Paper details
| Paper authors | Hanan Dudin, Lisa Schwartz, Olive Wahoush, Sonya DeLaat |
| In panel on | ‘Real’ Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, and Alternatives |
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Abstract
1 in 22 people globally require humanitarian aid, totaling an “all-time high” of 362 million in 2024 (UNIS, 2024). United Nations and partner organizations assisted almost 200 million people in 2022 across 63 countries through joint funding amounting to 41 billion dollars (United Nations Global Humanitarian Overview, 2022). Some organizations taking on the biggest burden of providing this aid, specifically medical humanitarian aid, are the International Committee of the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières. In 2023, these organizations addressed almost 200 missions worldwide, staffing nearly 100,000 across both organizations (ICRC, Annual Report 2023; MSF, Annual Report 2023). As the number of people requiring aid globally continues to increase while funding and capacity dwindle, a resource allocation crisis is created, forcing these organizations to prioritize (Slim, 2024). As humanitarian aid organizations struggle to address rising needs, brief insights into the future reveal that prioritization, who and when humanitarian aid organizations choose to help, will soon become a necessary protocol (Slim, 2024). The ICRC and MSF maintain clear ethical codes, such as the ICRC’s list of Fundamental Principles; however, the justifications that humanitarian aid organizations articulate for prioritization are vaguely externalized. Therefore, the research question that will guide my paper will be, “How do humanitarian aid organizations (e.g., IRC and MSF) articulate justifications for prioritization?” The initial literature review reveals that humanitarian aid organizations partly derive decision-making processes from certain internal ethical codes and principles, whether implicitly or explicitly. The remainder of the investigation will be carried out through a realist evaluation of three emergency humanitarian interventions as case studies: a conflict, a climate, and an epidemic disaster, through publicly available data. The cross-analysis of those three case studies, the Syrian Civil War (2011-ongoing), Cyclone Idai (2019), and finally the Ebola Virus Outbreak in West Africa (2014-2016), will reveal a pattern that indicates what factors may affect prioritization, and how they may differ based on context.
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