Rethinking the origins of transnational humanitarian organizations: the curious case of the International Shipwreck Society

This exploration of the evolution of the International Shipwreck Society (ISS) – a previously neglected transnational humanitarian organization that by the late 1830s had branches in every continent – casts new light on three key aspects of the development of global humanitarianism. First, that there was a secular humanitarian association with a global organizational structure in the 1830s challenges widespread assumptions about the timing of internationally organized humanitarian action. Second, the influence of Chinese precedents on the ISS points to the importance of long forgotten Eastern origins of transnational humanitarianism. And third, the evaluation of the role of individuals in the development of the ISS reveals that early transnational humanitarian organizations faced leadership problems that scholars had previously neglected. In each of these respects, this article provides a new perspective on the origins of global networks.     

Governing Ebola: between global health and medical humanitarianism

Medical humanitarianism and global health are two distinct but co-dependent spheres of global health security. Their actors differ in their units of analysis, understanding of neutrality, and organizational capacities. While health underpins the normative principles of humanitarian action, humanitarian ideas, and notably medical humanitarian organizations, are absent from global health security planning. This article develops the work of Lakoff [‘Two regimes of global health’, Humanity, 1(1), 59–79 (2010)], distinguishing between these two governance spheres and how this had stark consequences in the 2014/15 Ebola outbreak in Liberia and Sierra Leone, framed as a problem of global health but which rapidly became a humanitarian crisis. Such a frame excluded medical humanitarian organizations from the initial global strategy and resulted in the creation of a new organization (UMMEER – United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response) and the involvement of militaries to bridge the health-humanitarian divide. Reconciling the distinct but co-dependent relationship between medical humanitarianism and global health is fundamental to effective delivery of global health security.     

Working for God and Sustainability: The Activities of Faith-Based Organizations in Kenya

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) have long played a role in international development, and are increasingly involved in environmental sustainability initiatives. Despite these contributions they have, until recently, been largely ignored in scholarship and by secular agencies. This article adds to the growing recognition of FBOs, exploring the identity and function of FBOs doing environmental and development work in Kenya through document review, qualitative questionnaires and participant observation. A diverse group of FBOs with varied identities and engaged in a broad range of activities revealed several strengths and challenges of faith-based environmental and development work. Of particular note is the key role churches and faith-based agencies can play in effecting sustainable and holistic change in Global South countries, due to their rootedness in the community, the social capital they help to produce, and the respect they receive from the people.     

How Do They Fit?

Abstract

Despite public policies that promote an increased role for faith-based organizations in the delivery of publicly supported services, insufficient attention has been paid to assessing how service delivery by faith-based and secular providers might differ. This study considers the issues involved in evaluating the role of faith-based organizations within the broad context of a community's social service offerings. Criteria are developed for assessing role differences by comparing the types of services, delivery approaches, and service locations offered by different types of providers. The approach is then illustrated using a large sample of social service providers in Los Angeles County. Important role differences are revealed. Faith-based organizations offer fewer and different types of services than their secular counterparts. The results suggest a modest and focused role for faith-based organizations in social service delivery, but one that is complementary to the efforts of secular providers. The methodological issues raised by such analyses are highlighted.     

One hundred years of suffering? “Humanitarian crisis photography” and self-representation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Humanitarian images streaming from the ongoing conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are not “new”. In fact, contemporary aid and journalistic images strikingly mimic photographs created a century earlier during the Congo Reform Association’s humanitarian attack on Leopold II’s actions in the Congo Free State. This article explores the consistency of these photographic forms and their surrounding text, showing how the images of suffering are not simple reproductions of observed reality but carry personal, local and political meaning. By analysing image content as well as the subject and photographer’s experiences of image creation, this article expands beyond realist objectivity to encompass the subjects’ visual embodiment of subjective desires and expectations. Specifically, I examine how the photographic space composed of the photographer, camera and subject, becomes an intersection replete with competing expectations, hopes and tensions. To situate these images and their subjective, political and humanitarian weight within the DRC itself, I conclude with analysis of how the Congolese choose to present themselves to a different audience: themselves.     

Death and Transfiguration: The Final Hours of Muscovite Monks

The aim of this article is to draw attention to certain theological and liturgical factors that enter into the composition process of hagiography, and in particular, in the depiction of the death scenes of Muscovite monks. The monks who wrote the major portion of medieval Russian literature did so from a particular cultural context in which theological and liturgical texts played a prominent role. The article looks for evidence of this monastic culture in the memorials written to honour deceased members of monastic communities. It outlines some features of the monastic culture that produced the vitae, rehearses previous investigations into the production of Russian medieval hagiography and offers a detailed analysis of four texts from the Muscovite period. The Dormition and Transfiguration are important foundational motifs underlying death scenes in particular. Attention to liturgical and theological principles in other saints’ lives and biographical sketches will enhance our appreciation for the artistry of medieval Russian authors, who appropriate a lengthy Christian tradition in the production of their texts.     

Faith,work, and women in a changing world: the influence of religion in the lives of beedi rollers in West Bengal

In India, religious norms and values play a significant role in regulating the lives of women and girls in many communities. This article looks at how the lives of women and girl beedi (hand rolled cigarette) rollers in a Muslim community in West Bengal are influenced by their religious background, highlighting the complex relationship between gender, faith, and work. Secondly, the article discusses how secular NGOs – which in India are often seen to be hesitant in addressing questions of religious faith and practice – can engage in development work with women and girls in faith-based communities. The article focuses on the experiences of two secular NGOs working with women beedi workers in villages in Murshidabad, as they come to understand that to bring about significant changes in women's lives they must open up discussions around sensitive religious belief, within the community and their own organisations.     

The Care/Security Nexus of the Humanitarian Border: Assisted Return in Norway

While Assisted Return and deportation are frequently viewed as two different return policies, the first represented as humanitarian and the latter as enforcement, this article argues that there is a continuum between these policies and that they form part of humanitarian border enforcement. Drawing on policy document analysis and interviews with NGOs and with irregular migrants, the article provides a two-level analysis by examining how AR is presented from the Norwegian governmental perspective and how it is experienced from the Afghan migrant perspectives. The article argues that the government bases its AR policy on the need to maintain the credibility and sustainability of the asylum system, as part of fighting crime, while presenting it as a humanitarian solution. For irregular migrants, however, the experienced lack of proper asylum procedures delegitimizes return policies. Overall, the performative aspects of humanitarianism in return policies contribute to depoliticizing return.     

The space between us: feminist values and humanitarian power dynamics in research with refugees

ABSTRACT

International humanitarian and development agencies striving to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment sometimes neglect to recognise the power hierarchies present in their own engagement with communities. Drawing on research on Syrian refugees and humanitarian workers in Jordan, this article explores the research and monitoring and evaluation practices of international humanitarian agencies. It suggests that the emphasis on generating evidence has resulted in more transactional and less relational engagement with refugees. This paper asks how feminist values can inform research with refugees, and explores how these values may provide less-extractive ways of engaging with displaced populations.     

Tragic Choices in Humanitarian Aid: A Framework of Organizational Determinants of NGO Decision Making

Humanitarian NGOs face difficult choices about whom to help and whom not on a daily basis. The research question in this article is how humanitarian NGOs make these difficult decisions and why in a particular way. March’s study on consequential and appropriate decision-making processes is used to analyze the nature and course of NGO decision making. Since March’s two models are often explicitly or implicitly linked to certain types of organizational settings—as reflected in an organization’s formal structure, compliance and coordination mechanisms—this article particularly zooms in on the relationship between NGO decision-making processes and these settings. The theoretical framework is illustrated and discussed by means of an exploratory comparative case study of two international humanitarian NGOs: Médecins Sans Frontières Holland (MSF Holland) and Acting with Churches Netherlands (ACT Netherlands).     

Humanitarian response and stress in Kenya: gendered problems and their implications

ABSTRACT

Stress-related conditions such as burnout and post-traumatic stress disorder are a growing concern in the humanitarian sector. Aid workers themselves report not only that mental health problems are common, but that the support they receive from their employers is insufficient. Problematically, the experience of the international aid worker – particularly those who are white and from the global North – is often foregrounded in explaining what constitutes stress and related mental health problems. This indicates a wider problem of what is required of ‘the perfect humanitarian’ – a personality that is gendered and racialised – and how this influences the different experiences and treatment of national and international staff from aid agencies. This article explores the organisational culture and working conditions of humanitarian settings and their impact on the mental health and well-being of staff. It argues that there is a structural dimension to stress that is less to do with external security threats and more to do with the specific infrastructure, policies, and practices of humanitarian operations, with implications for aid workers which cut across dimensions of race, gender, and nationality.     

Media and Clergy: Influencing the Influential?

This article examines media use among clergy for purposes of gathering political information. More specifically, it examines the specific forms of both secular and religious media that clergy report using for such purposes. It assesses the extent to which clergy vary in terms of their different patterns of media use; how such differential patterns may be associated with theological, social, and political differences among clergy; and whether such differential patterns of media use are linked to different effects politically.     

Working Hard for the Money: A Faith-Based Media Literacy Analysis of the Top Television Dramas of 2000-2001

This article analyzes 5 of the highest-rated television dramas from the 2000-2001 season in terms of "faith-based" media literacy. It strives for a more systematic and conceptually sound critique that gets beyond the casual assessments frequently found in the popular press. Synthesizing social science and theological constructs, I present a values-based framework for studying how television creates meaning. Such an approach may be useful to viewers seeking a more substantive and conceptually rich definition of media literacy from a principle-based perspective.     

Report on the Workshop on Practical Protection in Humanitarian Crises

With a global crisis of approximately 15 million refugees and an estimated 20 to 25 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in need of protection, the current protection regime is under increased scrutiny. "Practical Protection" is a fairly new concept. Those pursuing it aim to expand understanding and responsibilities for protection beyond those institutions with a specific protection mandate. "The Workshop on Practical Protection in Humanitarian Crises" was organized to bring the practical protection concept to representatives from a wide range of international agencies, governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), who discussed its implications for their work in humanitarian crises.
Organizations with specific protection mandates, primarily the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), work to protect uprooted groups through legal tools and recognized principles, often in the context of assistance programmes that provide shelter, food, water, medical care, education and other forms of humanitarian assistance. They work in collaboration with NGOs and other international organizations that focus primarily on assisting forced migrants. These latter agencies have traditionally avoided overt involvement in protection activities. When UNHCR and ICRC are not present or are over-extended, gaps in the protection regime emerge. The gap is particularly evident with regard to internally displaced and other war-affected populations, but it is present in most refugee situations as well.     

The Protection‐Neutrality Dilemma in Humanitarian Emergencies: Why the Need for Military Intervention?

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BOOK REVIEWS

This study examined 5 years of successful Christian music to determine if there had been a significant change in the amount of theological language used in contemporary Christian songs. Christian music is the only genre defined by lyrical content instead of musical style (Price, 1999). In a 1999 Wall Street Journal article, the Christian music industry was accused of watering down its lyrics in an effort to increase profits (Miller, 1999). After coding 100 of the top songs from 1996 to 2002 in the Christian rock and Christian hit radio genres, no systematic or significant decline in total theological words was found. However, when examining the type of theological words used in lyrics, the data demonstrated that words have become significantly less explicitly Christian.     

Syrian refugee men as objects of humanitarian care

Critical feminist scholars of conflict and displacement have demonstrated that “womenandchildren” (Enloe 1993) have become an uncontroversial object of humanitarian concern in these contexts (Carpenter 2003; Hyndman and Giles 2011). Yet very little scholarly work has attempted to understand the position of refugee men as a demographic within humanitarianism. Through an analysis of the Syria refugee response in Jordan, this article investigates how humanitarian workers relate to refugee men and think about refugee masculinities. It argues that refugee men have an uncertain position as objects of humanitarian care. Seeing refugee men as objects of humanitarian care would disrupt prevailing humanitarian understandings of refugeehood as a feminized subject position and of gender work as work that “helps women” (Cornwall 2007; Johnson 2011). It would furthermore challenge prevailing binary visions of refugee men as agential, political actors, and refugee women as in need of “empowerment” through the implementation of technocratic programming. In the context of the Syria refugee response, these gendered and racialized understandings of refugee men and masculinities are mediated by particular conceptions of “Arabness.” This research is based on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews with humanitarian workers and Syrian refugees, which was undertaken in Jordan in 2015–2016.     

Enjoy Poverty: humanitarianism and the testimonial function of images

The overlap between production of humanitarian images and interventions in contexts of natural and man-made catastrophes is growing on a global scale. An increasingly close relationship exists between image production, news production and humanitarian industry. In this article, we argue that this process is transforming the meaning of the social, political and ethical act of bearing witness. We analyse the epistemic and political implications of visual humanitarian testimony through the documentary film Enjoy Poverty (2008), shot in Congo by the Dutch artist Renzo Martens. Examining some of the key scenes of the film, we undertake an analysis of the visual culture of humanitarianism within which the contemporary production of sensational images of strong emotional impact is inscribed and justified. We maintain that rethinking testimonial debt in light of contemporary visual humanitarianism fundamentally means to acknowledge and explore the hierarchical relationship that visual humanitarianism creates between the witnesses, the victims and the spectators. We conclude by arguing that Enjoy Poverty constitutes an attempt to generate a new visual, discursive and political horizon within which one can prevent the transformation of the testimonial relationship into a relationship of power.     

Building aid workers’ resilience: why a gendered approach is needed

The concept of resilience is increasingly earning attention in development and humanitarian literature. Agencies and organisations are interested to learn about resilient communities, and keen to support the goal of ‘building resilience’ in developing countries. However, there is comparatively little interest in the resilience of aid workers themselves. This article will discuss the need to support aid workers to build resilience, for their own well-being and also for the effectiveness and sustainability of the essential humanitarian and development work they do. It will advocate for the need of embracing a gender-focused approach in the study of aid workers’ resilience, and more generally, in the study and promotion of aid workers’ well-being. The article draws on a qualitative study which found international women aid workers face specific stressors within the organisations they work for, in working relationships with national staff, and in their personal life. Humanitarian and development organisations need to adopt a gender-focused approach to resilience in the provision of psychosocial support for staff working in development, and emergency relief/humanitarian aid.     

Marriage in a British Evangelical Congregation: Practising Postfeminist Partnership?

This article explores understandings and practices of marriage in a congregation from the growing British evangelical Christian movement New Frontiers International (NFI). It investigates how those who subscribe to evangelical religion interact with the gendered ideas and behaviour of the more ‘secular’ society they inhabit. The data for this research are drawn from participant observation and interviews with members of the congregation. These are situated in the context of the official discourse of NFI and of contemporary debates about the move to individualized partnership. It is argued that though these evangelicals claim to shape their marriages according to ‘biblical’ patterns, they in fact reflect the partnership practices of their less religious peers. Building on work by Stacey and McRobbie, patterns of marriage and heterosexual partnership in contemporary Britain are conceptualized as ‘postfeminist’; the article locates within this framework NFI's declared – and undeclared – marriage practices. It finds that while they are somewhat more conservative than their ‘secular’ peers, NFI evangelicals are indeed practising postfeminist partnership. Observations are also offered on the impact of religion on people's ability to live out individualized partnerships.