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9 Peace and the private sector: Northern Ireland’s regional experience of globalised trends Katy Hayward and Eoin Magennis Analyses of Northern Ireland’s peace process tend to concentrate on either the public sector (specifically systems, institutions, and parties of governance) or the community and voluntary sector (which has traditionally carried a huge responsibility in the delivery of essential grassroots support in peacebuilding). While economic development has been widely acknowledged as being crucial to progress, the much-anticipated peace dividend has
20 The new agreement with the Eurozone (the second Memorandum) and private sector involvement Anxiety swiftly returned to Greece after the summit of 9 December 2011. The government’s primary concern was to satisfy the preconditions required for the release of the €130 billion loan. Two agreements needed to be drawn up. The first concerned the conditions of the loan. It would clarify the still unclear arrangements for the new fiscal measures and the structural changes needed to achieve the agreed targets. In sum, this constituted the new Memorandum. The second
unwieldy bureaucracies that dominated in the past ( Betts and Bloom, 2014 ). The concept of innovation has sometimes been articulated in terms of the 4Ps – new products, new processes, new positioning and new paradigms – which flowed from the private sector to turn powerless beneficiaries into empowered consumers ( Ramalingam et al. , 2009 ). The central argument, for many, is that the humanitarian sector lacks the cut and thrust of a competitive
accelerating digitisation of beneficiary bodies, and increasing data and private-sector involvement in humanitarian aid. 3 I want to focus on how these developments, the miniaturisation and personalisation of ICT technology and a growing interface with biotechnology are co-producing what I call ‘intimate humanitarian objects’ for use by individual beneficiaries on or inside their bodies ( Jasanoff, 2004 ). The object of my analysis is the making of ‘humanitarian wearables’. 4 These are
Accountability and Performance) research programme ( Ramalingam et al. , 2009 ), humanitarian innovation became a concept for both research and practice related to refugees and other affected populations ( Betts and Bloom, 2014 ; Ramalingam et al. , 2015 ). It also included a focus on humanitarian innovation ecosystems, such as calls for the system to partner with ‘non-traditional actors’ such as the private sector and led to the emergence of
A decade into the Syrian war, Lebanon remains the country hosting the largest number of refugees per capita worldwide, limiting their work to three sectors of the economy. Most of the employed refugees have therefore been active in the informal market under indecent and insecure working conditions. One solution currently being promoted by humanitarian and development organisations and the private sector is that digital work in web-based labour markets can provide an alternative that circumvents these local restrictions, offering refugees a way to make a livelihood online. This field report contests this assumption, based on analysis of the impact and experience of a digital skills training programme that reached some 3000 beneficiaries by 2021. The report critically examines how a context of regulatory restriction and economic crisis in Lebanon undermines the feasibility of digital refugee livelihoods, thereby offering a critique of the idea that web-based income opportunities transcend local markets, policies and regulations. Due to discriminatory policies, ICT-related exclusion, and financial exclusion, the programme’s objective shifted from online work to local work. Ironically, most of those graduates who found work did so in the local informal labour market once more, having failed to secure any form of sustainable online income opportunity.
humanitarianism ( Roth and Luczak-Roesch, 2018 ). In the wider context of innovation in humanitarianism, it has of late been argued that the ‘humanitarian innovation’ movement does in fact represent an ideological departure from long-held humanitarian principles, not necessarily openly discussed and intended as such, but in actual practice. Driven by the private sector and a strong commitment to the market as the main driver of innovation – whether understood narrowly or more holistically – and using the
Norwegian Refugee Council are development actors like the International Trade Centre and the International Labour Organization, and even private sector actors and supporters like Upwork and Tent ( Upwork, 2022 ). Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working to place refugees in remote digital work today find themselves in the peculiar position of acting as online market intermediaries between refugees and corporations in the digital economy. This ranges from helping refugees
accountability and core concern. The idea of humanitarian innovation as a purely private-sector, tech-focused and product-ridden space is critiqued through attention to the more nuanced evolution of the humanitarian innovation agenda. Some recent efforts to forge or support more ethical, participatory and locally driven spaces for humanitarian innovation are also shared. Finally, the ‘big space’ question of humanitarian innovation at scale is given consideration, as well as the expectations and structural limitations involved. From Black Hole to North Star? [A black
, vocational and skills training, and facilitate digital access and improve current legal structures to enable refugees – particularly women – to engage in remote employment ( Dempster et al. , 2020 ). This could be achieved by first clarifying the regulatory environment governing digital work in Jordan to refugees, then supporting refugees in navigating remote working in Jordan through advice and technical support, and by collaborating with the private sector and other non