Petitions and Signatures

Calling all Global Development Professionals to Collectively and Unapologetically Raise Our Voices For Ceasefire

As global development and humanitarian assistance professionals, we jointly call for a permanent and enduring ceasefire, condemn the unfolding genocide, and call for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

We are choosing to speak up as individuals because many of our political and organizational leaders have remained silent in the face of genocide. Because our shared humanity and actions extend beyond the organizations we work for. And most importantly, because we are not alone -  we are in the global majority. We are in solidarity with all individuals, communities, and movements around the world who are calling for a permanent ceasefire and end to the occupation.

As international development and humanitarian assistance professionals, we see the global and local impact of violence and war firsthand. We know that a building that is destroyed in a second by a bomb will take years to rebuild. We know that preventing violence at its root creates a safer world for children, families, and communities. We know that many of the psychosocial support, empowerment, and ‘resilience’ programs we work on are merely a bandage after the type of violence has been unleashed - bomb after bomb - in Gaza. We know that the amount of money our governments spend on military aid to bomb innocent people far surpasses the amount of money they spend on emergency aid and reconstruction, and programming. For example, the 2021 U.S. government military budget was 10 times greater than the entire USAID budget, at $408 billion to $41 billion.

We have witnessed Western governments - primarily the United States, UK, EU, Canada and Australia - expand their support and funding for the Israeli military machine, helping to increase the profits reaped by defense companies. We bear witness to the killing of Palestinians with the death tolling rising every single hour, nearly half of them children, and over 100 humanitarian aid workers- these are our friends and colleagues and co-workers; the starvation and dehydration of 2.3 million Palestinians; the forced displacement of 1.8 million people (and counting); homes, schools, hospitals and the health system flattened; and communities shattered – that no amount of “aid” will ever be able to put back together.

And while we watch in horror the genocide in Gaza unfold, the violence and terror of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, has also heightened, including increasing numbers of people who are being arrested and administratively detained without charge or trial.

We have also witnessed willful and/or forced silence from most sector leaders. This is especially disappointing in the case of organizations and leaders who have jumped on the "decolonizing" trend in the global development discourse, but have been blatantly silent in the face of actual colonization and often siding with the occupiers.

This is the moment in which all of our talk - all of our discussions, all the workshops we’ve attended, all the pithy tweets - meets action. Today, we are saying that we will not just speak about belonging, creating safe spaces, listening to local leaders, localization, and supporting decolonization. Words alone are not enough. We commit ourselves to action against colonization and colonial violence that is happening live before our very eyes.

The truth is, we all have been silent for too long. And, therefore, complicit.

We recognize that we - especially those of us who are from Western/Global North organizations and those of us who are “expats” - explicitly benefit from war, violence, occupation, and apartheid. As calls grow for international aid to be brought to Gaza, it is our Western-based organizations that will win lucrative contracts to promote “aid” and “response” in Gaza - after a war that our [Western] political leaders allowed to happen. And we also know that the majority of the funding in those grants and contracts will go to Western organizations rather than Palestinian organizations and movements. We are the ones who will see new job postings open up. Already, we are hearing international development leadership speak about a “good budget year” for 2024 and exploring ways to staff up “the Middle East” or “stabilization” teams to make sure our organizations are “positioned” for success. Yet again, we are watching as we create a war, and then reward ourselves with work to fix the problem.

We recognize that the silence of development organizations about Palestine is reflective of the development industry’s fundamental contradiction, in which the political and economic agendas of “Western/Global North” governments and corporations supersede the rights and self-determination of individuals and communities in the places where development programs are being funded.

We acknowledge the problematic nature of the concept of an ‘international development’ led by Western organizations and nations, and point to the current reality in Palestine as an illustration of the hypocrisy of Western leadership: we will bomb your lands, extract its resources, then pay our own people to step in and provide “aid” in support of “development.” This pattern of structural violence and extraction has occurred in Iraq, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Pakistan, and numerous other countries and now unfolds in real time in Gaza.

We also acknowledge that the violence in Palestine is interconnected with broader, transnational struggles for justice and liberation. The partnerships between police forces in the United States and the Israeli military connect the struggle for Black liberation in “donor” countries with the Palestinian struggle in “donor-funded” countries. We recognize that the ongoing extractive strategies of imperialism, colonization, and capitalism that have fueled slavery, caused genocides of Indigenous people worldwide, and accelerated the climate crisis and depletion of natural resources from countries in the Global South are also fueling today’s genocides and violence in not just Palestine, but also multiple other places, including Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria, Yemen, and Haiti.

Further, we acknowledge that our sector’s silence enables dangerous new precedents for future contexts. The international community’s silence in the face of the forced displacement of ethnic Armenians from the Karabakh/Artsakh region has set a precedent for the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. We recognize that nearly endless drone bombings of Pakistan by the U.S. normalized the use of drones in war making at scale. As such, any impunity afforded to the state of Israel as it bombs hospitals, schools, churches, mosques, and refugee camps will set a precedent for future violence and humanitarian crises that our sector will then be tasked with ‘aiding,’ ‘developing’ and ‘empowering’ thereafter.

We are signing this letter in recognition of the impact of structural violence and colonialism, in support of liberation for Palestine, and in support of a broader systemic analysis of our entire sector. We are signing as individuals because we are not waiting for our organizations, funders, and other ‘sectoral leaders’ to “lead.” At a minimum, we cannot sit by and silently witness yet another cycle of bandaging over a war with promises of post-war development. As international development professionals, we have a responsibility to stand up and speak out on human rights and address the root causes of human suffering and injustices.

And we know that together, we can create a movement where we can collectively build a liberated world in which all people are safe from violence - for Palestinians and all of us.

Today, to respond to the urgency of this moment as we witness a genocide, we call for: 

• An immediate and sustained ceasefire - not a pause for humanitarian assistance, not a pause for a few days, not a pause for a genocide, but a permanent ceasefire in Gaza;
  
  

• An end to foreign military support (e.g. from the US, etc)  for Israel that fuels these endless cycles that puts profits ahead of lives;
  
  

• Holding our organizations and the clients we work for accountable for the policies, actions, and language that profits from war, and enables the degradation and dehumanization of Palestinians;
  
  

• Standing in support of our peers and colleagues who are and have spoken up in support of Palestine and are facing the consequences for their words and actions; and
  
  

• Continuing our ongoing, long-term learning and unlearning about the complicity of the development and aid sector as a continuation of colonial structures.

To support each other in these efforts, we are sharing this toolkit with resources and ideas for concrete actions, and an invitation for collective dialogue and discussions. 

*Note - by signing our petition, you agree to having your name shared publicly via our website: https://bit.ly/GlobalDev4Pal.