Paper details
| Paper authors | Dorothea Hilhorst |
| In panel on | What is holding us back? Humanitarian Reform and the Shift to Locally-Led Response |
| Paper presenter(s) will be presenting |
In-Person / |
Abstract
Humanitarian aid has long been dominated by a classical, Dunantist paradigm that was based on the ethics of the humanitarian principles, and centred on international humanitarian UN agencies and NGOs. In recent years this paradigm has been paralleled by a resilience paradigm that is focused on local people and institutions as the first responders to crisis. Whereas classical humanitarianism is rooted in the notion of exceptionalism, resilience humanitarianism starts from the idea of crisis as the new normality. This presentation discusses the two paradigms and the incongruent images they evoke about crises, local institutions and the recipients of aid.
The presentation brings out how the stories that humanitarians tell about themselves are based on highly selective views of reality and don’t include the role they play themselves in the reordering and representation of realities in humanitarian crises.
