Depoliticising Humanitarian Action

Is it possible to separate humanitarian action from politics? Drawing on the expertise of practitioners and researchers, and balancing theoretical insights with empirical grounding, field examples and policy recommendations, this book is an essential guide to the thorny interplay between what are too often considered as separate worlds.

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.

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