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The September 2023 Special Issue of the Journal of Humanitarian Affairs (5.1) encourages both academics and practitioners to critically engage with humanitarian numbers. The editors cogently enumerate the qualities and limits of these numbers in their issue introduction. Throughout the introduction, however, there is an underexamined notion that numbers drive humanitarian decision-making. This assumption indeed permeates logics of datafication in humanitarianism yet in practice remains more aspiration than modus operandi. This op-ed proposes an eleventh talking point to the growing critiques of humanitarian numbers: Decisions are driven by more than numbers.
Data-driven humanitarianism is changing the face of aid. More data potentially enables quicker and more efficient evidence-based responses to situations of conflict and disaster. Yet the proliferation of data also challenges traditional lines of accountability, exacerbates the drive toward extractive relations and processes while deepening communication barriers and asymmetric relations between humanitarians and affected communities. This article reflects on critical data literacy as a transformative method in the context of the datafication of the humanitarian sector. It draws on research carried out with internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria and South Sudan as part of a collaborative international project examining the practice and ethics of data collection and use. The article discusses the project’s participatory ethos, its engagement of IDPs with the project over time and the importance of developing co-produced tools of critical data literacy together with IDPs. Reflecting on the significance of our findings for humanitarian practitioners as well as for academics working in the field of humanitarianism and displacement, the article argues for a collective commitment to engaging with affected communities while cautioning against viewing data literacy as an easy fix to empowerment challenges, both in the conduct of humanitarian work and in the implementation of research.
In armed conflicts around the world, armed escorts are increasingly used by civilian actors in the delivery of humanitarian assistance. These escorts, at times, include peacekeepers, counter-insurgents, armed forces, armed groups or even private security companies. The use of armed actors, however, remains a critically underexplored issue. This paper will assess the theory and practice of the use of armed escorts by humanitarian actors, uncovering the legitimising discourse and the impact that armed escorts have on humanitarian principles and acceptance by local communities. It accomplishes this through a critical analysis of humanitarian guidelines and policy documents and draws from the limited research on armed escorts. The article draws from fieldwork in Sudan in 2022 to empirically show these trends in Darfur, demonstrating that the use of armed escorts by one non-governmental organisation can cause a knock-on effect to others, and that once in place, there is a lock-in effect.
Humanitarian innovation is occurring in a wide range of organisational contexts, from innovation labs and hubs, to specialised units within humanitarian organisations, to small social innovation startups and through intersectoral partnerships. Ethical considerations associated with innovation activities have been the source of increased discussion, including critiques around inclusion in the definition of problems, imposition of solutions, introduction of new risks for people in crisis situations and potential for exploitation. To promote ethical innovation, various initiatives have sought to articulate guiding values and to create resources and frameworks to integrate values in project design and implementation. A distinctive yet complementary line of ethical analysis is offered by the approach of positive organisational ethics, which considers the features of organisations that promote and sustain conditions supportive of ethical action. In this paper we examine three dimensions of an organisation’s ethical infrastructure: the resources that are established, such as policies and statements of organisational values; the practices that are enacted, such as methods of onboarding new staff; and the capacities that are fostered and accessed, including ethics knowledge and skills. Attention to these features constitutes an important means of laying the groundwork for organisational conditions that are supportive of ethical humanitarian innovation.
Internally displaced persons (IDPs) have suffered multiple disadvantages and experienced social exclusion due to involuntary movement to new communities where they struggle to find opportunities for social inclusion. This study examined the political dimensions of social inclusion which focus on engaging IDPs in decision-making on issues that concern them. The study used the democratic participatory theory as a framework for political participation through decision-making. The qualitative exploratory study used in-depth interviews to collect data from twelve IDPs, comprising five females and seven males, who were resident in Benue State, Nigeria. Findings show that government does not incorporate the decisions and choices of IDPs when designing humanitarian measures for protection and assistance; IDPs are not communicated with on issues of interest to them; and IPDs lack sustainable opportunities for interaction with host communities. The study concludes that not incorporating the decisions of IDPs in issues of interest to them creates a culture of humanitarian aid dependency. The study recommends democratising solutions by using grassroots bottom-up measures for sustainable social inclusion of IDPs where solutions emerge from IDPs who are the end beneficiaries of the interventions. A discussion of the study findings is followed by concluding recommendations.
Diverse SOGIESC issues (sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics) are seldom discussed in humanitarian work but are emerging as an important gap to fill in both knowledge and practice. This review’s objective is to provide a clearer picture of how SOGIESC issues are included in humanitarian practices. A socio-ecological approach is used to identify the different settings in which these issues are present and should be addressed by the humanitarian sector. The review is based on a search of three databases covering peer-reviewed articles and grey literature that link SOGIESC issues and populations with humanitarian work. The fifty-one documents included in this review provide insights into its three main results. (1) SOGIESC concepts must be clarified in the humanitarian sector, which has been partially aware of these concepts and related issues. Two good governance principles should be prioritised and reviewed. (2) The inclusion of SOGIESC issues lacks clear ‘Direction’ (strategic planning) for the reduction of SOGIESC-based discrimination beyond short-term disaster management. (3) Diverse SOGIESC communities lack ‘legitimacy and voice’ to address their needs and participate in emergency responses. Transformative practices are identified to palliate those gaps but, most importantly, to connect humanitarian work to diverse SOGIESC peoples.
Chapter 5 explores the implications of learning from knowledge produced beyond the academy and by Global South movements, specifically MAB. The chapter shows how the what and how of the study (i.e., the questions asked and methodologies used) cannot be separated from the who and why. Taking a collaborative and solidarity-based approach to knowledge directly shapes the theories and methods of analysis. The chapter builds on the previous by focusing on the following question: How could the study of social movements be transformed utilizing methodologies other than theoretically based analysis that is produced exclusively inside the university, and within the “Global North,” and what might this mean for organizing for the right to water? The chapter examines the potentials of using categories of analysis that emerge beyond the academy and Global North university. It is both methodological and analytical, and examines knowledge production and, specifically, how MAB’s work is grounded in theory (Marx, Gramsci, Fernandes, Freire, liberation theology, and many others) and praxis, and is led by many young people who are adding to, critiquing, and changing theory. In doing so, it is building a national (and international) movement for the right to water. MAB’s focus on liberatory education and consciousness-raising is counter-hegemonic work that is critical to creating the conditions for change. In this sense, MAB’s focus is as much about process as outcomes – which is also an example of counter-hegemonic logics.
Chapter 6 examines efforts to reclaim the commons of water, and how grassroots movements drive the struggle and demand the prioritization of democracy, transparency, and human rights over corporate profits in public policy. As feminist scholars have pointed out, the “standpoint” offered by marginalized actors offers important insights into the operation of systems of power and the strategies of resistance. Transnational social movement scholars have too often reinforced the idea that knowledge flows from the Global North to the Global South. This chapter builds on scholarship that has examined the importance of Global South to Global North social movement connections by bringing together all of the book’s empirical case studies. The book argues that these three cases actually reflect a single case of a translocal movement for the right to water, with the National Summit on the Human Right to Water, Nigeria’s Water Emergency: From Resistance to Real Solutions Against Corporate Control held in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2019 (referred to from here forward as the Summit), as one specific convergence space of translocal organizing for the human right to water. The fight against water grabbing in all its forms, and the struggle to build a new world, is connected to a larger counter-hegemonic movement, and is an ongoing and non-linear process.
This chapter provides background context for how water privatization fits into a broader economic project. Through examining water-based social movements, Global solidarities against water grabbing explores how individual movements are frequently a part of larger movement communities. Thus, they are examples of translocal movements, in which people (citizens, residents, activists, and movement actors) engage with each other, the state, and the market and fight for community-driven partnerships, communal ideas of property rights versus private property rights, and for participatory, democratic, and horizontal governance structures. Imagining a world structured differently than the one we have is challenging because hegemony works by controlling knowledge systems and socialization systems. This first chapter offers a dialogue between global environmental justice, resource conflicts, political economy, feminist and anti-colonial research methods, and social movement studies. The author connects on-the-ground organizing with broader theoretical debates and pulls areas of study, typically studied as discrete parts, together into a whole. This book makes three key assertions: 1) it shows how global communications and organizing are occurring around the public’s right to water; 2) it argues that movements in the Global North are engaging with and learning from the Global South with Global South movements playing a more prominent and innovative role than previous scholarship demonstrates; and 3) it shows how the struggle for water as a right, a public good, and a commons, rather than a commodity, is connected to a broader anti-systemic fight for livelihood that spans well beyond water.