Rethinking Humanitarianism | Should humanitarianism return to its activist roots?

[10:12] – Activism vs. advocacy 

[15:15] – Leaving the UN to join the Gaza flotilla

[28:43] – Why the system won’t change 

[35:40] – Is it humanitarianism or a protest?

[51:30] – Solidarity and the need to redistribute sacrifice

[1:01:30] – Is this the end of humanitarianism, or the beginning of a new one? 

Chloé Fiona Ludden 

When we think about returning to our activist roots, it's assumed that it is the humanitarian organisations and humanitarianism that should define its own political role, but again it's centered upon us. So, for me, the real question is: Do our humanitarian organisations and program expand or constrain the political agency of the people that we serve, and seeing them not as beneficiaries, vulnerable or marginalised populations, but really as citizens, as communities, and as decision-makers.

 

Tammam Aloudat 

Welcome to this special edition of the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast in collaboration with Start Network. In this series, we explore what really drives change in the humanitarian system. 

 

Christina Bennett 

And what it tells us about future efforts to transform it for the better. In this episode, we ask: Wat if humanitarianism returned to its activist roots? 

 

Tammam Aloudat 

From The New Humanitarian, I'm Tammam Aloudat.

 

Christina Bennett 

And from Start Network, I'm Christina Bennett. 

 

Tammam Aloudat 

So, Christina, I'm particularly excited about this episode. When we talk about change and reform in the humanitarian system, we talk about change and reform of the existing system in ways that replicates it in its current form, and I think we're trying to do something different this episode. 

 

Christina Bennett 

Yeah, I think we're going to hear some really interesting and provocative ideas from these two guests that we've got in front of us. They have very, very strong views of what humanitarianism should be, like reconnecting with its political and socialist roots, talking about, you know, activism, old school activism as opposed to what we do now, which is advocacy and what the difference is between those two things.

 

Tammam Aloudat 

Yes, and this is interesting because it's an entirely different thing. We don't really do that anymore. And we'll hear from them, you know, when you talk about roots, I'm still struggling to figure whether a serious activist trend in humanitarianism would be a return to the roots or a divergence from the roots, because we do have different roots. I mean, from the Red Cross having been actually started by a conservative religious businessman, and we will talk about Save the Children started entirely differently. So, you know, what roots, and what's going back, and what's going forward would be interesting to see in this episode. 

 

Christina Bennett 

Yeah, I think there is this thing called, sort of, this myth of, this romanticising of the early days of humanitarian action as being, you know, very grassroots, very activist driven. But I think you'll hear, as our guests point out, that's not the case with all roots of humanitarian action. And so you're right to ask: Is this a continuation? Is this a divergence? Is this a return? Is this a back to basics? Or is this setting ourselves up for something completely different? 

 

Tammam Aloudat  

So I was reading a booklet released in 1974 by Bossier, I think, about the biography of Henri Dunant, the creator, the, you know, first person to have created the International Committee of the Red Cross. And yes, he was actively, like, going and talking to people, and politically engaged, and so on. But his audience was largely kings, and queens, and princes, and so on. I mean, there is an activist root, but we'll also discover that activism doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. 

 

Christina Bennett 

Yeah, and I think one of our guests, Philip, will point out the the fear that sits in many humanitarian organisations about being political, about re-politicising humanitarian action, really framing it as, you know, really not wanting to piss off the the Western powers or not wanting to anger the Western powers that are the patrons of our very sector. And it'll be interesting to hear what Henri Dunant would have thought about that. 

 

Tammam Aloudat 

Last year. I joined part of the Gaza flotilla, and that's where I met Chloé, our other guest, for the first time. And it's a humanitarian effort that comes with an entirely different narrative and a different purpose. And I mean, the humanitarian sector pretended that the flotilla and the attempt to break the siege on Gaza didn't exist, and they didn't engage with it. But what if that is a form of humanitarianism that is as legitimate as the sort of acknowledged one that we see everywhere? What if that is actually what is going to take over, or at least in part be a parallel system? Those are the questions that I don't think we can afford to not have at least on the table if we're seriously, in this series, asking about how change really happens. 

 

Christina Bennett 

And one thing that was really interesting about Chloé, I thought, was that she came from the formal humanitarian system. She came from within the UN, and what she found within the UN was, you know, something very different than what she expected in terms of the values and the principles that she thought would be alive and well within the UN that perhaps weren't. But where she did find it was joining you on that flotilla, and you know, in a gesture or in a place where many thought that, you know, because aid wasn't actually delivered, because it was more of a political statement than anything else, that it was less humanitarian than active, sort of, service delivery. But what she found there was the principles of humanitarianism, the foundations of what it meant to be a humanitarian were much more prevalent, or were much more active and alive in a set of actions that were discredited by humanitarian actors at the time. 

 

Tammam Aloudat 

I'll tell you one thing: On that flotilla, on that boat, the sense I got, the sort of sense of excitement, engagement, discussion I got is one I remember from when I was a volunteer in the Syrian Red Crescent more than 25 years ago. If we qualify sentiments as a legitimate way of defining humanitarianism, that sentiment of excitement and commitment I haven't felt in a long time being, you know, quote-unquote, a professional humanitarian. So, I think our audience will enjoy listening to our two guests today. Our first guest is Philip Proudfoot, and he is a research fellow at the Institute for Development Studies and the co-founder of the Accountability Archive, a crowdsourced record of statements that justify, deny, or incite violations of international humanitarian law. Philip is also writing a book that argues for a more activist-oriented humanitarianism. He joined us from Brighton. And Chloé Fiona Ludden is a scientist who resigned from her United Nations job to join the Global Sumud Flotilla where she has served as an international coordinator for the last two missions. Chloé joined us from near Barcelona. 

 

Christina Bennett  

Philip, can we just start with you? Across your work, you've argued that humanitarianism should return to its activist roots. Take us back, what are those activist roots exactly?

 

Philip Proudfoot  

Okay [LAUGHS]. How far back? What I find interesting about the question is what we consider and demark as activism. So I'll often argue with people when I'm trying to make this point that even the, you know, the ancestors of the Global North-led humanitarian system were to some extent activists. So Henri Dunant was an activist. His memoirs of Solferino [A Memory of Solferino] was an activist pamphlet in the sense that it was an attempt to change the minds of his audience, that enemy soldiers suffering and dying on a battlefield deserve to be assisted and protected. And then interestingly, in Hugo Slim’s Solferino 21, he makes the point that the individuals that Dunant encountered on the battlefield, the local individuals who are coming out to assist the injured soldiers, were kind of, you know, local activist first responders. So we can go right back to, you know, even the highest sort of ancestors within the Global North-led humanitarian system, who are often perceived, you know, to be the founders of the humanitarian values, in particular neutrality, and actually argue that there was an activist impulse there. As we move through time, we can see different moments, more like burstings of activism, and then followed by a kind of institutionalisation. So, you know, the other classic example is Save the Children, and Save the Children was founded, one of its first initial actions was to break the Allied siege of Germany by sending rubber milk bottle tops to breastfeeding women who were, didn't have access to them in Allied siege Germany. And that was done explicitly to draw attention to the siege of Germany and its suffering on the population, and it was a distinctly political act, and it reads to me as an activist gesture, and of course, you know, similar to other siege breaking that I'm sure we're going to talk about on this episode.

 

Christina Bennett  

Thank you for taking us back. And then from what you're saying, it doesn't sound like there's a single point in time where humanitarianism as activism shifted, but you have alluded to some spikes and some troughs in that shift, and gave us, you've given us an example. Why do you think humanitarianism departed from its activist roots? Even if you can't pinpoint a moment, can you pinpoint something that drove that? And maybe address the difference that you see between what you're calling activism, and what today we might call advocacy.

 

Philip Proudfoot  

That's excellent, because this is another one of my book [inaudible]. Okay, so activism and advocacy are not the same thing. The fundamental difference I see between the two is that advocacy begins from the point where we believe that the person we're speaking to agrees with us on certain core principles, and what we're advocating for is particular aspects of our mission. So we're advocating for a better response to cholera here, or a little bit more aid to this particular crisis, but we all basically agree, you know, that people shouldn't suffer in a crisis and that we ought to assist them. So we're advocating to them, because they're someone who can be listened to. Activism, by contrast, is what we actually see in that beginning story of Save the Children, which is an attempt to build a public that supports that mission, not to advocate to a public that already agreed. So famously, when Eglantyne Jebb held a public meeting in London, when she stepped out, they were pelted with rotten fruit and vegetables, because it was seen to be, you know, assisting the enemy. So they were attempting to try and change and build a population, and build a public that supports the mission. And that's what I think has been lost, and why the humanitarian system in its Global North forms is struggling to respond to the current moment of crisis is that we have this advocacy mindset. So we think that “Okay, I'm going to go and speak to this particular donor, and I'm going to convince them that actually they really should care about us, because we're angels doing God's work,” right? But instead, that doesn't– it's less effective when you have a rise of, kind of, authoritarian right-wing populists who are, you know, very willing to start cutting down the aid budget. Instead, we need to think past or through governments and think about publics, and this is, this is my real argument on the difference between advocacy and activism, is we have to try and build, we have to increase the level of the political consequences of defunding aid, which means we have to convince a population that aid and assistance and assisting people in need is a good thing again, right. And then people will feel when you say that, “Oh my god, this is impossible. The population don't care about that anymore.” That's not true, because humanitarians just don't know where to look for that population, because that population was marching in hundreds and hundreds of thousands in London, week in, week out, demanding an end to the genocide. There is a huge population that cares. They just don't look like they used to look for those populations. It's not, you know, middle-class women in the home counties sending 50 pence into a donation appeal in the Daily Mail anymore. It's people who are, have watched all of the promises of the current political system be denied to them, and then watched a livestreamed genocide and taken action, and that that public would support the print some of the, principles of humanitarian action. 

 

Tammam Aloudat  

Let me jump in here, because I think there is a bit of disambiguation to be done in the beginning. Because in a sense we assume that activism is a good thing, and I want to remember that there are fascist activists, there are right-wing activists, there are… so activism is not necessarily, you know, acting towards something good. So in a sense, humanitarianism assumes something good in the intention. Activism doesn't. And the other thing is, I mean, I just want to dispute a little bit – yes, Dunant was an activist, although arguably he was, in your definition, he was an advocacy person, because he didn't really challenge the power structures. Most of the advocacy he did, he did with kings, and princes, and queens, and he didn't challenge the legitimacy of war. He didn't challenge the legitimacy of the sovereign waging war. He just said, you know, don't let the people die unnecessarily. When you talk about activism and the need to return to… many established humanitarians will tell you, “Oh, well, that's we're doing exactly what was done in the beginning. What do you want, what different do you want?” And the other thing is, I mean, I've worked 20-something years in the humanitarian system, and whenever I cross the sort of threshold of accepted advocacy, I would be told “We are a humanitarian, not a human rights organisation. We are a humanitarian, not an activist organisation. You want to do activism? Go and do activism.” And I think this is where Chloé comes in, because you probably hit that exact wall and went from being in the system to deciding to be outside.

 

Christina Bennett

Chloé, you have moved recently from being in a position of, where you were part of the system – you worked for the United Nations, for example, you engaged with the power structures that be within the United Nations, which are nation states and everything that goes around it – but you resigned. What led you to resign from the United Nations?

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden  

I simply resigned after trying to bring in the United Nations and taking a position in helping, as observers, for example, on the ship, or in supporting and taking an active stance to support the movements that have been trying for more than 20 years to break the siege on the Palestinian citizens. And of course, I was told at the highest level that this would go against their intergovernmental tradition and system. But I think it's interesting when we think about activism, it's usually something that is depicted at the fringes, when for me, the flotilla is really putting in practice the legal obligations that rely upon states. Everything is actually enacting international law, international humanitarian law. So for me, the dichotomy was so huge that I simply could not remain in a system that was not able to have more reflexivity. I was reading the report you made, Christina, 10 years ago on the need to change. You know, the humanitarian system has become incredibly good at criticising itself in an almost nombril, navel-gazing way. We know about the donor dependency, the legitimacy crisis – there is a legitimacy crisis every decade – and the localisation failures, the accountability gaps, the power asymmetries. So we all know what the problems are, but despite understanding the problem really deeply, this has not, and never really produced deep transformation, because a real obstacle is not new reports, new assessment needs that rely on the paradigm that bringing evidence and good reports into the hands of decision-makers will enact change. I think that is the failure that we tend to… whether it was in the IPCC reports or in the UN, I still find this position that evidence and knowledge is the obstacle when it really is institutional change. For me, the question was, Who am I becoming? Because the institutions shape what we do, but also who we are. So, neutrality, professionalism, restraint, and constraint – all of these are important values. But if they are not associated with solidarity, democratic responsibility, and courage, they simply help institutions reproduce themselves.

 

Christina Bennett  

So, can I go back to your first point, Chloé, around, you know, you were in an institution and possibly even joined the United Nations to be able to uphold the laws of war, to be able to uphold humanitarian principles, international humanitarian and human rights laws, feeling that it was the institution that was going to help you do that. But in order for you to feel that you could do that, you had to leave. You had to leave the very institution that's supposed to be the custodian, or one of the custodians, of all of these rules. Do you, are you satisfied now that you are an activist on behalf of that normative system, or the principles behind it? And do you feel, in being outside of that system now, you are more effective as a humanitarian compared to when you worked within those institutions.

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden  

I think the ultimate purpose of international law is not only to protect people, but really to preserve and expand the ability to define their own futures. And that is a part that is fundamental to me that is not considered enough in the way we evaluate programs, in the way we think about programs, and in the way– you know, for the 21st century created our institutions to alleviate emergencies, we send the ambulance, and we keep sending the same ambulance. But now that climate, multiple genocide, war, democratic erosion, and economic instability is just creating a world of continuous crisis, we keep sending this ambulance and expecting it to fix the road, also. There is more and more expectations on the humanitarian sector. We want it to decolonise aid, to address climate collapse, to change the governance, to reconstruct, but at no point is that the right political space, in my view. I think the humanitarian system is one actor within a much wider ecosystem of solidarity with municipalities, universities, research centers, union workers, activists. And this ability to think of ourselves as an ecosystem is what we truly need in the 21st century to move from post crisis management and continuous crisis management – where the right, and the dignity, and the agency of the communities that we serve are not even perceived as the most important – towards a framework where we prioritise this. Because you know, I was reading your question, and it's very interesting, because when we think about returning to our activist roots, it's assumed that it is the humanitarian organisations and humanitarianism that should define its own political role, but again, it's centered upon us. So, for me, the real question is: Do our humanitarian organisations and programmes expand or constrain the political agency of the people that we serve, and seeing them not as beneficiaries, vulnerable or marginalised populations, but really as citizens, as communities, and as decision-makers. And it doesn't mean that I will never come back to the UN, maybe a UN one day will accept me back. But in the way I am now and perceiving this, I'm trying to build the ecosystems and this architecture of solidarity that goes back to what Philip was saying on building solidarity that goes beyond nation to nation states relationships, but really among people.

 

Tammam Aloudat  

Chloé, I think your points about agency and solidarity are important. And I think in reality, Gaza has showed a rift between our conception as the humanitarian system of, you know, survival, saving lives, the preserving dignity – which is in many slogans – but also the agency. What do people actually want in a highly politically charged situation where aid is being withheld, and used as, you know, weaponised to an extent that hasn't been? I mean, aid has always been weaponised, but it hasn't been this blunt and supported by most of the donor liberal countries, at least not this clearly. You made a choice to leave, and I mean, we have to understand that this is a choice that affects employability, it affects livelihood, it affects a lot of aspects of life. This is not an easy one. But when you reach that stage, my question is: Did you think that the UN, or the multilateral system, or so on, is failing what it was supposed to do, or did you realise it's doing exactly what it was supposed to do? And I think it makes a difference when we talk about change: Are we changing it back or are we changing it away? 

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden  

It's a brilliant question, and indeed, I decided to leave, but it's not a universal prescription. You know, we all, any movement need people within, outside, between the spaces. Some protect, some organise, some protest. So, for me, it was simply that for my belief in international law required a different posture and something different from me. But, of course, it's not about “Everyone should leave the institutions and let's get, let's avoid the elephant in the room.” It's incredibly difficult to change things from within, and I feel that most people, especially in the [UN] Secretariat, are actually in the posture of “We will do best with what we have.” It's not even seeking to improve, or transform, or radically change anything anymore and it’s… And that is what is shown in the UN80 reform agenda. It's about “sauvez les meubles”. We were keeping the furniture in, and the light on. Sometimes the elevator was stopped to make so-called energy savings. It was really ridiculous to have an institution that has so much potential and incredible reach around the world prioritise senior leadership instead of young people and country peoples. Posts were cut in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, when that is where we would have needed most support, especially since local staff were asking for international presence and support. So I simply had the impression that under the current leadership and mindset, because we were helping the resident coordinator system evolve and change and adapt to its ecosystem, and ask different questions about this role and posture in terms of financing, reaching civil society, but it was still organised in a very mechanistic neoliberal positioning, where it's about efficiencies and representation. And to be very honest, it was very obscene sometimes, and the theatrics of the Secretary General… we don't have time for this, and I think my generation is very much aware of it. So I became quite impatient. I really believed in the system, and I gave my role to improve it; to train resident coordinators on climate change pollution, biodiversity, on integrated programming and policy, but as you said, I think the system is a machine to reproduce itself, and unless we had institutional courage and the ability for whistleblowers to be organised for staff– you know, UN staff or humanitarian staff in general go from precarious contract to another. There's no union of humanitarian workers where it would be a safe space to construct criticism and construct positions and push back and protect whistleblowers. So I think it's quite ironic to want to enact change from an industry that itself is very precarious and not fit for human flourishing.

 

[MUSIC BREAK]

 

Christina Bennett  

This series is really about change in the humanitarian system. As Chloé has said, we have rehearsed the problems of the sector for decades and yet failed to act on them. And Chloé, I think, has given us some, some interesting hypotheses for why that's happened. One is this idea that we talk about solidarity, but solidarity assumes a degree of politicisation, that solidarity is about coming together with communities to understand their injustice, and to do something about it, not merely to manage or alleviate their suffering. And that's perhaps one hurdle that the system might need to overcome. The second thing Chloé's talked about, which I think is also important – which I know, Philip, you're also interested in these topics – is the institutional incentives behind the way that the system has evolved: professionalised, self-sustaining, self-preserving, mechanised, keeping the lights on, etc. Do you agree with what Chloé said, and if so, is it possible for this system to change without driving activism from within it?

 

Philip Proudfoot  

So I think it's helpful to start, yeah, with a diagnosis of why the humanitarian system looks the way it does today, like what shifts happened. And Chloé also used the word neoliberalisation, so that is, of course, neoliberalism is an important ideological and economic background force that shaped the current humanitarian system. So [are] things like the New Public Management School, logframes, metrics, upward accountability to donors. You know, every single time we see attempts at change, even if starting on small pilots, it somehow ends up folding back into this machine, and the machine functions in a particular way. So one of the, one of my hypotheses as to why the machine keeps reproducing itself actually starts, because I'm an academic as well, I like to start by looking at what are the research methods that humanitarians use, right, and how do those methods then lead up to informing a particular shape of a humanitarian response. So while you might see some examples of some layers of community engagement to some degree, largely the system is still doing quantitative data gathering, right. And then largely even more people will disagree and say “No, we're doing this, we're doing that.” Really, what's happening is they're extracting numbers, right. And then they take those numbers into whichever particular capital city, and they argue about what those numbers need, and then they allocate funding on the basis of those numbers. And everyone wants to declare an emergency as a particular sort of emergency. So you know, WFP would want it to be a food emergency, right. You know, WHO would like it to be a health emergency, because then that leads to funding, which then leads to self-sustaining. So we, if you try and change it from below, how we even engage with people who are affected by crisis has to shift, and it has to shift from this extractive thing to actually figuring out what people are doing, what they want, and then giving them what they want, which seems so obvious, but the system just struggles to deal with that.

 

Tammam Aloudat  

What is what they want is not what we want to give?

 

Philip Proudfoot  

What we give, yeah.

 

Tammam Aloudat  

Like, what if what they want is emancipation, political outcomes, you know, justice – stuff that we don't, we can't quantify and ask for donor money for?

 

Philip Proudfoot  

Most people want, you know, security, education, and jobs, right. But what they get is WASH kits, livelihood opportunities, and maybe an IDP or refugee camp, right. And partially that's an issue of like the funding system being short-termist. But then that then leads into the political economy aspect of why the system can't change, which is that we have to understand humanitarianism as a form of off-government funding. That's ultimately what it is. So it works in countries where we don't particularly like, the West doesn't particularly like or trust that government, right. So what they do instead is they fund it through the humanitarian system to try and reduce the total level of chaos, to try to reduce the flow of individuals out of that country towards Europe or where have you, and it's used as this mechanism, an off-government funding mechanism, and that's why we see protracted crises year on, year on, year on, because the system isn't designed to transition them out of protracted crisis. It's designed to keep them in a permanent state of instability. Because nobody wants to start funding, you know, the Houthis in Sana'a with serious, serious, you know, finance to start rebuilding the infrastructure. What they'll do is they'll fund the UN, right, because then they can say they're not funding this particular government. So this political economy aspect, and the ways in which the humanitarian system has been, has – the system, I should say, not the spirit of humanitarianism – has become part of the broader global imperial system. And my feeling of why we can't have change is that the problems are at a systemic level, how we understand what people want, and then at the international level, where the function of the system is actually not to give them what they want. The function of the system is to stabilise them in crisis.

 

Christina Bennett  

Is there hope for activism to change the way that humanitarian aid is done, or should it just simply sit alongside the system that you're talking about and act on its own.

 

Philip Proudfoot  

So when we're talking about all these definitions between activism and advocacy, it's also important to make distinctions between what we mean by an activist. So, you know, very crudely, we can say there are two types that engage in humanitarian type activity. One is what's sometimes called prefigurative politics, which means acting in the world now as you would like the world to be. So this is the kind of activism that I've written about in the context of the squats in Exarchia, where Greek anarchists were responding to refugees, not because they have international obligations according to the, you know, the international humanitarian system, but because they believe in the equal value of all human beings, that they don't believe borders should exist, that they have a political ideology. But in response to that, they're providing forms of assistance where there is no reason why they would, like, limit what their response to need is, because it's not determined by this big huge system, right, It's determined by the extent to which there's a volunteer there who knows about whatever particular thing or activity they might want to do, right. And this, I should say, you know, when we talk about this, people think, “Oh my god, but these are such small scale activities.” Actually, the vast majority of individuals cope in a crisis like this. You know, most people in a crisis are not waiting for the UN convoy to turn up. What they're doing is they're organising spontaneously within the community to scope as best they can. That is how the vast majority of people in crises meet their needs. A different humanitarian system would find out what that is, what is going on on that level, and say, “How can we help?” not, “This is what you need.”

 

Tammam Aloudat  

So this is pretty interesting, because one of the counter arguments to the activist approach to humanitarianism is that if you play politics – and here I'm quoting what was told to me – if you play politics, you're going to, you know, not get anything politically, but also restrict the access and the ability of the system to help. First it assumes that the system actually reaches places. Between Gaza, Sudan, and DRC now and other places, we know how little penetration at this time of political impunity and rejection of efforts to help people, it's reduced significantly. I can remember when it was better. But at the same time, it assumes that other alternative ways aren't going to work, and I think particularly if we take the flotilla – because again I think this is a significant rift – in the mission before last and in the last mission, there were no humanitarian formal INGOs participating, except one Italian NGO in the mission before last, and almost zero acknowledgement, like it was not talked about, even. It was, you know, “Let's not mention it, it’ll go away,” all the way to saying, “Oh, they're going to deliver those few cans of powdered milk. Is that what humanitarianism has gone into?” There is an assumption that activism negates the lifesaving aspect of humanitarianism, that you are playing politics at the cost of lives that are to be saved. And there is a doubling down on the ‘lives saved’ argument. If you hear [UN relief chief] Tom Fletcher now, he take us to, you know, “Give me $23 billion and I will save 87 million lives.” It's portrayed as a cause and effect – only if the money was available, next year there will be 87 million people alive more than now, as if it's a button you press. And, you know, from Western media calling the flotilla the ‘Greta stunt’ to more apparently serious people saying, “Oh, they didn't even have supplies with them, they just wanted to be arrested.” Is this dichotomy real, Chloé?

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden

On Tom Fletcher, it made me think of Patch Adams, this doctor and movie that has this quote that I was rereading as I was preparing for this podcast that says that the purpose of a doctor and any human in general should not only be to delay death, the patient's death, but really to ameliorate and better the person's quality of life. And that is, I think, the paradigm in which we are now. We try to save lives, but we're not looking at how we improve the very conditions that make life possible in the first place.

 

Christina Bennett  

I wanted to talk a little bit about the flotilla – and Chloé, you were there – as an example of a very, very strong political statement, but that never arrived, never reached people in Gaza. And wanted to hear your take on whether or not that is humanitarianism in the way that we're discussing it now – it's solidarity with the political, with the plight and suffering and injustice of people – or is that just protest and does it fall short of our humanitarian, the benchmark that we've set ourselves for what is humanitarian aid?

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden  

I think the flotilla has – and Greta in general – is used to getting a lot of criticism because it's always easier to criticise; it gives you a position and it forces you to not look at your own biases and the way you do not interact with the world. So to be very frankly honest, we don't really take them at heart. It was indeed very interesting to see the very different landscape of responses from Amnesty International, MSF, Greenpeace, and Open Arms joining us was really heartwarming. And for us it was really never about only humanitarianism. I left on the Handala and resigned at the heightened point of the engineered famine that was plaguing the [Gaza] Strip in July last year, and we simply continued to organise flotillas because there was no ceasefire. So it's not about protesting, it's about reminding everyone that the propaganda machine, the media machine has to be broken through and will be broken through. That there is no ceasefire in Gaza, the famine continue in different ways, it is inflicted by the control of humanitarian aid. And the message of the flotilla was not only to break the siege, it's just a start. We need to alleviate the very conditions that make humanitarian aid dependency possible in the first place. Our goal was never to give a couple of cans of beans. It was really to put attention and force the world to reckon with the fact that this concentration camp is still open and they're not having allies this time to break the doors open, because the Palestinians are fighting the entire world and interests from so many different countries. So it was both; it was honoring our responsibilities under international law, the responsibility to protect the humanitarian law, and really using the media attention and the attention economy through social media to make sure that everyone knew that the atrocities are still continuing every single day.

 

Philip Proudfoot  

Can I respond to the playing politics point that Tamam raised as well? Because I find this very interesting, because of the extent to which there are sorts of so many contradictions that can be unraveled in just that one statement of ‘playing politics’. So you know, as most humanitarians know, that, you know, that there are many cases where you're trying to reach somewhere or deliver something, and an individual local member of staff is dispatched because they're seen to be somehow aligned or close to the particular political force that's in that area. This happens on a day-to-day basis, you know. They'll say, "Oh, this person is of this particular tribe or group, that means that they can go there," right? So, this is using a person's political identity in order to generate humanitarian access. This happens all the time. When we say playing politics, what we really mean is annoying wealthy Global North states. We're not supposed to play their politics, but humanitarians are playing politically in every long term protracted crisis all of the time in their day-to-day gives and takes that allow for continued, or perceived to allow, for continued humanitarian access. That's not to say that shouldn't happen, like, of course, that has to happen on a day-to-day basis where you do certain negotiations, certain things happen, you look the other way. This, of course, is part of humanitarian response. But what we shouldn't do is pretend it doesn't happen. So, for example, where we see this toxic part of pretending it doesn't happen was in the response to, you know, allegations that x amount of members of UNRWA are Hamas, right. Well, the response to that should have been that individuals working for the UN are allowed to be members of political parties in their own countries, right. It's not, you're not banned from having a membership of a political party in the particular country where you work, right? And Hamas is not recognised as a terrorist organisation by the Security Council. Yes, it is by America, and by Britain, and by others, but not by the Security Council. Instead the responses is sort of, you know, is responding not to what are the rules and regulations, but responding to the politics of the West.

 

Tammam Aloudat  

Which goes to who's who is the constituency of humanitarianism. 

 

Philip Proudfoot 

Exactly. 

 

Tammam Aloudat 

It explains a lot if you think, you know, we're talking to states, we're not talking to people. I just wanted to read a very short point to following Chloé from from an article we published in The New Humanitarian by Nour ElAssy, who's a Palestinian journalist and poet, and she says, “As my younger sister, who is still in Gaza, said: ‘We don’t expect the ships to arrive. We expect the ships to exist. Because their existence means the world has not yet completed its silence.’” And talking about agency and solidarity, I mean, we throw around solidarity a lot, in you know, everything's solidarity. And I revised my view of that when I read a definition of solidarity: standing with people on their own terms, as in for what they want. That might be political, and we can't really say that we're in solidarity if we only accept the, you know, cute and cuddly desire for food, and so on, and not the political ones. So there's a set of questions that goes beyond that that is to be answered.

 

Christina Bennett  

That's a great quote, Tammam, and you know, I think that moment when we all felt that the world was staying silent, and this quote from The New Humanitarian article, that you know, the role of the flotilla was at the very least to demonstrate that the world wasn't silent on this crisis, and that there was, there was solidarity and there was hope. But what next? What hope do we have for taking what hope that the flotilla generated, or that the mobilisation that that flotilla generated? What hope do we have that that will be taken to the next level, which is about having political conversations, delivering aid, making sure that the flow of aid happens because the politics are being settled someplace? What's our hope for that, if politics is a no-go area, or the humanitarian system is refusing to enter into a solidarity mindset, if you will?

 

Philip Proudfoot  

My concern on this relates to what Tammam was saying around this return to the ‘saving lives’ rhetoric, because of all of all the rhetorics you can have in the humanitarian system, that the ‘saving lives’ rhetoric is the most attempt to depoliticise humanitarian activity, right. It is, you know, it's the reduction of human beings to biological flesh entities that can be saved, depending, as Tamman was saying as well, whether the button is pressed or not. And even where we see, you know, the transition to slightly more political thinking, which would be in, you know, nexus-type programming where we're actually starting to think about building something – you know, moving from delivering a truck of water to building a water tower – that suddenly will become a more political discussion – who runs the water tower, here is the water tower built, etc.? We've retreated from that. My diagnosis of it is it's firstly as a response to try and create this technical, non-political, ‘everyone can love and support it’ humanitarian action. It's also a typical response that people have to a funding emergency, is they think “We need to go back to the core mission,” right? The core mission was saving lives, and people think if you can only go back to the core mission, everything will work. But the core mission wasn't working. It was demonstratively not working, because the number of people in crisis, by their own metrics, were increasing year on year on year. So I do think we're in a real bind when it comes to imagining a different sort of aid that is more comfortable with politics. But you know, another thought I always have is that, you know, I'm a socialist, right. So I'm interested in aid because I believe at its core, it is socialist, right. Because we meet people on the basis of their need and we support them on the basis of their needs. We have needs assessments, socialists say ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their need’. So there is, in its core and the core ideology, is still something progressive, but it's how do we peel it all back, and of course it is a struggle.

 

Christina Bennett  

For me, one of the other arguments that humanitarians use to hide behind, or one of the reasons humanitarians used to hide behind the ‘life saving’ rhetoric,’ this idea that they're there to do a job, and it's the back-to-basics, the core mission. But I, you know, having been in this sector for a long time, it's also about the fact that there's never enough money to do more. Humanitarians don't have the money, they don't have the capabilities, they don't have the political space or the timelines to do any more of that. And is the failure that you're talking about – and I don't want to get into like terminology here – but the failure is political failure, the failure is a failure of equality or inequality. And so, as someone who's worked in this, the hiding behind the ‘life saving’ rhetoric is as much about there's “There's there's only so much we can do, why lay it all at our feet?” as it is about, “Well, look, we don't have the mandates, or we don't have the political acumen, or the political space to do anything more.”

 

Philip Proudfoot  

I mean, I have to be careful, because I, you know, I'm an evaluator [LAUGHS] So I do a lot of evaluation, and a lot of the time where, you know, the argument that we have no resources so we have to do this really like basic thing, you know, like generate jobs for a certain amount of time, right, my argument is an evaluator is option often why, like, would it not have been better to do something else entirely than this distributive supply-driven modality, right? And then you get into the question of where's this push coming from? Is it from donors, is it from the system, is it from, is it from agencies like, where does this attitude come from? But I think that the hyper-prioritisation rhetoric and the hyper-prioritisation around funding leads to a supply-driven response, right. And I would argue it might not necessarily be the most efficient use of resources.

 

Tammam Aloudat  

If I was trying to critique this conversation, I would say that we might be mistaken to sort of trivialising the act of saving lives, which is in itself, a worthy goal, cause, and important to do. The argument is, to me, is not that there's something wrong with the saving lives. It's: is it actually happening? And as you say, you know, they numbers are increasing year on year, and we do like, like economic inflation, we, you know, hyper-prioritise, “Cut 200 million of your, you know, people in need, and then you have a less number, and then you can cover it, actually.” And the other one is: Are we not causing more harm in the immediate and future senses by acquiescing to the politics of our time in the name of neutrality and impartiality? And I think there's a significant historical component here. And I, since you've mentioned the socialist ideals, I just want to go back to your point in the beginning, where you talked about Save the Children. And there's a very fascinating story. It was a sort of a conflict between two sisters who created Save the Children, and [Dorothy] Buxton, who was a socialist and anarchist, lost the battle effectively to Eglantyne Jebb, who was a, you know, a reformist, and accepted the status quo, and that affected– Juliano Fiori and others wrote a book about it and a brilliant description of how that actually drove 100 years of the history and character of Save the Children. There's an argument for specialisation, and particularly I come from MSF, and the argument is our job is to save lives through medicine. My problem is, you could be a clinician trying to save lives in a clinic through medicine, but if people are prevented from reaching you, or if the system, you know, harms particular people, excludes them so there's no chance to actually do that, then what to do otherwise? How does it look like practically, a politically involved – yet still capable of saving lives – humanitarian system where, you know, the constituency is not Western states who change their character with every government? I mean, Sweden, and Norway ,and the UK, and … who used to be like the good guys aren't any, any– not at least not the same way it used to be described a while ago. What would you create if you had a blank sheet?

 

Philip Proudfoot  

[LAUGHS]. That's a very unfair question [LAUGHS]. But what I would create is a kind of trade union and left-wing political driven international that's role is to provide humanitarian assistance to people in crisis, but it does so not on the basis of logframes and theories of change, and dadadadada, but it does on the basis of international solidarity, mutual aid, on the basis of ‘No borders’ activism. It would be driven from an entirely different ideological position. And of course, this is not something that exists outside of actual history, right? Left-wing organisations have often engaged in forms of practical solidarity, but it's just not a significant amount as goes through the sort of liberal post-World War Two order. But you could imagine a world in which you have a kind of interconnected series of left-wing socialist parties engaging in forms of practical solidarity and support. And I would wager that would probably take a different form to the current aid modalities. It would probably be a lot more to do with giving people what they want, no matter what it is, you know, as long as within a certain political bounds. You know, you would not be supporting fascist organisations, but you would nonetheless be providing people with assistance that would look, I think, quite different. But also, it's important to return to my argument that I said earlier, that the kinds of prefigurative form of political activism, which is acting in the world how you would like it to be, is actually what happens already all of the time anyway. So, you know, the response to various forms of displacement is often people individually, spontaneously doing things together, and they do that on the basis of a vision of the world in which people have dignity and respect. The human default is actually, you know, to be mutual in our orientation. We often think the human is more likely to be violent or aggressive, but actually, most, you know, archeological anthropological evidence shows that we behave kindly with each other. We do a good job of not going around killing each other most of the time. So in crises, people are doing that anyway. 

 

Christina Bennett  

Chloé, I'd love to hear what you think about that question. What's the blueprint you would use, or what would you, if you'd a blank sheet of paper, how would you create a more activist, a more politicised, a more, a deeper humanitarianism than perhaps we have?

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden  

Thank you for this question, it's a beautiful one, and I think I would start with what we were discussing about solidarity. It's important to understand that solidarity requires sacrifice, and we live in a world of sacrifice. Some entire zones, countries, so-called developing countries are sacrificed for the benefit of so-called developed countries. Future generations are sacrificed for the benefit of the current ones. So I think my entire software would be, how do we redistribute sacrifice? And then it goes from working with the citizens in the donor states, because we, you're right, it is a state-to-state based model, but it is actually taxpayers' public money, which is again going leading us back to Palestine, because it shows us how undemocratic and how the democratisation of our countries is actually intertwined with our ownership over our military budget, our development budget, our humanitarian budget. So it means opening up to the lay person, to the citizens, the machinery of these evaluation feedback loops, where we open up very specific futures that are World Bank-financed, because they can be calculated and measured, which closes completely different alternative futures that are not even considered or evaluated. So for me, it goes into creating this ecosystem, this architecture of solidarity with diaspora, with municipalities, because they are at the front and will be increasingly, on the front lines of climate and war responses. Universities, social movements, trade unions, climate alliances, artists, researchers, and also the humanitarian and humanitarian organisations that has to understand itself as one actors, not the main channel of international solidarity, because then, of course, we will have power abuses. And I would like to introduce us to the idea of reconstruction. We were based on emergency response in the 20th century. I would love us to move in the 21st century, in a world of constant crisis, in a reconstruction mindset, and especially a just reconstruction mindset. Climate policy has a ‘just transition, which was organised to change the economies without reproducing the injustices. What if we evolved a similar concept towards a ‘just reconstruction’ that actually asks the right questions, which is: Who remains? Who owns the land? Which memories survive? What kind of political atmosphere and life is created? And that requires humanitarian workers to work with urbanists, with a whole different set of partners. You know, it's true that they, we keep saying there's not enough money, but there's not enough money to do more of the same, which is a very patronising way of keeping people in camps and giving them food without actually giving them the dignity of creating their own food or their own house. There is this framework that is created by the Gaza Union of Municipalities, the Gaza Phoenix framework, and it's actually rights-based. It's looking at reconstruction that would be just, democratic, and ecologically grounded. So it's not even about asking actors to be more political, it's about calling on the very legitimacy of the system to uphold law and rights.

 

Christina Bennett  

And Chloé, what would it take to get from where we are today to what you're describing?

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden  

Education. I think it's fundamental. Education for the citizens in, as we said, the donors’ countries, and understanding their interconnectedness of the system, for them to learn that actually solidarity is not charity, it's really fighting for your own rights. And a very different set of people working in our institutions. Unfortunately, most people come from the same universities. Wherever they are in the world, they come from the same social, professional, economic background. There's a crucial, crucial lack of diversity, in my opinion – although it is geographic diversity – [of] life experience diversity, and the people that make our decisions in the people that represent us. The system is [skewed] toward ego-based profiles and types of leadership that is very far away from the kind of leadership that some Secretary-General of the UN were calling for themselves, which is leadership as a way of creating the conditions for political communities to have agency. We're not introducing anything new. We are actually bringing history and what we have learned before us and actually implementing them, instead of continuing with this nightmarish world where we have sacrifice zones and people living in segregated camps waiting for their entire life for a solution. I think that is– to think that is the most efficient way is ludicrous. And I really believe that our children and the next generations will never look at how efficiently we manage crisis, but will judge us on whether we have had the courage to change the very conditions that create the humanitarian crisis.

 

Philip Proudfoot  

I agree totally with the point about education and publics, because when I'm asked, "When did you first become interested in Palestine?”, well I grew up in Northeast England, and there every year we have a celebration called the Durham Miners’ Gala, where all of the local trade union branches, since, you know, the Victorian period, march through Durham, carrying these big embroidered beautiful banners with pictures of Marx and Engels on, and scenes of the local community. But also there was always this beautiful banner called ‘Durham Miners’ Gala Palestine Solidarity’. And then as a little, like, eight-year-old, I looked at that, and that's when I first started learning and I asked, “What is that?” And that institution was an embedded institution in the working class communities of Northern England that sought to support and extend solidarity to Palestinians. And the same with different communities across the world, it has a strong internationalist dimension within it. And one of the other actors that I do think should be part of our conversations around the future of an international system is the trade union movement, which is largely neglected as a very important actor for securing rights and justice for people in various contexts, but often people shy away from it, and they say things like “They have no capacity, they're politically captured,” as if they're not working with institutions that have no capacity and are politically captured all the time.

 

Tammam Aloudat  

There was a movie by Ken Loach a couple of years ago called The Old Oak…

 

Philip Proudfoot  

Yeah, that's where I'm from [LAUGHS].

 

Tammam Aloudat  

I mean the ability of an alternative narrative to link a Syrian crisis and refugees to the historical working-class miners’ towns that have been abandoned through Thatcherism and so on, and creates a line that is not, to be honest, not as cheesy or as disinteresting as many like– I cried through the film, let's put it that way. What you two are describing is not the humanitarian system we have. It's, it's different, and it's a vision that reminds me of olden days of, of what you know, literature has been during the Spanish Civil War, and about solidarity with people against fascism. About the internationalist movements that were anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist. What Frantz Fanon wrote about, [who], being non-Algerian, was one of the most, you know, vocal voices about Algeria at the time. My question is: Why reform the current system when you're talking about something entirely different? Why isn't that being created, this vision that we're talking about? Is the current system occupying or, like, consuming all the oxygen that is available for, you know, a humanitarian argument?

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden  

I'm working on it [LAUGHS]. It's true, but there is actually an interest for this system to move towards the division that we are discussing and debating now, because European donors, and donors, private philanthropy, will need to invest more and more in reconstruction around the world. Not crisis management only, but really seeing how financially interesting, and viable it is to not only send the ambulance, but to create the conditions of rebuilding the whole transport infrastructure. So if the humanitarian community had the ability to advocate – all right, let's advocate and build the evidence, and the logic, and the arguments to convince donors that it is in their own self-enlightened interest to move towards that kind of economy – we could have a transition. 

 

Tammam Aloudat  

I mean, my fear is that someone will tell you, “We already do that, it's called the nexus.”

 

Philip Proudfoot

Exactly.

 

Tammam Aloudat

I mean, and of all the dreaded, the dreaded expressions…

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden  

The nexus is the Lochness monster! [LAUGHS] 

 

[MUSIC BREAK]

 

Christina Bennett  

Philip, your forthcoming book is quite bluntly titled The End of Humanitarianism, and what you're both describing is a death of humanitarianism, or an end of the human of humanitarianism as we know it. And we're having this discussion about whether it could be reformed or whether it should be replaced. So, Philip, is this the end, or is this a point in time, an evolution that, if it does head in the right direction, the beginning of a new humanitarianism?

 

Philip Proudfoot  

I think, yeah, I mean, the title is, of course, to help sell the book [LAUGHS], and people like ‘End of’ titles, because the next line is also, you know, goes against what we were saying, which is ‘Saving lives in the age of impunity'. But what I try to argue is that you can, everywhere, see little signs of a different way of responding to people in crisis. But they’re little signs, they’re little promises, little flarings of opportunity. I've studied and written about some of them, and mentioned some, for instance, you know, looking at the anarchist response and asking myself: What about this response is different to a standard humanitarian response? Is it more effective? Is it more efficient? Is it actually providing what people want? And you know, one of the things about it is it actually gets to the very simple problem that we've discussed, is the anarchists are more willing to give people what they want and need, right. So the immediate need of LGBT+ refugees in Greece who had been facing threats in their, in the islands that they'd arrived in, was, you know, reactionary homophobic violence. So the anarchists put them into squats, right. In Lebanon, where I do the comparison with the orthodox system, the number one need is still housing, but no donor wants to support housing because it's a concentration of risk that means if that housing is then raided by the security, then they'll say, “Why is whichever embassy funding this house for LGBT+ refugees?” So we actually see within that a sign of a different way of doing things, which is very simple: It's giving people what they want, and maybe it doesn't have to go through the large donor systems, and whatever, and it was a relatively effective and efficient system. But I do think that, unless there is a serious reckoning with the political problems of the humanitarian system in the wake of Gaza, Gaza could be the end of it, because it is, it is a failure of the system on such a spectacular level. And often one is charged with being exceptionalist when talking about Gaza in comparison to Sudan, or wherever, but the response to that is quite simple, which is that the donors, the mainstream Western donors of the humanitarian system are also complicit in genocide. So it unravels completely. So, unless we move out of it, I do think we are not, it's not, we've not reached the end of it, but I think that there is a series of political, economic, and social crises, anomalies that have built up within the humanitarian system that would either require– you know, I have a PhD student working on paradigm shifts in the aid system, and she says that anomalies are building up to such a huge degree that there's a potential that something new could emerge out of it, because there's so many hitting all at once. I don't quite know what that is yet, but I think we're talking around the edges of it. And yeah, I'm trying to work it through in my book, which is why it's taking a long time to write [LAUGHS].

 

Tammam Aloudat  

And that's that's a very good point, because we ask the questions in a short interview, and we assume that it's as neat as engineering a solution, and that life doesn’t go on around it and derails and creates, also, alternatives. Gaza, I agree with you, is a state of exception that has exposed the rifts and the anomalies to an extent that is unnegligible, and in that sense it is exceptional – other than, you know, genocide is always exceptional. But it also shows we've been deradicalised to the extent we expect nothing of the system, to the extent that when, when again, Tom Fetcher talks to Chatham House and goes like slightly off script and, you know, talks a little bit more strongly – having sat with the US government and accepted money of them just a couple of weeks before that – it's like a massive celebration: “Oh God, the guy is so brave!” There is no radical rhetoric anymore. This is interesting, because, I mean, the end of humanitarianism doesn't need the end of humanitarianism as a sentiment or a societal function. It might mean the end of a stage, or an end of an architecture.

 

Christina Bennett  

Chloé, can we get your take on that? The end of humanitarianism? Is there something more that can come out of it? Is reform possible? Or should we be looking to replace it with something different and possibly better?

 

Tammam Aloudat  

If I may also, Chloé, you mentioned the redistribution of sacrifice. I really like that idea, and I would love to understand a bit more of it.

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden  

So, I do not know if we are coming to the end of humanitarianism, but I do believe that humanitarianism evolves when it recognises both its strengths and its limits, and that calls for humbleness. I think what I could see most lack of in the world, or systems, is simply humility and multidisciplinary, because the biggest humanists have always been multidisciplinary: mathematicians, philosophers, sociologists. And I do hope that we're going towards a world where we can create institutions where people, ordinary people can live according to their conscience instead of fragmenting who they are and their identities, where– because you know, this made me think of what you were saying about the nexus. The nexus is the the sea snake that crystallises how different disciplines, or different world views, or different practice look at the same thing from very different, with different words, or sometimes use the same words for opposite things. And there's this false, the silos that we reproduce through the definition of okay, is water irrigation project humanitarian or development or peace? How do we bring this together in the funding, but also in the implementation, so that we stop losing time, resources, and intelligence in the process, and actually move towards a systems approach to very systemic issues that we face by truly engaging with the people? Imagine having communities with a veto power, saying “No, we don't want this project, go back, work on it.” [LAUGHS] This would be the actual reversal of the power structure that we have been talking about, but never implementing. So more humbleness, a redistribution of actual decision-making process, because you know, having people making thousands of dollars, making a living and livelihood out of the misery of other people is problematic. I think this is not humanitarianism. It's part of the legacy of the colonial structures that we have. So I do think and hope that we evolve as a species towards a world where this sacrifice of who makes a benefit of out of the suffering of others is not only borne by activists or by young people like Greta Thunberg that can finally have a normal life, because the decision-makers would have done their job, or the person, that the families in Palestine finally gain their right to life, fully enjoyable and fully available to them – not because of the charity of a system, but because of justice. I think we still are learning very much as a species what it looks like to live collectively at this scale on the planet, and this will never happen unless – I believe personally – older generations finally humble their expertise. None of us are experts now. We are going into a world where no one really knows what's going to happen. We can predict, at best, using climate models and indigenous knowledge, and adapt and change, but we ought collectively to recreate a hierarchy where the people impacted are the decision-makers. It's fundamental. We don't want this techno fascist-led billionaire architecture, and it's very clear to me that it's just all of us together, and for now, I don't think we understand this really. We still live in a place where some of us are givers, protectors, or have the time and space and education to help others, and others are simply recipients of aid. This cannot go on, otherwise the number of recipients of aid will simply grow, because entire territories will go underwater. So we go back to this framework of: What does it mean to have a just reconstruction?  What does it mean to live in a world of constant crisis where we don't depend on the gatekeepers to improve the quality of life of people? Because it's either we do it non-violently and peacefully, or there will be events and resistance. And it's part of humanitarianism to understand its role in that, and to educate both the citizens, and the states decision-makers to make sure that they understand what is coming. 

 

Christina Bennett  

Just as an aside, we had an episode talking to the mutual aid groups and some researchers that looked at them, and it was just really interesting to hear them talk about what– like, we're all talking about what people want, what people want, what can we give, is it different what we can give and what they want. And I think the, you know, what we heard from, like, mutual aid groups, that people want freedom from fear and through joy. There was a lot of talk in the podcast around joy, and joy being the currency – not needs, not livelihoods, but joy as a fundamental right, if you will. And that what mutual aid was trying to do was to put the joy back in people's lives through meeting basic needs or by lessening their fear. They also talked about themselves as completely being time bound, like, none of those groups wanted to outlast the situation they were in, that they would disappear as soon as they weren't needed anymore, and not be self perpetuating in the same way that we are.

 

Tammam Aloudat  

People we deal with, people we serve in the humanitarian sector are not stupid. They know to ask for what they think is possible. They know to ask for what they think we want them to ask for. It's not for lack of ambition, it is for lack of possibility. They know us well. There was a cartoon I saw once about anthropology where, you know, primitive people are packing their TV, and lights, and so on. “The anthropologists are coming, pack everything up,” because people expect them to be vulnerable, expect them to be... So, I don't think there's a possibility of us knowing what people actually want, you know, while they are under the influence of a system whereby a few people – those who are making the livelihood and wealth on the top of it – have a life-and-death decision over massive resources to massive populations.

 

Philip Proudfoot  

I always give students this example of that problem, Tammam, is that when I landed in South Sudan once, and the radio was on in the car, on the radio, they said, "We now have an interview with the head of the WASH cluster [LAUGHS]. I said, I think this is one of the few countries in the world where the head of the WASH cluster does interviews on national radio, because that system has been established there and essentially functioning as a substitute state for well, for what, 15 years, 16 years. And anyone in that situation, if you know that the World Food Program is coming up the road, you're going to say, "I want food.” Of course you would. That's what you're going to do, because that's the system, right? And people themselves have been conditioned by this depoliticising necropolitics of humanitarian aid, and I like the thing that we were talking about, where we say that people in a crisis want many things, there are different ways in which they get support, humanitarianism and the humanitarian system can be one form among many, which means a much more humble position around what you do. But it would require breaking apart everything, [LAUGHS] which I'm in favor of.

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden  

I just wanted to know if I could add something a little bit hopeful, because there's this quote that I love and that keeps me going from Angela Davis, who always says that “It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.” So, I just want to thank The New Humanitarian for creating those communities and bringing us together, and remind our listeners that, although bleak and dark the horizon may seem, dawn will break.

 

Christina Bennett  

Fantastic to leave us with that, Chloé. Thanks very much.

 

Tammam Aloudat  

Thank you. Thank you, Philip. 

 

Philip Proudfoot  

Thank you. 

 

Chloé Fiona Ludden  

Thank you so much for having us.

 

[MUSIC BREAK]

 

Christina Bennett 

To our listeners, we’d love to hear from you: Is activism in humanitarian action a threat to humanitarian principles, or a necessary return to its roots? Or even a divergence from its roots?

 

Tammam Aloudat

Maybe a necessary one, or a scary one? Well, Thank you for joining us on this special edition of Rethinking Humanitarianism in collaboration with Start Network. 

 

Christina Bennett 

This episode was hosted by Tammam Aloudat and Christina Bennett, and produced and edited by Melissa Fundira. Concept and editorial support came from Irwin Loy and Kia Howson, and it was mixed by Tevin Sudi.

 

Tammam Aloudat

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 hearts of crises. Go to www.thenewhumanitarian.org to find out more.