This is the third and final article in a three-part series that critically evaluates different aspects of the aid sector and disaster relief response Malka Older imagines for our world 30 years from now in her feature story “Earthquake relief. Mexico. 2051: A glimpse into tomorrow’s humanitarian world”, published in the New Humanitarian on August 24 this year.
The first article in this series examines if the typical aid worker will be less WEIRD (Weird, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) in 2051. The framework in the form of the acronym is borrowed from Paul Currion 2015 article “Why are humanitarians so WEIRD,” published in the New Humanitarian.
The follow-up article puts the magnifying glass on the relationship between humanitarian and development aid in Older’s 2051, debating that an unlimited humanitarian aid budget could be great, as long as it does not eat away the world’s entire development aid budget. Many are the sources that have called the climate crisis the world’s biggest humanitarian crisis (Aly & Konyndyk, 2020) Further, the second article argues that climate adaptation and mitigation activities must happen in tandem, and warns that an aid sector too focused on only solving crisis salutations (e.g. responding to climate disaster events) just might end up causing more problems than they solve. Or, as Wabnitz et al, put it: “to expand the interpretation of primum non nocere (first do no harm) [is to] beneficence and consider the vitality of the planet as a bedrock for human wellbeing” (Wabnitz, 2020.)
The central theme of this concluding article is power structures and agency. Is a financing system characterized by mutual aid and global solidarity and bottom-up decision making guaranteed to make the humanitarian aid sector more equitable and just? If today’s authorities remain key actors, is there a risk that power is just being shifted around at the top?
Sending Western expats to crises situations: Are we still doing that in 30 years?
In Older’s 2051, NGOs are a memory of the past. However, this does not mean that westerners do not fly in to alleviate suffering in disaster-struck communities.
One character in Older’s story is Sana, an international disaster relief consultant based out of Beirut, Lebanon, who flies to the Mexican city where the story plays out. Her municipality’s local emergency fund was willing to pay for her travel. Sana looks for and finds work in one of the shelters that have been put up after a 7.8 Richter earthquake hit the city, which means her municipality’s local fund will be reimbursed for her flight costs by the Mexican city’s local emergency fund.
In 2051, every government – local, regional, national – is required to put aside a minimum percentage of their budget for emergencies.
“No matter how many manuals and trainings you have, it’s not the same as experiencing a disaster … That’s one reason my local group paid out of their emergency fund to send me here, you know: it keeps me in practice, up-to-date on technologies, builds my network,” Sana explains (Older, 2021.)
Older (2021) does not go into details about how the structure for how much governments have to put aside for their emergency fund looks like, but let us assume that the sum invested into the fund is in proportion to the area’s income level. This would mean that richer countries have larger emergency budgets. This matters, even if mutual aid is the dominating system.
In 2021, The World Bank classifies Lebanon as an upper-middle-income country (World Bank, n.a.) Middle- and high-income countries will be better equipped (i.e. able to afford) to educate their local disaster relief professionals by regularly sending them out to practice their skills. This means that a) they will have more local experts in their countries who can run activities in their country, shall it ever be needed, and b) there is a significant risk that the majority of all international disaster relief consultants come from resource-strong cities and countries.
If poor crisis-prone communities have little to no local disaster management expertise when they are put in charge of their own disaster relief programs under the voluntary guidance of well-educated expatriates, how likely would you say it is that these local community members feel empowered? Has the civil society landscape turned around, or do today’s most vulnerable people still lack the agency to make their own decisions about how money and power should be distributed and used in their communities?
Agency, I would argue, is about much more than being asked to share your opinion or told you are in charge, it is to not be restricted by external or internal powers – it is being able to act according to your own values and beliefs, without strong influence by an extreme situation or power. Edward Ademolu and Siobhan Warrington (2019) showcase this in an article that problematizes the act of asking parents who have a child that is in acute need of care to consent with their photos being taken by the aid providing NGO: “Some research participants [participants in a focus group] believed that desperation for assistance would be the key factor in someone agreeing to participate: ‘if they didn’t really need help, they wouldn’t let someone take the photo.’” Another example highlighting the importance of informed consent, not just “I made the other person say yes” consent, can be found in an article by the Human Rights Watch (June 15, 2021) revealing how the UN persuaded Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh to sign connect forms allowing their data to be shared with Myanma without properly informing them about that their data was shared with the government of the country they had fled from and that they had the right to services even if they did not sign the consent form. One man is quoted “I could not say no because I needed the Smart Card and I did not think that I could say no to the data-sharing question and still get the card.”
Community committees are overseeing local community budgets across the world. Richer community committees send their best people to where they can use and simultaneously expand their knowledge. Much of postcolonial theory can be located in the approach to critique the production and promotion of knowledge based on European traditions and experiences (McEwan, 2019, p. 90.) From this perspective, the 2051-aid sector Older envisions still seems to have at least a part-colonial problem.
Who are the “we” that fought long and hard to get the new aid system in place?
“The preservation of lives has always been a concern that we see in all cultures,” said Professor Antoni De Lauri in the second episode of the New Humanitarian’s podcast Rethinking Humanitarianism (Aly & Konyndyk, 2020). Yet it was in the west that humanitarian activities were given structure, which then expanded and solidified into the humanitarian system we have today. “We have a disconnect between the system that was set up by the west and the reality that there are many types of humanitarianism out there.” (ibid.)
In the article, Sana talks about how “they” had “oh so many meetings” before “they” managed to transform the aid system. In theory, the new system builds on a bottom-up local response to local problems. In reality, it seems to be ripe with many of the same power issues we have today. But then again, is it even possible to build a system perfect for everyone anywhere? A discussion of whether cultural differences and diverse context renders the answer to this question yes or no is beyond the scope of this article. However, one thing is for sure, if there should be a global system, designing it must be an honest participatory effort.
A central case in the postcolonial theory is that the dominance of theories based on European traditions and produced by Europeans must be fought, especially so theories for anthropological knowledge (produced through the study of culture and societies (Persson-Fischier, 2017, p.321.)), i.e. the process of knowing about Others – “but a process that never fully acknowledges these Others as thinking and knowledge-producing subjects” (McEwan, 2019, p. 90-91.) Anthropologists Ideally, I would argue, anthropologists’ theories should be based on intersectional experiences and guide the development of culturally appropriate and context-sensitive solutions to humanitarian problems.
It is not clear who the people reforming the plausible future humanitarian system Older describes, but Sana’s reference to her own role in the process makes me think that current humanitarian aid practitioners, funders, and policymakers all had a seat at the table. Judging by the complete lack of knowledge about the new system by Older’s protagonist (the local worker from the Mexican village hit by the earthquake), I would argue, is a warning flag, signalling that the people most affected by humanitarian crises may not have had much to say/been informed about and involved in, the system overthrow process.
Much of decolonial theory can be located in “attempts to envisage alternatives to European traditions and experiences …. and towards the removal of enduring forms of colonial domination” (McEwan, 2019. p.90.) By, at least in theory, handing over power to local communities, this seems to be the attempt of the new system. In reality, however, I fear that it has fallen short on this endeavour. As Audre Lorde (1984) famously said, “the Master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
Ultimately, the humanitarian sector does not operate in a vacuum, political systems, power structures and imbalances, academia and all other aspects of society are interdependent with the sector. By admitting that the world has not become fairer outside of the space disaster relief activities are carried out within, Older does not seem to envision that existing power imbalances have been overthrown in 30 years. It is, in other words, fair to assume that Western theories and systems – and ultimately people – still dominate academia and global policymaking in 2051.
In Older’s story, Sana speaks about a central coordination space where seemingly anyone anywhere can add best practices and ideas that others can implement in their area. This sounds great in theory, but I do remain cautious. It is commonly known that technology is not neutral (Feenberg, 2012), “technology is not something neutral with a power of its own but is rather a deliberate product, suffused with interests, that is designed for a particular purpose” and users (Unwin, 2017.) I hope the coordination space is available in multiple languages, that it is designed to work in low-bandwidth settings, and that it has a user-friendly interface that does not exclude people without full technical literacy. I also hope that disaster relief centres (such as that Sana works in) have a computer room (there is, after all, a snack room) where anyone can use a computer to access the space.
If society at large is still run by the same powers and humanitarians are still WEIRD, then I am afraid that people who are marginalized today, will remain marginalized in 2051. I hope I am wrong.
Reflection
This blog series was produced in the context of New Media, ICT and Development-HT21 course, part of the Communication for Development Master at Malmö University. I have very much enjoyed the course and this writing exercise. Juggling different communications roles for varied research and humanitarian organizations and my master studies, I do a lot of writing. For work, I write articles about themes, projects and programmes relevant to my employers, following clear voice and tone guidelines to captivate the reader and honour the brand I am representing. For my studies, I write academic papers, adhering to strict word counts. While I feel that my professional experiences help me in my studies and vice versa, I do not often have the chance to truly use lessons learned from both spaces in my writing – this exercise was a rare exception.
I ventured into this exercise with three clear topic ideas in my head, reviewing Malka Older’s New Humanitarian feature story was one of them. I set out to write an article with the working title “X questions about the future of aid that Malka Older’s story in the New Humanitarian does not answer.” Question number one: Will humanitarians be less WEIRD in 2051? When I checked the word count and saw that I had used over 700 words discussing only this question, I realized that my readers most likely would not stay with me until even if I made the list short and included only three questions. I am grateful that the flexible format of this assignment then allowed me to rethink and expand my first article into an article series. This allowed me to discuss different elements of Malka Older’s story in detail and truly reflect on what mechanisms affect different aspects of the humanitarian aid sector today and in the future. I firmly believe that being able to conform to a word count is an important skill – both as a communication professional and an academic – but I also believe that sometimes being let free and being allowed to write without caring too much about format and length can be both great fun and allow for a great learning process. This assignment is a case in point.
Resources
Ademolu, E. & Warrington, S. (2019) Who Gets to Talk About NGO Images of Global Poverty?, Photography and Culture, 12:3, 365-376, DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2019.1637184
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Aly, H. & Konyndyk, J. (Hosts). (2020, April 11). Aid’s climate challenge (No. 8) [Audio podcast episode]. In Rethinking Humanitarianism. The New HUmanitarian. https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/podcast
Edward Ademolu & Siobhan Warrington (2019) Who Gets to Talk About NGO Images of Global Poverty?, Photography and Culture, 12:3, 365-376, DOI: 10.1080/17514517.2019.1637184
Feenberg, A. (2012). Questioning technology. Oxon: Routledge.
Human Rights Watch (2021, June 15). UN Shared Rohingya Data Without Informed Consent. Retrieved 2021 October 26 from https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/15/un-shared-rohingya-data-without-informed-consent?
Lorde, A. (1984) Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press.
Older, M. (2021, August 24) Earthquake relief. Mexico. 2051. A glimpse into tomorrow’s humanitarian world. The New Humanitarian. Retrieved 2020 October 25 from https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/2021/08/24/futureaid-tomorrow-humanitarian-world
Persson-Fischier, U. (2017). Anthropology and humanitarian action? In International Humanitarian Action : NOHA Textbook (pp. 321–338). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14454-2
McEwan, C. (2019) Postcolonialism, Decoloniality and Development (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge (pp. 90-95).
Unwin, T. (2017) Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Development. New York: Oxford University Press
Wabnits, K.J. et. al. (2020). A pledge for planetary health to unite health professionals in the Anthropocene. The Lancet. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)32039-0
World Bank. (n.a.) Lebanon. Retrieved 2021 October 28 from https://data.worldbank.org/country/lebanon
