Opinion | The New Humanitarian

- Opinion
- Solutions and Innovations
- 3 November 2015
A desert called reform

'Inspired' by our recent interview with new UN humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien, IRIN columnist Paul Currion says he has lost faith in the World Humanitarian Summit as he argues the powers-that-be want to preserve the status quo, not fix the crisis in the sector.
- Opinion
- Migration
- 21 October 2015
Editor's take: The limits of coexistence

UN chief Ban Ki-moon is in town, huddling with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to try to prevent the situation from (his words) “spinning out of...
- Opinion
- Migration
- 19 October 2015
The EU’s dirty deal

Rebecca Bryant, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, warns that the EU’s deal with Turkey could have dangerous and far-reaching consequences for the region
- Opinion
- Aid and Policy
- 24 September 2015
The right way to reinvent the wheel?

After Julian Pöschl saw television coverage of hundreds of migrants and refugees arriving at Vienna's main train station, the Hauptbahnhof, he decided to take some...
- Opinion
- Aid and Policy
- 2 September 2015
Europe doesn't have a migrant crisis

Imagine Syria didn't exist - that the war never happened. Suddenly Europe’s migration crisis doesn't look so bad. The two EU countries that receive the...
- Opinion
- Solutions and Innovations
- 26 August 2015
Eyes Wide Shut: The biometrics challenge

Biometric registration is driven by the interests of national governments, technology companies and aid agencies – in that order.
- Opinion
- Aid and Policy
- 19 August 2015
Whatever happened to those heroes?

The original plan for this column was a Buzzfeed-style list of “Ten facts that you don’t know about World Humanitarian Day”. Unfortunately I couldn’t find...
- Opinion
- Solutions and Innovations
- 5 August 2015
Editor's take: What hope for reform?

On the northern tip of Sri Lanka, amid the limestone and palmyra groves of Jaffna, lie the graves of New England missionaries – graduates of...
- Opinion
- Aid and Policy
- 13 July 2015
Memento Mori

It is easy to laugh at aid workers, but every year, hundreds are killed, kidnapped or injured doing their jobs. We need to do more to honour them.
- Opinion
- Migration
- 15 June 2015
Refugee or migrant? Why labels matter

Refugees and migrants have been making the headlines like never before in recent months. With the start of Refugee Week today, culminating in World Refugee...
- Opinion
- Conflict
- 25 May 2015
Shelter crisis needs more than flatpacks

Aid workers get the same spam email as everybody else – apparently I have a budding online relationship with the daughter-in-law of deposed Liberian warlord...
- Opinion
- Aid and Policy
- 15 April 2015
Why are humanitarians so WEIRD?

I'm WEIRD. I'm not sure whether I became an aid worker because I'm weird, but I was definitely a WEIRD aid worker. I realised this...

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