Distribution by Region

Distribution by Organisation Type, Document Type, Region and Year

Humanitarianism occurs mostly in documents published in Europe, followed by Asia and Africa with comparatively smaller contributions. Overall, the top five contributors in terms of occurrences are NGO, RC, C/B, NGO_Fed and Net organisations.

NGO documents provide the greatest number of occurrences, primarily from European general documents and activity reports published in the six regions. Ocurrences from RC were mostly obtained from European general documents and Asian activity reports.

C/B documents only generated occurrences in European general documents. Occurrences from NGO_Fed were mostly found in activity reports published in Europe, followed by Africa. Occurrences from Net were obtained from European general documents and activity reports. Lastly, Net generates a minor set of occurrences from European strategy and activity reports.

• operates on the principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality

• whose modern form is considered to have originated in Europe and Nigeria

• strives continuously to meet people's needs and respect humanitarian principles, based on a rational and ethical response

• whose objectives include

  • treating people in crises as human beings, with dignity and respect

  • protecting human life and dignity from armed conflict

  • saving lives and reduce suffering in the short term

  • preventing and alienating human suffering, whenever it occurs and the right of all persons to receive and give assistance

  • reaching the most vulnerable people

    • which may be achieved by building a more predictable response capacity and providing for more predictable and flexible funding

• may be difficult to distinguish it from development work

• whose scope and boundaries are being reshaped by protracted crises, the humanitarian-development nexus and the localisation agenda

• may be subject to politicisation

• includes

  • acknowledging the essential dignity of all human beings, and in serving, supporting, and advocating on behalf of poor, marginalised people and those affected by conflict and crises

  • openness and respect for people of different races, nationalities, and religions, and sensitivity to human suffering

  • providing a safe environment for aid workers

  • preventing and alienating human suffering, whenever it occurs and the right of all persons to receive and give assistance

  • a sense of responsibility to advocate on behalf of poor, marginalised people and those affected by conflict

  • accountability

A strong commitment to international humanitarian law and the provision of flexible, timely funding based on the principles of independence, neutrality, impartiality and humanitarianism underpins our approach.

Our core values include Humanitarianism, which includes a responsibility to advocate on behalf of poor, marginalised people and those affected by conflict...

The chart below represents the distribution of humanitarianism between 2005 and 2019 in terms of the number of occurrences and relative frequency of occurrences. It also allows you to view the distribution across Regions, Organisations and Document types.

• Those who work in the field of humanitarianism know that political manipulation often compromises the supposedly sacrosanct principle of neutrality. The overlapping field of economic development is equally politicised and perceived by buzzwords. Professional aid workers tend to deny that what they are doing is a form of charity.

• It is said that the global South refers to disaster management and development cooperation instead of humanitarianism because there is a common perception that humanitarianism is a Western economic and political tool. The humanitarian system is not trusted. Humanitarians need to be sensitive to the trust gap and make disaster management more holistic by drawing on experiences from South-South cooperation.

• The humanitarian principles which underpin the Western aid system are under extraordinary pressure. Independence, neutrality, impartiality and humanity are under continual strain due to murky – if necessary – compromises and accommodations. Conventional humanitarianism is besieged.

• In the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, the US and its allies referred to humanitarian organisations as 'force multipliers', 'part of the combat team' and elements of 'soft power' to present them as actors on their side. This compromised the meaning and understanding of humanitarianism. In conflicts like that of Kosovo, military intervention was justified on humanitarian grounds. In Pakistan, there is an inverse trend: humanitarian response is being justified on security grounds. This has increased the suspicion felt towards foreign assistance by many Pakistanis.

• The manipulation of aid to advance political aims has reached unprecedented levels in Afghanistan, where humanitarianism is in a parlous state

• The armed forces represent a form of "state humanitarianism" and the possibility of other agendas.

• Is humanitarianism being sacrificed in the name of politics and peace-building?

• Humanitarian principles are necessary but not sufficient to preserve humanitarianism. Clarity about the benefits of making investments in humanitarian agencies is also required, in what increasingly looks like a marketplace. Agencies must advocate for increased transparency in government funding of assistance undertaken by state armed forces and private security forces. There should be political will to independently evaluate and learn from the assistance activities undertaken by state armed forces and private security companies, to provide a more objective basis on which to allocate funds.

• Many NGOs question the legitimacy of state humanitarianism because states are thought to be driven by geo-political or economic interests. Humanitarian should be the preserve of civil society. However, states drew up the texts of International Humanitarian Law on which humanitarian aid is based and which affirm that every individual, in any situation – including war – has the right to dignity and security.

• Political negotiations, peacekeeping operations, and crisis resolution issues are all connected to humanitarianism. The risk of 'dangerous liaisons' shows how important it is to develop a strategy for civilian humanitarian action by the state, based on humanitarian principles. To do this, it is important to clarify the interactions between humanitarian action and crisis management instruments and particularly those involving the military. At the same time, it is difficult to deny that the humanitarian system is almost wholly dependent on state funding.

• The role of advocacy in humanitarian action has given rise to debates about the politicisation of humanitarianism, and concerns that greater engagement in advocacy undermines humanitarian principles and threatens humanitarian space.

• The principles of humanitarianism are often not understood by state armed forces, are sometimes dismissed by politicians seeking to co-opt agency capacity and may be interpreted as a bid by humanitarian agencies to monopolise the delivery of assistance.

• Many humanitarian practitioners agree that contributing to livelihood revitalisation and sustainability, including the environmental response on which they rely, constitute a core role for early response humanitarians. Other argue that any activity falling outside the strict historical definition of humanitarianism is inappropriate. Policy makers and planners within the humanitarian community should tackle aggressively these contradictions, using multiple fora and by producing practical suggestions for relief actors in the field.

• There is a debate about who will provide humanitarian assistance in the future. The humanitarian sector will not become totally obsolete, but a diminished professional humanitarian presence will be problematic. The humanitarian sector is not a delivery mechanism for humanitarian assistance, it is a delivery mechanism for humanitarian values. If the role of humanitarians in delivering assistance is put by the wayside, humanitarians will no longer be able to deliver humanitarian values. As people are able to help themselves more, the current basis of humanitarianism as a principled approach to helping people could be eroded.

• Local conceptions of humanitarianism, their motives for supporting aid and the terms of their support reflect a humanitarian approach that may differs from that of established organisations and donors, which can be more concerned with respecting the sovereignty of the state receiving the aid.

• The humanitarian system is not adapted to accepting failure, but it is necessary to invest in solutions that might not work, to try and not be daunted by failure, to reflect on options and keep an open mind on other methods. It requires humanitarians to drop the arrogance in the humanitarian system, to recognise that nobody owns humanitarianism because it is a universal set of values in which humanitarians are privileged to be involved.

• Ever since the birth of modern humanitarianism in the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino in 1859, international society has sought to articulate a clear distinction between the rights and responsibilities of combatants and the role of civilian organisations in alleviating the suffering conflict causes.

• Yet as the scale, frequency and complexity of emergencies increase, so too does the need to deploy a much broader range of skills, knowledge and approaches. This is compounded by recent tendencies to 'stretch' humanitarianism to include preparedness, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and recovery. All of this implies that multi-stakeholder/multi-sector responses will be increasingly necessary; indeed, efforts to work in these kinds of partnerships are already growing.

• How should humanitarian response be in urban areas?

• MSF considers humanitarianism more as a technical action rather as a principles-based political challenge.

Humanitarianism: Universal or a Western Construct?

Humanitarianism or Development Work?

• Some believe the current notions of humanitarianism are primarily Western and Northern in origin, and hypocritical when it comes to upholding the humanitarian principles

• Humanitarianism through the UN-led system is increasingly perceived in the global South as a Western construct consisting of a set of values and interests that are not universally shared in the places where it intervenes. Some non-Western states worry that humanitarian action can be used as an excuse to violate sovereignty.

• Conceptions of humanitarianism vary across cultures and contexts, and the Western established model is increasingly challenged and contested as a universal model.

• The international humanitarian community and the UN are perceived as Western-dominated and as having little experience of operating in the Arab and Islamic world, where the tradition of humanitarianism is based on Islamic values of philanthropy, charitable giving (zakat) and kinship obligations.

• Especially in protracted crises or areas experiencing recurring natural disasters, effective humanitarianism requires investments in preparedness and prevention measures, which traditionally belong to the realm of development.

• It is argued that development and humanitarianism have different objectives and approaches to politics, and that the key participatory approaches derived from development work are not fit for humanitarian action. Humanitarianism pursues social change, whilst development is intrinsically political.

• People in crisis-affected communities do not necessarily differentiate between humanitarian and development actors. Their expectations of engagement are often the same. Humanitarian agencies could learn from development methodologies. Local and international multi-mandate organisations could lead this learning process.

New Technologies and Humanitarianism

The Language of Humanitarianism

• The new humanitarianism of the mid-1990s focused on human rights-based approaches to humanitarian action and humanitarian reform. Today's new humanitarianism focuses on technological innovation. The goal of human rights-based approaches was to reconstruct power relationships on an ethical and moral basis, and the goal of humanitarian reform was to improve humanitarian action through structural change. The optimism currently surrounding the role of technology in the humanitarian enterprise appears to be based on two assumptions: first, that adding technology is inevitable; and second, that doing so will generate progress.

• Data-enabled rather than data-driven humanitarianism is needed. Data and new technologies may dehumanise humanitarianism because they become the central focus rather than the enablers of action.

• Investment should also be made in common standards, and in digital literacy and digital access, as vital components of humanitarianism – not as one-off, expendable overheads.

• The language of humanitarianism is perceived to be important and to have an impact. For example, some think that "capacity building" is a patronising phrase that ensured power remained entrenched in the global North.

• The language of humanitarianism is believed to be problematic. For example, there has been constant pressure from the government not to speak of ''internally displaced persons'' or ''conflict'', or even use of the word ''humanitarian'' in appeals and other communications by the humanitarian community.

• Philanthropic organisations linked to business are funding many local digital initiatives in Africa. As a result, private sector companies are unchallengedly adopting the language of humanitarianism. Engaging with the communications technology private sector needs to include a constructively critical look at their work and the validity of their claims as well as the benefits of their services.

Islamic Humanitarianism

Medical Humanitarianism and the Military

• Supporting humanitarian principles requires partnerships to demonstrate that humanitarianism is neutral, such as partnerships between Western and Islamic humanitarian organisations and between local and international organisations.

• There is clear compatibility between the legal framework upon which Western humanitarianism is based and Muslim legal tradition.

• Military medical innovations and their relevance in humanitarian work are evidence of the value of examining this engagement further. The Ebola response demonstrates an unprecedented recognition of the military's potential in medical humanitarianism. Since the Ebola response, there has been an increase in receptiveness of many international health workers to military engagement.

• The diffusion of military scientific knowledge and products highlights a distinct and under-explored area of active humanitarian–military engagement, and one that may hold potential for further exchanges of innovations valuable for medical humanitarianism.

Aid Dependency

Other Issues

• The idea that dependency is a bad thing and that free assistance creates dependency has long roots in the history of humanitarianism. It is also nourished by the strongly held views of those who think that relief should be sustainable, linked with a desire to move towards more developmental approaches.

• The discussion on dependency borrows the concept of dispersed dependencies from a field unrelated to humanitarianism, a notion formulated by psychologist George Kelly. In 2005, Paul Harvey and Jeremy Lind put the case that ''the focus should be, not how to avoid dependency, but how to provide assistance so that those who most need it understand what they are entitled to, and can rely on it as part of their own efforts to survive and recover from crisis.

Faith-based Humanitarianism

• Faith-based organisations modify their branding to reduce the faith aspect and increase the visibility of their humanitarianism so as not to fuel local people's fears. However, reducing the visibility of a religious approach and the need for cultural solidarity is contradictory because it disregards the crucial role that faith plays in boosting people's ability to cope.

Insufficient Data about Local Humanitarianism

• The diffusion of military scientific knowledge and products highlights a distinct and under-explored area of active humanitarian–military engagement, and one that may hold potential for further exchanges of innovations valuable for medical humanitarianism.

Short-Term Humanitarianism

• The diffusion of military scientific knowledge and products highlights a distinct and under-explored area of active humanitarian–military engagement, and one that may hold potential for further exchanges of innovations valuable for medical humanitarianism.

Principles, politics and the international humanitarian aid system

This new programme aims to improve understanding of the links between humanitarianism and politics, assess the implications for humanitarian outcomes and help humanitarians to respond.

It identified structural weaknesses in the existing humanitarian system, concluding that ''humanitarianism is not the main driver of donor behavior in financing humanitarian work'', and that the whole of the humanitarian endeavour is less than the sum of its multiple moving parts.

People left behind by the humanitarian sector

As suggested by Pictet, the question of whether short-term humanitarianism impermissibly leaves people with long-term needs behind may need more philosophy than analysis to answer.

Protracted crises, the humanitarian-development nexus, and the localization agenda are all reshaping the scope and boundaries of humanitarianism. This chapter focuses primarily on people left behind because they are experiencing crises considered beyond the remit of the international humanitarian sector as understood by the UN General Assembly Resolution.