I have been a humanitarian worker all my career – from the first time I set foot in Iraq in 2003 until my final trip to South Darfur in Sudan last year. Over the past two decades, I have worked on most of the big crises, conflicts, and disease outbreaks, either on the ground or from the headquarters of international NGOs.
I have witnessed the courage and agency of both the people affected by crises and the humanitarian workers serving them on the front lines. But I have also witnessed – time after time – the erosion of the moral argument of Western liberalism for its humanitarian purpose.
I saw it in the abandonment of the people of Syria, my country of origin. I saw it in the use of force against migrants attempting to flee war to Europe. I have seen it in the media’s silence and distortion of crises from Haiti to Somalia, from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Myanmar and Sudan. And most brazenly of all, I saw it in the relinquishing of international law and justice during more than a year of Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza.
Having one’s life pursuit thrown into doubt leaves two options: cynicism or action.
Over time, I have had to try – like many humanitarians – to reconcile my own intentions of acting in solidarity and being a force for good with the apparent increase of co-option, politicisation, and powerlessness of humanitarian institutions.
Increasingly, I couldn’t help but worry that I was part of the problem rather than part of the solution. This came to a head for me when attempts to engage more critically and politically – even from a senior position in a humanitarian international NGO – hit a wall of internal politics and moral inertia. Gaza, a live-streamed genocide that was met with apparent indifference or complicity by humanitarian actors, was the last straw.
Having one’s life pursuit thrown into doubt leaves two options: cynicism or action. While the former may be tempting, the latter feels like a duty if one still has the fight.
What got us here
But how can we resist the growing co-option of humanitarianism, especially now, given the unchecked rise of far-right authoritarian politics in the West and the apparent collapse of the so-called rules-based international order?
Firstly, by acknowledging some hard truths.
Humanitarianism’s struggles didn’t begin when President Trump issued an executive order freezing foreign aid on 20 January.
The seeds of the current turmoil lie in its complex history and conflicted soul: from its colonial, gendered, and racialised origins to its continuing absorption by the Western liberal project; and from its inability to address the interconnected, systemic, and politically fuelled consequences of the climate catastrophe, profit extraction, and selective negligence.
The level of critical interrogation needed to develop potential solutions for the crisis of humanitarianism will not happen by reacting to the US aid freeze as if it is simply a bolt out of the blue in an otherwise well-functioning system. It has to start with contextualising and historicising what is happening.
The multilateral system that enabled the (imperfect) functioning of humanitarianism for decades is falling apart.
Recent trends have only exacerbated the inequities inherent in the system. Cuts in humanitarian budgets by donor governments have forced an artificial process of “prioritisation”. This is likely to continue in the coming years as more cash-strapped Western governments follow the US lead and signal further restrictions on foreign aid and development assistance.
But it’s not only funding: The multilateral system that enabled the (imperfect) functioning of humanitarianism for decades is falling apart. International humanitarian law has been sidelined as war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and DRC go unpunished. Humanitarian assistance is increasingly used as a geopolitical tool whereby aid is exchanged for political allegiance or trade benefits. And when a truly global crisis hit, in the form of COVID-19, it betrayed the hollow realities of Western solidarity promises.
Solutions aren’t going to be found by tinkering with the current humanitarian architecture.
For years, we have seen how this just doesn’t work: Countless reform efforts have fizzled after taking up valuable time and bandwidth, effectively preventing real and meaningful change. Well-intentioned efforts at localisation and to build local leadership have failed to make much of a dent in what remains a Eurocentric and inequitable humanitarian model.
Deep structural issues
It’s important not to oversimplify the problems facing humanitarianism or democracy by framing our political upheavals as down to either the masses or just a few powerful people.
We need to think in terms of institutions, rules, and norms if we are to understand what is happening and effect change.
The NGO boss with a million-dollar salary or the billionaire who doesn’t think people deserve to survive, get aid, or have protection are symptoms of deeper problems, not the causes.
And addressing the structural and institutional deficiencies of humanitarianism is not, despite all the hype, going to be achieved primarily through innovation and technology. This ends with a form of technocolonialism that only risks entrenching power imbalances.
It happens instead through a profound examination of the system as it stands – beginning with a robust critique of the shifting of humanitarian institutions from self-proclaimed rebels to bookkeepers.
Through a willingness to acknowledge the political, social, and economic disparities underpinning these structural flaws in the system, we can begin to deal with the symptoms while forging a new and more equitable kind of humanitarianism.
A distinction has to be made here between humanitarianism as conducted by the humanitarian workers (local or international) who provide aid to people in need, and humanitarianism as a set of institutions.
The latter are situated within – and benefit from – the current status quo and power imbalances and, in the process, can amplify the structural violence that is at the root of humanitarianism’s decay.
Why reform isn’t enough
So the question I am posing is this: Does humanitarianism need remaking rather than reform – a radical shifting of the power structures and political economy of the whole system rather than just fiddling around the edges?
Humanitarian choices aren’t being guided by the needs of people affected by crises but by what will resonate better with donors and Western audiences – by what will be covered more by the media and bring in more funding.
Despite what we’re told, today’s humanitarianism doesn’t seem primarily concerned with developing protection, services, and agency for people affected by crises. Co-opted as it is by a narrow focus and politicised funding, it seems more inclined to produce narratives of absolution for its sponsors in exchange for funding for its expansive infrastructure and privileged position – often at the cost of survival and dignified futures for people it serves.
Humanitarian choices aren’t being guided by the needs of people affected by crises but by what will resonate better with donors and Western audiences – by what will be covered more by the media and bring in more funding.
What is remaking humanitarianism then, if it is not to end up as another failed reform led by the same people who rendered the system ineffective and complicit in the first place?
How can remaking humanitarianism be a solidarity project – one that does not tokenise people and organisations from the majority world through ineffective localisation rhetoric?
How can it be a political project – one that recognises that people do not fall into humanitarian crises by accident, that their vulnerabilities have been forced upon them by centuries of capitalism and colonialism?
And how can it be more radical – a departure from the paternalism and corporate mentality that pervades the humanitarian sector in the name of efficiency?
Should it also be more activist – operating with the understanding that crises are part of the broader structural violence (along with racism, sexism, climate inaction, and political and economic oppression) afflicting our societies – hence acting in concert with those resisting those other overlapping forms of systemic inequality?
The aid freeze by the Trump administration is neither the beginning nor the end. But it has broken more than can be fixed by just restoring funding.
The idea that states can be benevolent humanitarian donors at the same time as they neglect international norms, support conflict, destroy the environment, and prioritise economic growth above people’s lives has now been exposed beyond repair.
The choices humanitarians and their institutions now have to make go way beyond just how to balance their budgets without US funding. Let’s start shifting the conversation.
