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). The aid sector and the environments in which it functions are often much more diverse in reality. Quite apart from ‘the locals’, a vast array of less-privileged foreigners (or ‘third country nationals’) play key enabling parts in the humanitarian industrial complex but are left out of heroic white saviour narratives. 5 Nationality effectively becomes a shorthand for race, and non-white aid workers and their experiences are invisibilised and
operation of NGOs on the ground. But there needs to be more work to think about how these principles apply to the realm of sexual abuse, harassment and assault. In particular, organisations and individuals should be aware of the inherent power imbalance between senior and junior members of staff, between donors and recipients, between aid workers and the people they are helping. Aid operates in a world that is shaped by race, gender and class – by racism
programmes and initiatives that claim to help and empower women. This issue offers a rich contribution to our understanding of humanitarianism and the ways in which it is structured by gendered logics and power relations, as well as exploring how those gendered logics intersect with other power hierarchies, such as race and sexuality. Elsewhere, feminist and gender-focused approaches to studying humanitarianism have helped us better understand aspects of the sector, such as the gendered concept of ‘care
. Moreover, important topics or questions remain to be explored by further research, including the practical ways in which humanitarianism can engage in gender-transformative action, its complementarity to the longstanding work of feminist activists, and the relationship between humanitarian action and other cultural identity factors, such as race, ethnicity, class, caste, age, disability and legal status. Definitions Building on Enloe (2004 : 4
International Development Studies ’, in de Jong , S. , Icaza , R. and Rutazibwa , O. U. (eds), Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning ( London : Routledge ), pp. 192 – 214 . Sabaratnam , M. ( 2017 ), Decolonising Intervention: International Statebuilding in Mozambique ( London : Rowman & Littlefield International ). Wekker , G. ( 2016 ), White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race ( Durham, NC : Duke University Press ).
of the humanitarian lens or its subjects as racialised (‘race’ does not even appear in the index, while ‘gender’ has ten entries). 2 Fehrenbach’s theme sets the stage for one of the most influential episodes in the twentieth century iconography of humanitarianism: Biafra. Heerten’s essay on Biafra and Holocaust imagery in Humanitarian Photography provides one of the case studies, but it is only a glimpse into the much broader take on Biafra provided by
centuries of violence upon non-white populations in the name of the ‘enlightened spirit’, it would also be reworked into more racially sensitive and objective ways 6 . As liberal replaced race with culture and class with entitlement, so the advent of a globally ambitious claim to govern all planetary life could overcome all claims to sovereign integrity by appealing directly to the notion that underdevelopment was dangerous. While violence was therefore complex, since complex systems were less about linear root causes and more about states of dynamic connection and
: Routledge ), pp. 153 – 68 . Briggs , L. ( 2003 ), ‘ Mother, Child, Race, Nation: The Visual Iconography of Rescue and the Politics of Transnational and Transracial Adoption ’, Gender & History , 15 : 2 , 179 – 200 . Burman , E
discrimination as to nationality, race, religious beliefs, class or political opinions. It endeavours to relieve the suffering of individuals, being guided solely by their needs, and to give priority to the most urgent cases of distress’ ( ICRC, 2016 ). Other humanitarian codes of conduct contain similar principles. Discrimination in humanitarianism is restricted to triage – where the most effective intervention can be made on the basis solely of need. Humanitarians might, of course, be less than assiduously moral in treating those whose lives they are
. Tornhill , S. ( 2019 ), The Business of Women’s Empowerment – Corporate Gender Politics in the Global South ( London : Rowman & Littlefield ). Turner , L. ( 2019 ), ‘ #Refugees Can Be Entrepreneurs Too!’ Humanitarian, Race and the Marketing of Syrian refugees ’, Review of International