolishness [...]

Aly: Does this go into a fund? Does it get paid out in checks?

Iweala: Heba, we're talking [about] the wrong thing. Just give the money. You give us the money. People have accounts. People have transferred large sums of money before. Do you know what I’m saying? This is not that difficult to figure out logistically. Give us the money, then y'all can worry about your own thing, we'll worry about the rest…

Heba Aly

It's such a clarifying kind of statement. So yeah, I mean, there were so many interesting and insightful people on the show. But those are some of the ones that stuck with me.

 

Melissa Fundira

I think that reparations episode speaks to something I heard you say when you were accepting an award given to The New Humanitarian by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and you said that people think that solutions journalism is watered-down journalism, that positive journalism lets people off the hook. But that actually, there's power in saying, ‘This hasn't been done before, successfully. Why aren't you doing it?’ And what was special about that episode is, along with Uzo saying ‘Give us the money,’ we also had a German professor who talked about the fact that reparations have been given before to survivors of the Holocaust. And we discussed how reparations were given by the UK Government to former slave owners that then they spent more than 100 years paying them back for. I think that's very indicative of what you tried to do with the podcast, which is to say, ‘Yes, something's wrong, but what can be done? And what has been done and can be replicated?

 

Heba Aly

Also, I think one of the things we should be really proud of about the podcast is giving credibility to ideas that were considered fringe or impossible, or moving some of those ideas into the mainstream dialogue. And, actually, it reminds me of one of the other episodes that really stuck with me, which is the science fiction episode, which is your fantastic idea, if I remember well.

 

Kim Stanley Robinson: “Okay, how do you inspire people without them saying, ‘Oh, well, that'll never happen. That's a fantasy. That's that guy's wish list, old hippie leftist, the wish list has been the same for 50 years, that'll never happen.’ So how do you inspire them by them reading a utopian novel and saying, ‘That could happen.’ There's the test – that could happen. It's going to be messy, and it's going to be filled with defeats and reversals and conflict, but we could still get to a good result despite all that. And really, that’s the same as the work you all are doing. Humanitarian work is saying, ‘Look, we have disasters, let’s be realistic, but we could make a better outcome than just mass disaster for millions; we could have a better outcome.’ So that too, is a utopian narrative.”

 

Heba Aly

You know, this notion that things seem impossible, until – or as Serena Williams puts it – until you do it. And so to help ideas along that spectrum of saying, ‘Oh, this is just easily dismissed’ to actually ‘No, we should be taking this seriously’ – I think that's a huge service and one of the things that I'm most proud of in the work we've done on the show.

 

Melissa Fundira

One of the biggest topics that I think we tackled on this podcast, and that we tackled multiple times, and that I think struck a chord the most, was any episode that we did on decolonising aid. How would you assess where the sector is today on that decolonisation journey, especially given all these conversations that you've had over the last four seasons with guests?

 

Heba Aly

I think it's unfair to say that nothing has changed. And I think often in the sector, it's easy, and frankly a bit lazy, to just say, ‘Oh, you know, nothing's changing, progress is slow, etc.’ That's not to say progress isn't slow, but I think there has been movement. And in particular, that, in the early days of this discussion – of course, this discussion dates back decades – but in the latest iteration of that after George Floyd's murder, the obstacle was really at a conceptual level, and there was a lot of discussion around unwillingness to give up power etc. And today, I think, not just the discussion, but actually action, has moved significantly, and it's much more in the ‘how’ than in the ‘whether to do it or the why’. So I would say the sector is now at a stage in which there is broad consensus that aid should be localised, maybe less so on the decolonisation piece of it, and it's more around how do you operationalise that? And I think there has been movement in that regard. If part of the obstacle has been a lack of a playbook in terms of ‘how do you do this’, bits and pieces of that playbook are now coming together. We're seeing the NEAR network creating progressive pooled funds, and a bunch of new kinds of donor-funded intermediaries that can channel funding to local feminist organisations. We're seeing a lot more representation, both in positions of leadership, and in – I know it sounds silly or not very meaningful – but in panel discussions, and I think it is meaningful because giving voice is a first step in shifting narratives and in creating new consensus. USAID has been really trying to reexamine its whole architecture to figure out how it can be more locally oriented, and I think that will serve as a model for a lot of other donors. So there's obviously still a long way to go, but there definitely has been movement. I think the big way to go is on the decolonisation front, and by that, I mean the bit that is outside of the aid sector’s control. So, you know, true decolonisation, as we have heard on some of the episodes of the podcast, would be the removal of the need for aid in the first place, and there, there's a much further path to walk. Although, even there, we're seeing movement in some of the efforts more recently to, what I would call, level the playing field on the international scene, whether it's the loss and damage fund agreed at COP, or the new tax convention that we discussed on the last episode, or the reform of the World Bank to make it easier for crisis-hit countries to access financing. So things are moving. I think we don't recognise that often enough.

 

Melissa Fundira

Maybe I'm a bit cynical, but sometimes I have trouble telling if we're just in this cyclical loop of the global majority and different people pushing for change, and there being enough pressure for some concessions to be made, only for it to really result in more lip service. And then the cycle continues again, until enough people are fed up enough to pressure for more change, and people backtrack, and so on and so forth. Or, you know, am I being too cynical, and, you know, as MLK says, that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. Do you feel that we genuinely are bending towards justice, or is it just a boomerang?

 

Heba Aly

I think if this doesn't sound too neurotic and contradictory, both can be true. In the sense that, yes, I think we do take a step forward, and then we get pushed back, and then there's another step forward, and then push back. But overall, we're slightly further ahead after each step. But on the other hand, I think it is human nature to destroy ourselves. Honestly. I think there will never be a world in which people are not evil to one another. And so I think I've come to believe that the goal shouldn't be utopia. The goal should just be to continue to adapt to whatever the latest evolution of the world is, and whatever the latest need is. I think on some measures, yes, we're inching forward slowly. But at a really kind of high level, I think human nature is never really going to change.

 

Melissa Fundira

It’s classic Heba Aly hopeful realism. It's a very interesting balance that you strike, but at the same time, I think about all of the humanitarian crises that you've covered, the abuse of power within the sector that you've covered – the sexual abuse scandals, the corruption. Is there ever a part of you that just wants to burn it all down?

 

Heba Aly

I don't actually know if I'm a radicalist or an incrementalist. I think I'm probably a bit of both, in the same way that Degan Ali, I remember the episode we did with her, and she was talking about the big vision of decolonisation. And, as I said, that the changes that would allow aid not to be needed in the first place, but while you work towards that, you also tried to make aid slightly better, because, in the meantime, that's what we've got. And I think that you do need to work on both of those levels. 

 

Degan Ali: “I’m a pragmatist, as well as an activist. We have to figure out how do we make changes in the system with areas and things that we can do, but at the same time, it doesn't mean that I'm gonna stop talking about these issues. That's why I'm being purposeful and using terms like decolonisation, because for me, decolonisation recognizes the political, foundational underpinnings of this entire architecture that has been done on purpose by design, not by accident. And that's why I use the term decolonisation and not localisation of locally-led development. But recognizing that doesn't mean that we can't do some practical work as well.”

 

I think there's a way of combining the energy and the fire that drives those who want to burn it all down with working in the real world in a way that brings people along with you. And I think one of the things I'm most proud of at The New Humanitarian is that we have managed to make a strong critique of the sector but in a way that isn't exclusionary, and in a way that helps institutions improve, I hope, at the end of the day. So yeah, I mean, of course, there's days where you're just infuriated, and I think if you can take that anger and channel it in a constructive way – and usually constructiveness does mean playing a bit of a longer game – then you've got a bit of the best of both worlds. But I will just say one thing, I've said this to the team, I say it often because it's a quote that I really hang on to on the bad days, which is a NASA scientist that gets asked to give people hope about the climate crisis. And she says ‘I can't. I don't have any. The world we once knew is gone and it's never coming back. What we need is not hope, but courage, and courage is the resolve to do the right thing without a guarantee of a happy ending.’ And I think that's the way we have to approach this work.

 

Melissa Fundira

You mentioned localisation is one of those concrete steps that can be taken to improve aid within this much larger movement to decolonise the sector. And we got a question about that from Peter Maurer, who is the president of the Basel Institute on Governance, former president of the ICRC from 2012 to 2022, and a Rethinking Humanitarianism guest Season 3, and he wrote the following. He says: 

 

“Through the TNH you have championed “localisation” as an important opportunity to transform the humanitarian sector. Despite all the commitments of global humanitarian organisations and major donors to the principle of localisation, development has been slow – if at all. Can you reflect from today’s perspective what you consider obstacles, opportunities missed and better ways to concretise localisation?”

 

Heba Aly

Very interesting that such a question should come from Peter, given that the ICRC has not been the biggest proponent of this agenda, but I think I referenced it earlier. Initially, the obstacle was ideological. I think today the obstacle is the lack of a playbook. And so I think the opportunity is in starting to build that playbook piece by piece. And as I said, I think that's starting to happen. I think the other… what did Jeremy Konyndyk… oh my god, do you know that I realise that actually it’s not ‘Ko-NUN-dyk’, it’s ko-NINE-dyk’, and I have been pronouncing it wrong all these years. He had this term called forcing function, and he always used to ask guests when he was co-hosting with me: What's the forcing function that will make this change happen? And I think with localisation, there is an opportunity in that there are many forcing functions today. And if you look at where the sector is at – and I often say it's reaching its financial, operational, structural, and moral, or ethical limits – localisation can be an answer to all of those challenges. So in a world in which there won't be enough money to meet needs, in which operationally we might be challenged in a way that we saw during COVID, where people couldn't travel – or, what's likely during climate change, whereby the whole world will be in crisis at the same time and so deploying people somewhere won't make sense as an operational model – and ethically, other concerns we all know very well. I think, you know, localisation is that sweet spot where you can address a lot of those problems with the same solution. So I think over time, as those challenges become more and more intensified, that will be an opportunity for this – if not by choice, by force – to become a bit more of a reality.

 

Melissa Fundira

I want to move on to talk a little bit about the state of our industry. And by that I mean, media. It's quite bleak. To be blunt, it's been bleak for some time. Economically, the ad model is dead. There are fresh rounds of mass layoffs all the time. Trust is low, disinformation is high. Are nonprofit newsrooms like The New Humanitarian sustainable?

 

Heba Aly

I do think there are more nonprofit newsrooms popping up than the market can absorb. Yes. I think we will see a number of them crash and burn in the coming years, just because there probably isn't enough money to sustain all of them. I think there is a model to getting sustainability that isn't financial, so to speak, which is building trust with audiences. And just as you said, that's been something that has been lost in recent years. And, particularly in the Global South, I think a lot of audiences have been really… frustrated is too small a word… by the way many Western media have covered Ukraine and Gaza. So I think there is an opportunity for those media that take audience trust seriously to build sustainability, A) because they then become valued and needed, and B) if they are valued and needed by their audiences, they're more willing to pay for them. So I think the way forward has to be around building trust. And that comes in part from A) seeing journalism as a service industry, and I think that's one of the things we've tried to do at The New Humanitarian, is to really see ourselves as serving those in need. And then to ensure that you represent the people that you are writing about just automatically helps build trust. And so much of why audiences have turned away from media is that they don't see themselves in the media, and they don't feel that media can accurately represent them because they're not from that community. So a lot of the work that we have been doing on decolonising journalism is actually future-proofing the journalism industry, because that's what's going to save media in the future, I think.

 

Melissa Fundira

You've partially answered our next guest question, but I'm going to play it anyway because it is asking a broader question about the industry at large and the future of the industry. Take a listen.

 

Martin Scott: “Hi there, this is Martin Scott here. I'm a lecturer in media and development from the University of East Anglia in Norwich in the UK. I've got a question for Heba as she leaves The New Humanitarian. She's played a kind of central role in transforming The New Humanitarian, but I wonder, Heba, what do you see for the sector in general, for this kind of subfield of humanitarian journalism? What's its future? What happens next to this field inside and outside The New Humanitarian?”

 

Heba Aly

You're getting all my favourite people onto the show. Hi, Martin. Well, first of all, I should note that Martin is one of the foremost experts on humanitarian journalism. So once again, he probably has a better answer than I do. But, first of all, I think the term humanitarian journalism has always been funny to me, because I don't see it as necessarily distinct from journalism, whereby it has a different set of ethics, or practices. I think, done well, the future of humanitarian journalism is to treat all lives as equal and to separate itself from geopolitical and national security interests. And because, actually, more and more mainstream media are covering humanitarian crises, because these are the stories of our time – COVID, Ukraine, Gaza, climate change, migration – we are actually now in a situation in which journalists that might not have the same values that we do are covering our beat. And the coverage of Ukrainian gas, as I mentioned, have made clear that need for media that really treat all lives as equal and truly write for universal audiences. I think the future of humanitarian journalism is not just covering needs, but covering the systems of power that drive those needs, because the needs are becoming so big that you just start to sound like a broken record if that's all you do. And to start to connect what's common about why all these needs are taking place, and what are those abuses happening at a systems level that, if you can tackle that, you can then address all the humanitarian suffering – I think will be an important area of focus for journalists covering this beat moving forward. 

 

Melissa Fundira

So recently, Ebele Okobi took the reins as CEO of The New Humanitarian. You decided to step down, but this is something you've been thinking about for a while. When did you decide it was time to move on? And why?

 

Heba Aly

Well, I shouldn't speak for all CEOs, but I don't think there's a CEO out there who hasn't considered on a bad day moving on. I think it's a perpetual thought in the back of our minds, just because these jobs are really, really hard. I made a decision and told the board about a year and two months ago, something like that. So it's been quite a long process, and intentionally so. ‘Why?’ is it is a more complicated question, I think, a mix of things. I am a builder. I like the early stages of taking an idea and turning it into action. And I think others are better suited at the kind of scaling and expansion phase of an initiative. I think I've also been watching the problems in the sector for so long that I'd like to be part of the solution now, and not observing or describing the problems.

 

Melissa Fundira

In what capacity?

 

Heba Aly

So actually, my thinking about what I do next has been inspired by this podcast, funnily enough, an episode with Tim Muriithi. He's a professor in South Africa, and we were talking about alternatives to the UN. And he mentioned this little-known Article of the UN Charter, Article 109, that allows for a review conference, and that was put in by the drafters of the UN Charter as a concession recognizing that they had given so much power to the permanent five members of the Security Council, that after 10 years, the setup would be reviewed and adjusted as necessary. And 10 years came along, and they're like, ‘Ah, this year’s not great, maybe next year,’ and you know, almost 80 years later, it hasn't happened. And there is now something of a nascent movement to try to re-energise and, and trigger this article with the goal of reviewing global governance, such that it can be more effective for the global majority today. More inclusive and more fair, frankly. So that's an area that I'm interested in exploring, and exactly how I'm not sure yet.

 

Melissa Fundira

I was going through your LinkedIn the other day, and I noticed that your bio now reads “builder of ambitious initiatives that make the world a little fairer.” So I think that's one hell of a mission statement, and helping to trigger Article 109 definitely falls within that category. As you move on, how do you hope to see TNH evolve? You mentioned that you felt it was best for TNH to be led by somebody who can scale it and continue to, I guess, make it a sustainable nonprofit news organisation. How do you hope it evolves?

 

Heba Aly

Well, A) I think it's really exciting that we have found in my successor such an interesting profile. Someone who comes from a background that can really help us see things through a broader perspective. And with that very intentional choice is a hope that The New Humanitarian can reach wider audiences, because I think we all feel that we produce really unique and incredible journalism and more people should be reading it. And in an age in which our beat is kind of central on the world stage, that we want to be influencing those who are making decisions that have an impact on the way crises unfold. And that's politicians, and that's, in some cases, business leaders, but it's certainly not only the humanitarian aid community, which used to be our kind of central audience. And it's more and more the communities themselves that are able to shape their future. So how do we speak to them more directly? I think that's a huge challenge, and when we've been grappling with for years, so it's not as though The New Humanitarian is gonna be able to get there overnight. But I think that's an area that we all want to see it go. I think in doing so, though, I would love to see it maintain its unique character. I think it's so easy to be tempted by the allure of becoming a big media brand. And if you become too mainstream, you risk losing your essence, so that's going to be a tough and interesting balance to strike in the years that come. I hope that TNH continues to grapple with kind of the big difficult questions. I think we exhaust ourselves sometimes in the debates we have internally, but it makes us so much better. And I hope that never stops.

 

Melissa Fundira

Well, if you remember in our exit interview with Peter Maurer, we sent him off with a series of rapid-fire questions, and I'd like to do the same with you. 

 

Heba Aly

Okay. 

 

Melissa Fundira

And we're going to start off with two guest questions. The first one is from someone you know, quite well, Ben Parker…

 

Heba Aly

Of course.

 

Melissa Fundira

… who is the co-founder and former Senior Policy Editor of IRIN News and later The New Humanitarian, and this is his question for you:

 

Ben Parker: “This is Ben, I used to work at The New Humanitarian. My question is: if there was one thing that the wider public don’t get about humanitarian issues, what would you choose and why?”

 

Heba Aly

I think the wider public doesn't understand how much soul-searching and reckoning happens on a daily basis in the sector. Sometimes we don't give the sector enough credit. It asks itself a lot of questions and it works in really difficult environments and has to make really difficult choices. And I don't think the public really gets that.

 

Melissa Fundira

The next question comes from another former rethinking humanitarianism guests.

 

Degan Ali: “Hi, it's Degan Ali, Executive Director of Adeso. Hi Heba. I'd like to know, as someone who has witnessed the journey of the TNH from its IRIN days based in Nairobi to where it is now, and under your leadership, can you share one thing that has truly shocked you about how the aid system works? At the same time, can you separately share one thing that has made you the most optimistic or hopeful about the system? ”

 

Heba Aly 1:00:45

I think what shocked me most is the broken record-ness of it, that people are just hearing and saying the same things over and over, ‘There isn’t enough money’, and not thinking differently about the problem. I think what I'm most optimistic about is one thing we've talked about on this podcast, which is this notion of more activist aid that is starting to emerge. And I think that makes me optimistic because, by definition, it's going to be more local, I think it stops the sector from hiding behind the illusion that humanitarianism was ever apolitical. I think it gets at root causes and drivers of suffering a little bit more. So that's a really interesting space – non-neutral humanitarianism, humanitarian resistance, mutual aid – that we're starting to see more and more of.

 

Melissa Fundira 1:01:37

If you could report on one last story for The New Humanitarian, what would it be?

 

Heba Aly 1:01:43

Goodness, I feel like every day, I'm telling the team like, ‘Hey, you should look into this, he should look into that.’ And they're like, ‘Get away from us. Leave us alone.’ I'm fascinated by the inner workings of aid organisations and the dilemmas that they face, and the kind of stuff that happens behind the scenes that the public doesn't really get a view on. I mean, one example I just heard from someone is that Western governments have been putting pressure on the ICRC to soften its stance on what it is deeming violation by Israel of international humanitarian law in Gaza. So that kind of thing just makes me want to like, ‘Oh, I want to report that out!’ I almost came up with a book idea once about, it was called “UNTold” about the UN's failure in Syria, but that's gone into the cupboard

 

Melissa Fundira 

Is that part of your plans post-TNH?

 

Heba Aly

I don't, I don't think so. 

 

Melissa Fundira

You gotta do it just for the book title!

 

Heba Aly 

It's pretty good, no?

 

Melissa Fundira

Yeah, it's good. Aside from triggering article 109 of the UN Charter, if there was one idea from the Rethinking Humanitarianism episode that you could just hop on and take on as your next challenge, which one would it be?

 

Heba Aly 

Ooh, I love the notion of colonialism. I don't love… listeners, I did not say that!

 

Melissa Fundira

Freudian slip. 

 

Heba Aly

I love the notion of reparations for colonialism. I think that's super interesting, and something I'd be very keen to work on at one stage in my life, to create a kind of index – actually, we talked about, Uzo and I – create an index of what each country owes to its former colonies, and then start a conversation around that, and then try to develop a fund in which that money would go and be used for a different kind of development. So I think this podcast, honestly, people should go back and listen and pick up some of these ideas and run with them because it's full of really interesting, really smart people who have bold visions for the future that shouldn't be dismissed.

 

Melissa Fundira

Which reporting from The New Humanitarian, are you most proud of? The New Humanitarian at large?

 

Heba Aly

It's easy to think of the really big breakthrough stories, like exposing sexual exploitation at scale by the World Health Organization, among others, in the response to Ebola and DRC. I think that story was phenomenal, and it really changed things. It changed policies, it got people fired, it changed funding and staffing, and even at a community level helped women in DRC know that they have recourse when this kind of thing happens. But often, it's the silent stories that don't necessarily get a lot of attention, but that I think we all feel by doing that we are documenting history in a way that will be important in the years to come, in ways that we might not even know. I mean, one example is when Philip Kleinfeld, our Africa editor, got on the back of a donkey and travelled through really difficult terrain for two or three days to get to Jebel Marra to talk to people about their situation in a way that the international community hadn't cared about for years. And I think having people in areas like that that are completely cut off from the world know that somebody cares about their fate, is an important role for us to be playing.

 

Melissa Fundira

What are you most proud of personally?

 

Heba Aly

I am most proud of having steered a conversation in the aid sector around decolonisation in such a way that it has actually changed the narrative and is being taken seriously by people in positions of power. And we have seen a number of examples of people who, as a result of some of the conversations we've hosted, have directed their teams internally, changed their own policies internally, to try to move in a different direction. And I think that could have easily been a kind of tick-box conversation to have, and we stuck with it, and we hopefully made it meaningful for people and tried to – as I said before – kind of bring people into the tent rather than framing the conversation in a way that made it easy for people to just step out. So I'm really proud of what I think has been a long-lasting shift in the sector as a result of that.

 

Melissa Fundira

What excites you most about the future of TNH?

 

Heba Aly

To be seen, as a news organisation that deserves the trust of communities around the world. I think that's a really exciting place to be and we can do amazing things with that trust.

 

Melissa Fundira

What excites you most about your own future?

 

Heba Aly

I'm going to reform the UN. That's kind of cool!

 

Melissa Fundira 

That is pretty cool. I want to thank you for four seasons of this podcast of stewarding very complex, nuanced, respectful conversations about some of the biggest questions that face the sector, and that face the people who are affected by crisis. You will be very missed. This is hopefully not the last time we have you on as a guest by the way, but I will give you some time to reform the UN and, you know, execute reparations for all former colonies before we have you on.

 

Heba Aly

Yeah, next season should be fine.

 

_____

 

Melissa Fundira

Heba Ali is the former CEO of The New Humanitarian. She was recently succeeded by our new CEO, Ebele Okobi. You can read all about Ebele on our website, TheNewHumanitarian.org

 

As always, if you have thoughts about today’s episode, write to us or leave us a voice note at [email protected].

 

Thank you to Dustin Barter of ODI’s Humanitarian Policy Group for writing in to the podcast about our last episode, which was about why humanitarians should care about tax justice. Dustin wrote in to say that, while he agrees humanitarians should be thinking about improving global tax, “I do also wonder if rather than thinking about these grand global schemes, which are important, humanitarians could be focusing on domestic level tax collection and allocation, which is perhaps more immediately feasible.” Thank you for that food for thought. I do think it begs the question: is it really humanitarians’s role to involve themselves in tax collection, even if at this more feasible local level? I don’t know, but I would love to hear your thoughts, again that [email protected].

 

Last, today, we’ll leave you with a clip from Heba’s 2016 TEDx talk titled “Stop eating junk news”. You’ll hear Heba make a very compelling analogy between Michelin star food and solid, reliable journalism.

 

Heba?

 

Heba Aly

Yes?

 

Melissa Fundira

How do you feel about reading our extra one last time?

 

Heba Aly

Yeah! This podcast is a production of The New Humanitarian. This episode was hosted, produced and edited by Melissa Fundira. Original music by Whitney Patterson and sound engineering by Mark Nieto. I’m Heba Aly. Thank you for listening to Rethinking Humanitarianism.

 

Heba Aly, TEDxChamonix: “It's an overwhelming world out there I get that, okay, but simplistic narratives perpetuate in part because we allow them to, because we buy into them. We've gotten used to being entertained rather than informed. Now, a cat video here, a meme there, you know, we all need a dose of distraction from time to time – but we don't eat junk food every day. So my appeal to you is this: let's push back against the received wisdoms, the lazy assumptions, the cliches. Let's stop eating junk news. It's making us sick and miserable, and it's not doing much good for the world either. There is a better, healthier menu out there of rich, mouth-watering stuff. You know when you go to the restaurant and the chef has taken his time to carefully plate every course, and every bite is perfectly seasoned? That my friends is the tricky, messy, more elusive stuff of truth in all of its nuance and complexity. Despite the challenges that the media industry faces today – the fake news, the social media, digital transformation – there are some of us out there fighting the good fight. Solid reliable journalism does exist, you just have to seek it out and consume it, and where possible support the journalists producing it. Just as we have to pay more for nutritious food, we should be prepared to pay for quality news. And just as you check the label at the back for the calorie content, let's start asking ourselves whether the news we consume is good for our minds. So consider this an invitation to start looking after ourselves a little bit better, and in so doing, to help look after the world. Just like the junk food revolution, we’re likely to land on the right side of history.”