Paper details

Paper authors	Isabelle Schlaepfer
In panel on	Taking ideology out of humanitarianism? The everyday, corporate interests and the politics of global solidarity
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

The engagement of multi-national businesses in humanitarian action has long been a controversial topic, especially their impact on humanitarian principles. The literature has often been accompanied by a morally led debate but hampered in part by a lack of empirical evidence. One area that has been specifically neglected within this discussion is the importance of businesses in the provision of humanitarian technologies – defined here as both, digital and web-based software as well as tangible ‘things’ such as products – which are developed, designed, or adjusted for a humanitarian market. This article aims to investigate to what extent the development is committed to humanitarian principles, and how this affects humanitarians’ validation of such technologies. By using a qualitative case study design of a corporate technology, this article is based in a critical realist narrative analysis of documents and semi-structured interviews. One of the main findings is that corporate principles are prioritised over humanitarian principles. However, while humanitarian principles might be compromised, they do not tend to be a necessary condition for humanitarian actors to accept or reject a humanitarian technology neither. This article discusses that principled aid has been challenged in the aftermath of restructuring the humanitarian sector towards a humanitarian market; and concludes that this process is accelerated through the constant release of corporate technologies sweeping the humanitarian realm.

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