Depoliticising Humanitarian Action

Isabelle Desportes is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany. Her research focuses on the (hidden) politics of disaster prevention and humanitarian response, including in authoritarian conflict settings.Alice Corbet is an anthropologist working for the French National Centre for Scientific Research. She does consulting work for non-governmental organisations and works on the issues of refugees and displaced persons, encampment, and humanitarian relations.Ayesha Siddiqi is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Her research examines postcolonial geographies of disasters.

A long time ago, when the all-out war against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was raging in Central Mindanao in my own country, the Philippines, I asked a displaced woman what she needed. My pen was poised to check water, food, shelter on the needs assessment sheet. Peace, she said. Peace and justice. These were not on my list, but these were the answers that really mattered. Now, this book asks humanitarians: How can we really address suffering and deprivation, indignity and insecurity? Given what’s incessantly on the headlines during this ‘Age of Crisis’, I was going to say how timely. Yet this isn’t a new question. It has been there all this time, just somehow always conveniently parked. The book urges courage to confront the reality of the humanitarian aid industry and boldness to change it.Lan Mercado, former Asia Regional Director and Co-Director for Strategy and Feminist Futures at OxfamIt is not easy to openly reflect on something actors don’t see, don’t want to or pretend not to see. The fact that humanitarian action is immersed in politics can remain unrecognized – often on purpose - by the very people involved in the game. Yet this book has successfully taken up the challenge. It confronts the lived experiences of a wide range of humanitarians who work in paradigms that are seemingly depoliticised – which can be immensely important for realizing their humanitarian task. The book zooms in on how they navigate the associated dilemmas, resist depoliticised approaches, or, as is often the case in real life, engage in a combination of those. What makes this volume extra precious is the diversity of authors that speak from their own environments and perspectives, weaving together theoretical insights and case studies ranging from the Colombian highlands to street protests in Hong Kong. This makes the book a highly engaging read for scholars, humanitarian leaders and field staff alike. Ultimately, the book contributes to a more multi-faceted and nuanced understanding of the politics of humanitarian action.Dorothea Hilhorst, Professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute for Social Studies of Erasmus University in The HagueThe humanitarian enterprise has long misrepresented itself as apolitical while internalizing a belief that the depoliticization of aid is essential to achieving its humanitarian goals. Grounded in both academic research and practitioners’ perspectives, the chapters in this book paint an essential picture not simply of humanitarian action as deeply political, but of how this depoliticizing narrative undermines its objectives and delivers harm along with the good stuff.Marc DuBois, Senior Fellow, Department of Development Studies SOAS, University of London, former General Director Médecins Sans Frontières UK and IrelandThe book makes an important contribution to academic literature as well as to practitioners’ debates, which focus on humanitarian politics and the related resistance, dilemmas, and ruptures. By looking at depoliticization itself as a form of politics, the well-selected contributions illustrate what depoliticization means and implies in the humanitarian context.Antonio De Lauri, Research Professor at the Chr. Michelsen Institute and President of the International Humanitarian Studies Association

• Chapter 1: Depoliticising humanitarian action: Understanding and countering the status quo in an age of crises SECTION I: Depoliticising paradigms Humanitarians without politics?: Practitioner intervention Chapter 2: Humanitarianism and neoliberal rationality as a depoliticising ideology Chapter 3: Resilience versus surveillance humanitarianism: How two conflicting paradigms depoliticise aid and affirm the top-down status quo Chapter 4: Austere rationalities: UK food banks, humanitarian practice and the depoliticisation of need Chapter 5: How media depoliticise disasters in Indigenous contexts SECTION II: Depoliticisation dilemmas Principles versus pragmatism: Humanitarian diplomacy dilemmas from Cox’s Bazar to Kyiv: Practitioner intervention Chapter 6: Access over advocacy: The depoliticisation of Myanmar’s 2012 Rohingya internally displaced persons’ crisis Chapter 7: Depoliticisation is disaster risk creation: Insights on non-government organisations’ disaster prevention and humanitarian response in the Philippines Chapter 8: Depoliticising humanitarian aid in Lebanon: National and Gulf actors between co-optation and independence from Western institutions SECTION III: Resisting Depoliticisation Bottom-up humanitarianism: Practitioner intervention Chapter 9: Resisting depoliticisation: Alternative humanitarian advocacy from the experiences of women and feminists in Colombia Chapter 10: Ruptures and contingencies in a bottom-up humanitarian assemblage: a history of peasants, territories and displacement in Colombia Chapter 11: Politics, principles and practice among medical-humanitarian volunteers in protest and revolutionary settings Chapter 12: Conclusion: Alternative visions for humanitarianism