Rethinking Humanitarianism | Who wants to be the new UN refugee chief

SPEAKERS

Hourie Tafech, UNHCR candidates, Tammam Aloudat

 

Hourie Tafech  00:00

So it still remains a very opaque process, and this is why we're hoping, through our space dialogues that we had over the last two months to bring some transparency.

 

Tammam Aloudat  00:15

Welcome to Rethinking Humanitarianism, a show that explores the future of aid in a world of rising crises. I'm your host., Tammam Aloudat, CEO of The New Humanitarian. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, finishes his term at the end of the year. Who will replace him? These are the voices of a few people who want his job.

 

UNHCR candidates  00:47

Voice: To affirm the enduring relevance of UNHCR, we need to make it better managed, more efficient and more responsive and ultimately less needed. 

 

Voice: Having worked with many of these refugees on the ground that they are, very often those that can give us the best clues about the best solutions. 

 

Voice: Actually, I'm probably the only one politician in my country – very polarised one – who can have good relations, personal relationships with Prime Minister and President.

 

Voice: How many times have I faced solutions being devised about women empowerment without women being at the table? Many. How many times have I witnessed youth solutions without young people being around the table? But this is no different.

 

Tammam Aloudat  01:38

They are speaking at a rare event, a public candidates forum for a UN leadership position. Even more unusual, it was held by a refugee-led organisation. Like most top UN roles, picking the UN refugee chief is far from transparent. There is no vote. Instead, passport matters as much as policy. Most UN refugee chiefs have been European, and few have experienced life as a refugee. That's still the case for most of this year's candidates. So why does this pick matter? Joining us is Hourie Tafech, the director for refugee leadership and partnerships at Refugees International. She was one of the Co-organisers for the candidates forum. We'll talk about what's changing, what's missing, and what refugees want to see from the UN. If you have any questions or comments, stick around for the credits to find out how to reach us.

 

Tammam Aloudat  02:42

Today, we're going to talk about the new High Commissioner for Refugees, whose selection process is ongoing. But before we talk about that, tell us about your story, how your journey of displacement led you to refugee leadership and how you came to where you are today.

 

Hourie Tafech  03:01

I was born as a refugee – particularly Palestinian refugee in Lebanon for refugee parents. The Palestinian refugee crisis or displacement have been going for over 70 years now, so I come from the third generation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. For me, I sometimes try to understand how I ended up here. Because if you have to ask me this question, like 10 years ago or so, when I was still in the camp, I would say, I don't believe in the whole human rights regime or the United Nations, and I don't think it will get us anywhere. But I ended up now, when I look at myself 10 years later, working parallel to the system, or within the system, where I'm trying to change something from within the system, so people like me who are still in the camp [can] go back to believe that, actually maybe human rights applies to everyone, and protection actually might for all people. 

 

Tammam Aloudat  04:02

I do want to talk about this a little bit because we are at a key point, particularly when it comes to Palestinians who have been uprooted. And as you say, you're a third generation of that uprooting. And now there's plenty of discourse that talks about, “Oh, well, it's too long, you know, how could you belong to a place that you've never seen?” And I want to frame it just a little bit. I was born in Damascus, and a lot of my friends were born in a place called Muḵayyam – Muḵayyam al-Yarmūk, which means Yarmouk Camp, which was a refugee camp for Palestinian refugees from 1948 and then afterwards, from 1967. And I don't know a Palestinian who was born into displacement, who doesn't still belong to Palestine, as they always did. How is that the case? What makes it that strong?

 

Hourie Tafech  05:00

This is a really great question. I have heard that multiple times when I say I'm Palestinian, and then people ask me, oh, so where you were born, or start talking about cities in Palestine. I say, like, “Actually, no, I was born in Lebanon. And they were like, “but so you're Lebanese.” So this question always goes back to like, “so how could you still relate to Palestine, when you have never been there and you're the third generation out.” There is no simple answer to that and the dilemma of identity and where you belong and what's your connection to Palestine. But for me, as someone who was born and raised in a refugee camp, being reminded every day that I'm Palestinian refugee, and that's why I'm here, that's why I'm in the camp, that's why I cannot go back, that's why I cannot work, that's why I cannot go to access school, that's why I cannot travel. Our whole identity – since kids – have been around, why we cannot do what we want to do, or why we are excluded from certain forums and not having access to certain rights just because we are Palestinian refugees. So first, you get no chance to actually forget about your identity, because you are living all the circumstances that come from being a Palestinian refugee. The second, we were raised in a way to be proud about being Palestinian, even though we have not been there, but it is part of us, part of who we are, that we are Palestinians, even if we have not been there. Our parents have not been there, but we're still very much [raised] to believe that we will go back one day and this identity will keep it with us.

 

Tammam Aloudat  06:37

And to remind our listeners as well, this is not only a sentimental thing. In 1948 it was resolution 194 I believe, of the UN General Assembly that asserted the right of Palestinian refugees to return. And it has been reaffirmed in the General Assembly many times. So this is also a legal right that is established and continues to be. My question to you is, we're talking about the selection of the High Commissioner for Refugees. How does your position, your experience, your lived experience, shape your understanding of that role and who should fill it.

 

Hourie Tafech  07:46

We have to explain one thing before we go into details, because we have to make sure that the audience knows that Palestinian refugees are under UNRWA, which is the United Nation Relief and Work Agency, and that one is specific for Palestinian refugees. And for today's episode, we are talking about the UNHCR, which is the High Commissioner for Refugees. So I wanted to make this a bit clear. So when I'm talking about how the position of the next High Commissioner for UNHCR will have any impact, it will not be on Palestinian refugees in any way; we are talking about refugees worldwide. And at Refugees International, I am the director for refugee leadership and partnership, and in my current role, I try to work on advancing refugee leadership. What does that mean? On how we actually could get refugee expertise and perspective to some critical conversations, given that for tens of years now, the perspective of refugees will not be included in such a sensitive or critical conversation. And for the sake of doing that, we have been organising a dialogue. We called it a dialogue with the high commissioner candidates who are running for these positions. For the first time ever, actually, such dialogue happened, for the first time on the side of the General Assembly at UNGA, just in September, and we brought together at that time the five confirmed candidates for the positions, and the forum which brought them together was a refugee-led forum which made it even much more powerful. So yes, they are bringing together the candidates. This is great, but to bring them to a refugee-led forum where they were really actually engaging, knowing that they're going to engage directly with refugee experts and lead this dialogue from the refugee perspective, meant a lot for us. Because we usually don't know how the commissioner gets selected. There is not much information about the process. We just know that the [Secretary-General] will make the decision. There is a lot of conversation in the back doors, but we don't know how the candidate is being selected. We're trying to change this a little bit now by saying, “No”. The next candidate has to expect that they have to deal with a refugee-led agenda. They have to answer to refugee-led questions. And this is what has been our pathway for the last few months, where we brought together the candidates in New York, and then we brought together another five candidates in Geneva in October.

 

Tammam Aloudat  10:24

You have co-hosted this between Refugees International and R-Seat. Can you tell us about R-Seat as a refugee led organisation?

 

Hourie Tafech  10:35

So the dialogue was organised by R-Space, and R-Space is a refugee-led forum that is made from different partners. It is a refugee-led forum because all the leaders who are involved and the experts are from a refugee background. But we work in partnership with different academics, different non-refugee-led organisation, NGOs INGOs, as myself, I work for Refugees International. Refugees International is one of the partners. We are not a refugee-led organisation, but I come from a refugee background, and this is why I'm the one who leads the work from RI. And in addition to other partners, like one of the prominent partners, is Refugee Seat, which is R-Seat, this R-Space, started back in 2023 actually, it was not our first time to have a refugee led forum. We had the first one in December 2023 on the side of the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, when we felt at that time, we're having big forums. We are having some refugee participation, but still not up to the place where we feel the refugee perspective is being taken as a legitimate partner, as we were saying, as an agenda, someone who is setting the agenda, not just participating. And this is why we decided to have an R-Space where everything is led and implemented by refugee-led agenda. And that started in 2023 and this year we had the dialogues with the candidates, which was a great step moving forward. And in December, we will have another R-Space convening on the side of the GRF Progress Review in Geneva next month. The main idea behind R-Space is to actually have a forum where the agenda advocacy is being set and led by refugees in a way that is beyond tokenism and toward real collaboration.

 

Tammam Aloudat  12:28

So let's focus on this. There are a few things that I think are important. We have riled here on this show before about what is called the horse trading in the UN where there are agencies that are sort of given as a right to some states. You know, Britain assigned the head of OCHA, WFP and UNICEF are the share of the US, I think. But there are other agencies that do not have a nationality, sort of given. And UNHCR is one of them. But what you're saying is we don't know how the person is selected. It is a decision by the United Nations Secretary-General that is untransparent.

 

Hourie Tafech  13:13

Yes, it is completely opaque on how the decision is being made. We hear lots of rumours or how the decision is being made. We know that states could support some candidates who are running from that state, but the decision will go back to the Secretary-General. For sure, there would be an interview committee but no one knows who is on the interview committee, and then there will be voting from states. But it won't really much matter, because it's like the [Secretary-General] will put on a name and they will vote on it, but it will not be like multiple names, and they can choose it's just one name that he will come up with, to the General Assembly for the vote. So it still remains a very opaque process, and this is why we're hoping, through R-Space dialogues that we had over the last two months, to bring some transparency to the process so the refugee and other members of the community [can] actually hear and listen to what the candidates have to say and to answer to some of the very important question, especially on the question of localisation, the questions of working with refugee-led agenda.

 

Tammam Aloudat  14:25

There is something specific about this cycle. First, we know the candidates. To my count, there are nine candidates now in the running.

 

Hourie Tafech 

Twelve. 

 

Tammam Aloudat

Okay, so it's hard to keep count, but there's also something exceptional. Because again, correct me if I'm wrong, there hasn't been before a commissioner from the Global South.

 

Hourie Tafech  14:45

Never. We haven't had a commissioner from the Global South. And this time, we're having two candidates.

 

Tammam Aloudat  14:50

We have two candidates from the Global South. We have a candidate from Iraq, Barham Saleh, who used to be a President of Iraq, and. And candidates from Ghana, Matthew Crentsil, there used to be also Ahmet Yıldız from Türkiye. 

 

Hourie Tafech

Yeah, you're right. 

 

Tammam Aloudat 

So there are three, which is exceptional, given that the only non-European or non-Westerner before was Ogata from Japan, which hardly counts as Global South. So there is a possibility actually, of a candidate taking up this position who is not the run of the mill, usual, Western diplomat or candidate. The other thing is, you are allowing them to put out their agenda and talk about what they want to achieve in this position.

 

Hourie Tafech  15:42

ICVA allows them to answer some written questions and answer to some written questions that they put out to the public, but not like an actual dialogue and a conversation with the candidates.

 

Tammam Aloudat  15:54

And just before we go to the discussions, I want to bring to the attention that Filippo Grandi recently, in the executive committee of HCR was talking about the financial difficulties that UNHCR is going through. They are $700 million short from their budget. I mean, I have a question about who on earth would want this position under the circumstances. But before that, what did you hear from the candidates? Is there anything different?

 

Hourie Tafech  16:25

What we heard from the candidate ranged from a typical answer to our typical system is like, “We have a funding gap and we have to start thinking about other ways of raising funding.” And we have heard some points of view, which says maybe it is not a question of how much money we have to raise. It's a question of how we are spending this money, right? Because sometimes, no matter if you keep raising all the money and keep expanding and expanding, then you will always be in a critical position to raise more money or having a funding gap. So the answers from the candidates have ranged from someone saying, “Yeah, we need to diversify our funding. We need to not rely on a state or two or three”. While others were saying, “Actually, maybe we have to rethink, yes, we can diversify the funding, but maybe also we have to think how we were spending this money. Are we sticking to our mandate? Are we doing more? Are we going to go back to the basics or try to rethink how we actually use our money in the first place?” 

 

Tammam Aloudat 

What do you think about that? 

 

Hourie Tafech

From my own perspective, I think the current funding gap is not new. I know that now it's hitting a certain severity that has not been experienced in the same mode before. But the funding gap is not new, and the reduction in funding the humanitarian aid is also not new. And it goes back to… 2015 we were talking about the same thing, right? And we were talking about reducing the humanitarian aid, and we are running on a funding gap, and we need to do something new. We need to re-prioritise. So it's not new. Maybe the severity this time is even more than usual, but that would require us to think differently. We cannot keep saying we have to diversify funding, we have to bring more money. But we need to really think about how UNHCR is working at this point. We got to a point where UNHCR, right now, is operating like a big NGO, as I see it. From my perspective, they're trying to do everything from delivering aid, to protection, to development, sometimes – like everything. Is it really sustainable? Is it the way that UNHCR has expanded over the last 10 years or more, is sustainable at this point? Or we have beside thinking about the funding gap and beside thinking about, we need to actually fix this, we need to think about the UNHCR itself. Is it really sustainable to keep going this way, to keep operating as a big NGO and delivering humanitarian aid? Or we have to go back to actually ensuring that UNHCR does what [it] should be doing best at its mandate – the protection of the displaced people. And they have to work on getting more funding, but if we rethink the model, we might not end up actually needing that much money to do the work.

 

Tammam Aloudat  19:50

So the mandate of HCR comes from the Refugee Convention of 1951 which was adapted obviously after the Second World War. And a piece of interesting information is it was actually meant to apply to European refugees, not to everybody else. Originally, it only talked about refugees that were displaced before 1951 and there was a choice for states to not apply the convention for non-European refugees. So there is like a whiff of colonialism and European exceptionalism in the origin of it. That conditionality was removed in a protocol in 1967 if I'm not wrong, and then it starts applying. But there were a good 16 years where it wasn't meant for the rest of us, but that's the mandate. And can you talk a little bit about what you see as the core mandate by the convention, and what is it different from what you're talking about the delivery of aid itself?

 

Hourie Tafech  20:51

It is the prioritisation by UNHCR to make sure that the rights and safety of refugees is being protected. They have access to legal status and to all forms of the durable solution – from integrating in the community to being resettled or for safe return, returning back home.

 

Tammam Aloudat  21:14

And this is very important. I want to just give an example from my experience. Syria went through – where I come from –  went through 15 years of war, including several million refugees. And I've had friends and relatives and acquaintances, and they would spend in Azraq Camp, for example, in Jordan, years waiting for: there's an expression… Have you heard from the Commission? And this is the difference between being stuck in a camp and having near rights, as in to work, to move, to travel, so on. So it is a crucial role. It's the recognition of the person as a person, because otherwise they are stuck in a camp, cannot even leave the doors of the camp, in many occasions. And one of the delays is lack of resources, because the case workers of UNHCR took forever to be able to process the numbers of refugees. So this is the mandate that is core to the convention. But if HCR doesn't provide the humanitarian aid. But who would, then?

 

Hourie Tafech  22:24

Exactly. This is the dilemma we ended up with. But it doesn't mean if UNHCR does not deliver the aid, the aid will not be delivered. Aid should be delivered, but also should be delivered for a specific period of time. We cannot deliver aid and relief for 20, 30 years in camps. This should not be the situation. We are not going to question if aid should be delivered. We are going to question how long the aid would be delivered and by whom. We have some local partners and the host countries, some refugee-led organisations in some of those countries, some local organisation that could actually carry out this work, that could actually support the delivery of aid. And we cannot say that UNHCR does not use this host community or local organisation at all – they do. But not at a level where we can say, okay, UNHCR now could get out of here, because the local actors could continue the work. But also the work should not continue in infinite – like just keep delivering aid. There should be a transition period from when the aid will actually transition to more of development, to more of integration. Because to keep saying that this is temporary and they are going to go back – we're just lying to ourselves, to be honest, at this point. Because, as we're hoping, the host community or the host countries really want to see it temporary. Want to see people go back because they don't want refugees to stay. But if we have to look at numbers and statistics, it's rare that people are going back in a year or two or even 10, and we cannot be delivering aid for that much. I see it as permanent temporariness at this point.

 

Tammam Aloudat  24:09

People probably do not recognise how long refugee situations last. The camps in northern Kenya have been there for decades, the Somali refugee camps. DRC has people displaced for decades. Syria now we're 15 years beyond the beginning of the war, and yes, Palestinian refugees are under UNRWA mandate, but it still has been decades. Western Sahara refugees, the Rohingya refugees out of Myanmar in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. It's almost 10 years now since 2017 when the mass exodus and some have been there before – it is becoming normal. And in a way, this has been said and said again, we cannot have humanitarian solutions for political problems. There has to be a resolution for the conflict and return of people to their land…  It's almost allowing the continuation of this displacement by providing this minimal aid, no political rights, and a constant case of precarity for large numbers of people.  But I want to go to the local organisations you've said that HCR already deals with them. Are you here talking about the difference – and you know, I'm segueing – between local implementing partners, the dreaded expression in humanitarian aid, and actual refugee-led organisations and local led organisations with agency and choice that goes beyond just being instructed to do what they do because they are cheap labor.

 

Hourie Tafech  25:50

So yes, you hit the nail right on here. Yes, when we're talking about that, “UNHCR are already working with some local”, we say local implementing partners. We're not saying that the local partners are in the decision-making seats. We're not saying that they are the one who set the plan of what things should go. I don't also want to say it doesn't happen at all, but we can say, in general, the locals are implementing partners, not the ones who are leading the organisation or organising the plan to implementing the plan. And this is where, also, I will always support localisation. However, there's a very important thing that we don't want to confuse. We use this argument that we should support local actors because they're efficient. But that does not mean they can do miracles.  With very little money we're giving them to say we have heard the numbers and you are efficient, then we give you X amount of money and expect them to do miracles with it. And I felt with the funding cuts, it started to be the case more and expected from local organisation to do very much with very little, just because we're saying that local organisations are efficient, and this is not what we mean when we say local organisation are efficient. There is an efficiency argument there, for sure. But that does not mean they can do miracles with the cheap labor and expect them to deliver. And we cannot also expect them to deliver overnight, because we have not really set the basics for the local stakeholders to take on the humanitarian aid action. We cannot say, “Okay, we are out today and tomorrow, you will take the lead”, and then we set them up for failure. We have been saying localisation for good time now, good time and the Grand Bargain and all of that. But I don't think that the building up the basics have been in place in a way that we say, “Okay, now they are fully ready” and you can get out and the local organisation would be managing to deliver like perfectly, or even to expect them to work perfectly at certain circumstances. When talking about localisation, we have to keep in mind two things: Local actors cannot do miracles and do not expect to get out today and them taking the role tomorrow without actually working with them on some transitional period. 

 

Tammam Aloudat  28:11

And this is important because you mentioned the Grand Bargain. The Grand Bargain talked a lot about localisation, but at the end of the day, only a fraction of the money, and almost none of the authority went to local actors. I mean, we've rode the wave of localisation for a decade now without really localising. And I completely buy into what you're saying. You cannot expect localisation suddenly to become the solution for the budget cuts. And I appreciate that there is efficiency, but to my mind, there's something even more important, which is autonomy and agency for refugee-led organisations. And you have worked on this and know it very well: What would you expect to be different when a refugee-led organisation is actually the holder of the decisions, rather than the implementing partner.

 

Hourie Tafech  29:05

So yes, for sure, the efficiency argument is one thing out of multiple others, and it's not the most important thing. The most important thing that we try to make the case for when it comes to supporting RLOs or the local partners are: they are closer to the situation they have the perspective of lived experience that would actually differentiate them from anyone else, no matter the amount of empathy they have. You would not get to that level of knowing the community by being raised in the community and knowing the needs. You will not get to the level of compassion and empathy by not living the situation. It's so different. There is something about being part of the community, about experiencing the displacement, that helps you build certain compassion and empathy that drives you to do much, much more for much, much less. And I'm not saying this because I'm trying to convince to not pay local actors well, or to not to fund them, but from my own perspective, as someone from a refugee background, compared to others in the field, when I see how we work, I see how much I'm willing to go, how much I'm really willing to push, how much I'm really willing to, sometimes, like work 12 hours a day, just to make sure that I'm making sure that this refugee voice is in that room, because it matters, compared to someone who has no lived experience. And that would take us to the argument of being biased and to the argument of being objective. Maybe this is something else, but as we always get hit with this question: “but you won't be objective. You will be biased if you come from a refugee community. How could we make sure that the local actors are not being biased to their people and all of that?” But long story short, I say that in the local actors and the refugee-led organisation, there is enough skills and enough technical experience to lead, and we have to stop thinking that we don't have the required pool of skills within the locals to be able to do the work. There is enough, that's for sure, but we have to give them the chance. We have to think that being closer to the situation, living through the displacement, really builds something that is not comparable to any university degree or any experience you had as a senior-level leader in X humanitarian organisation in New York or Geneva or anywhere else. And the last thing is, yes, local actors could be more efficient.

 

Tammam Aloudat  31:49

You mentioned the lived experience and the understanding of what is it to be in a situation walking a mile in someone else's shoes is not only metaphorical, it is an actual thing. And I mean, somehow we have this cultural dissonance. I mean, as a cisgender heterosexual man, if I was to go and pretend to speak on behalf of all women, I would be rightly ridiculed and rejected. But for someone who's never been in the experience or positionality of a displaced person to go and speak on their behalf and be the person who represents them without necessarily asking many, it's still an accepted position. And I think it is problematic. And to take us back to the debates that you posted, have you heard from any of the candidates something significantly different?

 

Hourie Tafech  32:52

Yes, I'm not going to mention names, but there is one of the candidates in one of the one-on-one meetings with them – because we also had some one-on-one meetings, mentioned about how UNHCR is being perceived, maybe as like a Western organisation or a Western saviour tool to some of the host countries, or some Muslim countries, some Arab countries, where they still feel disconnected from it, right? They still have their own refugee system. They accept asylum applications. It's a totally different system in each country, because maybe they have not to this moment, felt their part of this because it still looks like it's something alien or coming from the West or the East. It resonated with me because I have been hearing it from some, let's say, Gulf humanitarian aid workers or humanitarian aid representatives, where they talk about, “okay, we're not going to look at the Gulf countries as ATM and let's say anymore.” Is it just like, are you coming for the Gulf, just for the money? … Not only about UNHCR, I'm talking in general when it comes to that philanthropic work. So this resonated with me that someone is actually thinking about how to look at the identity of UNHCR and how it could relate to the different countries, even in the hosts and the South, or let's say east, where maybe until now it’s not very clear to them on how can they play a part in this, other than paying money. But it is also important to say that it is not just about the identity of the candidate. For sure, we want to have the right candidate who's capable of handling such a position, bringing visionary leadership, able to do some restructuring and think about the power structure, not just about the identity.

 

Tammam Aloudat  34:56

So this is slightly cynical. Does it really matter who takes that position, or is the system going to be the system no matter who's in the seat?

 

Hourie Tafech  35:04

I mean, I think it matters. To what extent – this is another question, right? So would it make a difference who is in the seat on how it runs? Yes, but how powerful is the system to override anyone in that seat. I think that the system is pretty powerful… for years now, but I'm still hopeful that having different identities in the running seat would have an impact, even if the change won't happen over a year or two, or a night or two, but it will take a bit of time. But because the building of the system has taken 10s of years, so we cannot expect by changing one position for a few years, things will go differently. Right? The change would really take time and to be able to actually arrive to a place where things are being different. It is not only about the person, it's about the structural changes that would happen by having that person in that position, by getting a certain someone with a different identity, maybe they would be able to push to certain changes that, with time, could lead to a systematic change. But without systematic change, and trying to actually go into the structure and the power structure of the system, I don't think we would be able to get to much more high-level changes.

 

Tammam Aloudat  36:26

And here, you say, someone from a different identity, and I'm assuming we're talking here about, you know, one of the candidates who aren't the Western regular candidate. I mean, we don't have ways to judge from UNHCR, but we might have a couple of other examples, for example, the high commissioners for human rights. We've had Navi Pillay, who is from South Africa, and we've had Zeid bin Ra’ad, who's from Jordan, before, in that commission. And I believe that both of them have made a difference. They come from a different positionality. But it doesn't only take that, because that can turn into tokenism really fast. It takes an enormous amount of courage and thick skin to be able to oppose the systemic way of things happening – the powerful states that want to only protect the international law when it doesn't hurt their feelings or interests, the systematic dismantling of the norms. Let me ask you, are you optimistic after those conversations that you've hosted?

 

Hourie Tafech  37:37

I'm optimistic with cautious. I can say optimistic in a way that I see there's something different might come up with this from this new candidate race, but with cautious, because it is easy to end up in the same situation, or to keep the status quo. It's easy. There is a very big probability that we're going to keep the status quo. There is a very big probability that politics will take over  to whom should be [the high commissioner] in that because they come from a certain state, they could bring certain money, they could bring certain support of other states. So there is a very big chance that we will go that route, and there is a hope that it might go in another direction, and we might be able to end up with a bit of a different change in the status quo.

 

Tammam Aloudat  38:27

And it wouldn't be the biggest shock in the world if things went the same way. We have an example from just a few days ago, with Alexander De Croo being selected – a previous Belgian Prime Minister being selected to lead the United Nations Development Programme. And there was a discussion about, is it really the right selection when there were other candidates, including some from the Global South? I mean, is it really the ultimate selection to continue to have Europeans, Westerners in places that carry the decision about circumstances they have never lived through or understood, particularly when one comes from being a politician background, not even an expert. So this is still a possibility, but I'm going to get over my cynicism and share your cautious optimism for now. Thank you very much for being here today and for your time and work. Much appreciated. 

 

Hourie Tafech  39:35

Thank you, Tammam.

 

Tammam Aloudat  39:46

Thank you for listening to rethinking humanitarianism. Our show is produced, edited and mixed by Levi Sharpe. Editorial oversight provided by Irwin Loy, Eric Reidy, and Freddie Boswell. If you have any questions or comments, you can email us at [email protected]. Please rate and subscribe to our show wherever you get your podcasts. Also consider becoming a member of The New Humanitarian to help us continue reporting from the heart of crises. Go to www.thenewhumanitarian.org to find out more.