Paper details

Paper authors	Chin Ruamps
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

With the restrained humanitarian space and intensifying humanitarian crises, the scale of humanitarian crises has outpaced the capacity of humanitarian agencies. The changing humanitarian landscape and needs, in this sense, call for collective duties and systematic collaboration of the humanitarian community and the capable, resourceful private sector. In reality, effective distribution of humanitarian assistance depends on how relevant stakeholders such as donors, humanitarian agencies and the private sector—interact along and around the aid chain (Hihorst & Jansen, 2010). An innovative partnership with the private sector can be the key to better address the needs of vulnerable and affected populations.

However, despite the attempt to reinforce business-humanitarian partnerships, the collaborations between humanitarian agencies and businesses remain disproportionally low. One of the key reasons is the legitimacy concerns arising within and around business-humanitarian partnership in humanitarian action. With the growing role of the private sector in humanitarian action comes great challenges: language barriers, different values and norms, different ways of working, different motivations, preferences, priorities—all pose significant doubts and legitimacy concerns for humanitarian agencies. To be more specific, norms and principles differences cast doubts on humanitarian agencies on businesses’ motivations in engaging in humanitarian action. Priorities and preferences differences raise problems of aid accountability. Finally, different practices and cultures may hamper the already complicated humanitarian coordination and further affect the effectiveness of humanitarian responses.

This paper analyses and addresses challenges posed by these legitimacy concerns. It considers how different humanitarian agencies’ principles, values and practices form and shape their legitimacy concerns towards private sector engagement in humanitarian action, and how such concerns can be addressed for constructive collaboration and innovative partnership.

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