Panel details

Panel organiser(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online
Number of paper presentations	4
Location	Istanbul

Abstract

The humanitarian system is changing with positive and negative currents. The dismantling of USAID, hesitation towards localization, and persistence of crises. As the world looks for solutions, humanitarian actors seem to have forgotten a phenomenon that until a decade ago dominated humanitarian discourse. This was South-South humanitarianism (SSH), the dispatch of humanitarian goods and services from one Southern country to another. However, since then, research and practice on SSH has faced two major challenges. First, initial research on SSH limited its focus to only aid that the Southern countries circulated within the South, and not aid they sent to Northern countries. Second, SSH discussions have since 2016 been overshadowed by the localization agenda. However, given the instability and uncertainty in the humanitarian system, it is essential that we return to SSH to reassess the aid activities of Southern states and non-state actors.
This panel will accept papers that discuss the following and related issues:
a. The histories and contemporary practices of how African, Asian, and Southern American governments organize to help one another and others outside of their regions during humanitarian disasters
b. Regionalization of humanitarian aid; what regional organizations in these regions have done, or have been doing first, to respond to disasters in their regions and outside of it, and second, to create regional level humanitarian systems
c. Analysis of challenges that Southern states and regional organizations face, and how those can be addressed
d. Uniqueness of Southern humanitarian action; norms, principles, organizational structures, funding patterns, and prognosis
e. Relations among state and nonstate humanitarian actors and relations with Northern development and humanitarian actors
f. Proposals on how Southern humanitarian actors can adapt to the changes currently happening in the humanitarian system

Paper presentations