Poor management is often at the heart of mental health problems among humanitarian workers. If in doubt, listen to this on-the-spot podcast by Imogen Wall.
This being said – how are front-line field offices affected? Factors such as salaries and staff rights do not often depend entirely on field managers. Is there anything they can do? Below is the experience we had at the UNHCR Suboffice in the Bekaa valley, in Lebanon, back in 2018.
The importance of management in humanitarian field offices
Humanitarian front-lines pose particular risks for the mental health and welfare of humanitarian workers. Workload and pressure piles up. Security is, at best, spotty. Families may be far away, and meaningful social life can be poor or non-existent. Staff witness or listen to countless horrors. They can also be victims themselves, in particular national staff. Front-line staff have to take responsibility, in front of affected populations, of poor decisions or simply the difficulty of having any meaningful impact.
Particular ills often plague the management of small field offices in humanitarian front-lines. It is not uncommon that young, unprepared expatriates are put at the helm of field offices or teams in extremely difficult situations. A number of important distortions can then arise. Oftentimes, professional insecurity leads to abuse of authority. This can be amplified by the relative isolation and lack of awareness of staff rights and redress mechanisms by field staff, in particular national ones.
Conversely, lack of communication or tensions may also arise when national staff are more prepared to take decisions than expatriate managers. All this can be compounded by the relative neglect, in some humanitarian circles, of hard, specific managerial skills. These include internal management skills, such as planning, budgeting, delegation and team design. They include analytical ones, in particular as regards the political and social environment. Crucially, they encompass also functional skills such as advocacy and humanitarian negotiation.
Finally, in some cases field managers may themselves be victims of poor management up the hierarchical line. Bad management and abuse of authority has an uncanny similarity to child abuse: abusers have often been victims themselves. At the end of the day, one of the most difficult things to do is to draw the right lessons from the wrong experiences.
What can humanitarian managers do at the front-lines? Below is the experience we had in the UNHCR Bekaa Sub-Office back in 2018 where we decided to prepare a local staff welfare plan.
How did it all start?
Managers need to dedicate time to their staff on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I wasn’t always able to find the necessary time in the Bekaa. Massive rains would flood refugee camps. Militants would stage suicide attacks in high-tension areas. Armed conflict involving the Army, Hezbollah and Daesh would necessitate contingency planning for mass displacement.
During one of the lulls between crises, we decided to organize small, informal meetings between all units and management to talk about anything and all. This included managerial practices. Conversations were not always easy. However, in one of them, magic just happened without warning. One of the staff, who had been staring at me silently during the meeting, all of a sudden asked me: listen, what is it you do? Well, I’m the Head of Sub-office. Yeah, I know that. But what is it you do on a day-to-day basis?
I remember that quick reflexes from my side saved the situation at the time. However, my answer, a series of platitudes which I have mercifully forgotten, wasn’t very intelligent or accurate. The question, precise as a scalpel, had penetrated my defenses and opened a series of questions in my mind to which I did not have the right answers. Among them:
What are the actual responsibilities of a field humanitarian manager? How are the different angles (diplomatic, operational, managerial) to be articulated among themselves?
How best to articulate management and staff responsibilities, in such a way so as to maximize mutual support and convergence?
How can a manager improve communication about her role and activities? Can transparency and communication about managerial roles be of help in improving staff welfare and mental health?
After that fateful meeting, the reflection narrowed its focus to staff welfare, and then of course widened again to try to encompass all important aspects of staff welfare under the direct responsibility of a field office, besides of communication. A consultative process opened, including an anonymous staff review, consultations with national staff welfare officer and management, and extensive consultations with the local staff association. By May 2018, the Staff Welfare Plan had been approved by the staff association and all staff.
A dilemma had been at the basis of the process: where shall initiative and accountability lie? A management-led process may not be consultative enough. Conversely, a staff-led process may not gain sufficient management buy-in. After some thought and consultation I decided to lead the process, so as to enhance management accountability and buy-in, while making all possible efforts towards a consultative process.
The 2018 Bekaa Suboffice staff welfare plan
We decided to work on six priority aspects:
Staff welfare services and counselling,
Staff development,
Stress management,
Staffing, staff rights and accountability,
Infrastructure and services,
Communication, consultation and transparency.
Some of the measures taken were:
Clear rules on communications. Staff would make reasonable efforts to be reachable during emergencies. Conversely, management would never contact staff (including through email) outside of working hours unless during an emergency.
Establish our own budget for external training, prioritizing national staff. The staff would pay the training fee and the office would cover travel and other expenses.
Training sessions on career management.
Efforts not to reduce staff, and transparent and timely communications on staffing planning and decisions.
Staff Association members would have at least one hour per week, out of office work, to dedicate to the Staff Association.
Staff Association participates in all regular important meetings, including weekly meeting. Head of Sub-office communicates his own quarterly action plan, as well as progress against it, to all staff.
The entire plan can be consulted here. It’s a relatively simple two page document.
A few conclusions
Did it work? I guess partially, as most things. Some measures weren’t implemented, others took hold as a habit. Staff Association gained confidence in raising grievances to me, for which I’ll always be grateful. We were quite disciplined in communicating workplans (including from management) to all staff, on Staff Association participation, on budgeting for training and on infrastructure. On the contrary, cross-fertilization across units proved difficult, due to workload. Beirut management was supportive, and as a part of organization-wide staff welfare policies we had a Beirut-based Staff Welfare Office visiting every region on a monthly basis and being available to all staff, which was very useful.
Later on, and on a slightly different issue, we raised the issue of salaries of office security staff during the Lebanon financial crises. National management intervened with a good measure of success. By the way, this is an oft-neglected issue also in need of answers: what about the welfare of national personnel working in subcontracted companies for humanitarian organizations, for instance on cleaning or security? That counts, too.
At my level, upon leaving the Suboffice I undertook a 360-Degree-Review, which was one of the toughest but most revealing experiences of my professional life. Since then, I keep an updated personal development plan (for which UNHCR has an excellent tool, by the way) which always includes management training.
I still remember, of course, the moment that staff fixed his piercing green eyes on me and asked: what is it you do? It took guts to do that, and it proved eventful that he did. I guess one final lesson is: lead your team in a way that everyone, guts or no guts, feels she or he can raise difficult questions.
The humanitarian industry is currently dominated by Western, educated knowledge workers. They have contributed to disseminate three powerful trends present in late capitalism:
Increased bureaucratization and managerialism,
A growth of a third sector, dedicated to serve the industry itself rather than affected people directly,
Cultural traits such as the worship of leadership and the adoption of the pair vulnerability-resilience as a universal lens to understand crises.
These are contributing to creating a powerful cultural barrier between the industry and those we serve.
V. Is AAP the solution?
Faulty accountability of the humanitarian system to those we work for has long been acknowledged by the industry. Over the last decade, policy and programmatic responses have multiplied. Important progress is registered in some operations. Yet, a recent report by the Humanitarian Policy Group signalled that “these efforts are all important, but they fall short of a system-wide shift to ensuring that humanitarian responses are demand-driven”[1].
We will argue here that this relative failure is not only due to lack of momentum in implementation, but also to inherent policy flaws. Following what is common in the market economy for the business-client relationship, most of current AAP doctrine evolve around accountability to individuals. Highly sophisticated systems are created to collect and respond to individual claims, suggestions and complaints. This is, of course, necessary for services rendered at the individual or family level. However, it is insufficient for higher-level issues requiring also organized, community-based involvement, such as general humanitarian priorities, or whether (and how) to organize IDP return.
Organized and empowered communities can also receive finance and distribute aid, participate in humanitarian meetings and – more importantly – exercise the kind of advocacy and legitimate external pressure which is essential to accountability. This is mostly sidelined in current AAP policy. The consideration of affected populations as clients rather than right holders, its atomization into individuals, the lack of curiosity as regards their social organization, and the increasing use of answering machines and artificial intelligence, all contribute to isolate top-level humanitarian decision-making from the voice of organized communities[2].
There is even perhaps a class divide contributing to this isolation. Increasingly, highly paid WEIRD humanitarians manage the industry and take decisions, while lower paid local personnel and local NGOs absorb the social and emotional labour of listening and responding to people in need and facing their complaints and even anger, while often lacking adequate responses.
There is an uncanny familiarity here with a few phenomena quite prevalent in modern Western society. One is the increasing segregation between, on the one hand, educated urban professionals and on the other, manual and care workers. The pandemic has contributed to highlight that the latter are both a pillar of society, and much more exposed to risk, while not receiving by far enough support and protection from the managerial classes – both in politics and in business. This realization has not escaped the humanitarian industry.
A second one is the phenomenon of the call center as an example of disembodied, abstract relations between service provider and client whereby the latter can only vent her anger to a fellow disempowered person, with whom can however feel no commonality[3]. A third one is the doctrine of stakeholder capitalism. This doctrine does champion listening to civil society as part of a new accountability model for capitalism. However, it does have in common with the humanitarian industry a mistrust of external accountability, that is relatively autonomous civil society movements choosing for themselves whether participation, advocacy or denunciation are the most effective strategies in any given situation, often in the face of resistance to change[4].
To be fair, there is currently quite a number of initiatives by humanitarian organizations to engage with leadership structures representing affected populations, including at global level. As an instance, UNHCR is currently systematising good practice arising, among other initiatives, from refugee participation in the latest Global Refugee Forum.
At the same time, effective accountability will only be realized when participation by civil society linked to affected populations is no longer seen as radical, and starts happening regularly in fora such as Humanitarian Country Teams, clusters and interagency meetings.
Let us now turn our attention to two more factors contributing to the relative isolation of WEIRD humanitarians: the way they build social capital, and the weight of the written word.
VI. WEIRD isolation
WEIRD humanitarians increasingly evolve in isolation from local civil society and affected populations. Expatriates tend to spend an increasing amount of time either coordinating or exchanging information with each other, or in bureaucratic tasks created by the growth of the humanitarian services economy, the need to manage organizational complexity and the inflation of “bullshit jobs”. Thus, the self-service exigences of the industry simply don’t leave any time left for quality dialogue with affected communities. This is compounded by the acritical acceptance of a few key terms curiously contributing to the cosmopolitan parochialism of WEIRD humanitarians.
We will now look at three further aspects contributing to WEIRD isolation. One is the lack of social capital between WEIRD humanitarians and affected populations. The second is how the sheer thickness and weight of the written word acts actually as a barrier to dialogue. The third, admittedly speculative, is the psychological security we seek through professional and personal interaction within the circle of WEIRD humanitarians.
WEIRD social capital
WEIRD humanitarians tend to socialize among themselves and donors. This contributes to creating trust, increasing a shared sense of identity and trading social and professional recognition, thereby facilitating cooperation. From a more materialistic perspective, a social network of internationally mobile professionals is obviously more useful to international professional advancement than one rooted in local society. At the same time, this human ecology also contributes to creating quick consensuses and a sense of security about what the situation and needs are of affected populations.
The boundaries of the human ecology of WEIRD humanitarians are, of course, diffuse and mobile. Quite often, expatriate human rights workers, journalists and researchers inhabit the same spheres. The requirements of localisation can also open doors to a few local officials and local NGO personnel. They tend, however, to be urban-based, educated and English-speaking. Often, an unwritten trade-off occurs whereby they help WEIRD humanitarians fulfill localisation requirements, while acting as door-keepers of social and professional relations and finance. This also contributes to the crowding out of smaller, non-English speaking, rural-based local NGOs and grassroots organizations, including those led by affected people. Thus, language and class, and not only geography, also acts as an access barrier to the circle of WEIRD humanitarians. Too often, the boundaries between WEIRD humanitarians and local society cut across local society itself, rather than between both.
A brick wall made of written words
WEIRD humanitarians share a culture made not only of language and professional affiliation but also of words. Socially and professionally, it is increasingly difficult to express the needs and rights of affected populations without consciously or unconsciously referring back to a growing mass of written policies often using abstract, complicated jargon such as vulnerability, resilience, affected populations, communication with communities, accountability to affected populations. This is, of course, called for by the need to have a few common concepts in order to communicate effectively. There are, however, other less honourable reasons. One is the need of humanitarian agencies to be seen as quickly domesticating through policy documents global trends called for by the industry or donors. Perhaps more pernicious is the fact that a growing number of WEIRD humanitarians write texts for a living: research, policy recommendations, needs analysis, donor reports. This contributes to calcification of accepted jargon and ideas, reproduction of the inner culture of WEIRD humanitarians and yet more growth of the textual mass to which they have to refer to communicate. This generates several difficulties.
First, the textual and conceptual culture of WEIRD humanitarians operate as a barrier of entry, professionally and socially, for local NGOs and grassroots organizations – with the exceptions that we have seen above. This only adds to the increasing use of English in meetings even in countries with widespread use of other UN official languages such as French, Spanish or Arabic.
Second, as we have seen above, behind each concept such as vulnerability and resilience there are layers upon layers of ideology that contribute to obscure their original meaning and to increase their value as mere markers of what is culturally acceptable among WEIRD humanitarians and donors. This anchoring of words and concepts to a pre-existing culture obviously blunt their ability to empirically describe local context and causality behind humanitarian and protection problems. Most WEIRD humanitarians have a shared experience of reading Humanitarian Needs Overviews, or Humanitarian Action Plans written in such a neutral, contextless, standardized language that could actually refer to virtually any crisis on Earth. Another shared experience is the shock of listening to local NGO leaders or affected populations expressing facts, needs, rights and preferences in much more precise and eloquent language than the one used in written communications by WEIRD humanitarians.
Finally, and perhaps more insidiously, we have to ask ourselves if the mass of written text in which WEIRD humanitarians evolve is not acting as a barrier for dialogue between the industry and those we work for. Real dialogue does entail a shared commonality of concepts and language. However, it also requires an ability to bend and shift concepts and language that are only proper to us in order to properly listen to the other person. However, the inner pressures of our culture and the sheer weight of the mass of words and concepts that we feel compelled to use actually impede this flexibility. Too often, the intellectual effort of placing the other’s words within the confines of charged, pre-conceived concepts (vulnerable person, protection case, resilient women) acts as an impediment to listening and therefore to dialogue.
A prominent example of concepts obscuring social reality refers to the deeply interlinked concepts of localisation and community mobilisation. Humanitarian practitioners are familiar with the diffuse boundaries between, on the one side, longstanding grassroots movements and local NGOs, and on the other social mobilization by affected populations for mutual assistance and to claim their rights. Yet localisation and community mobilisation remain siloed concepts in international guidance. Thus, the recent IASC guidance on localisation all but ignores organized affected populations as local humanitarian agents. Thus, the more we write about localisation, the more we create blockages to its realisation.
The security we crave
Attacks against aid workers reached an all-time high in 2020, affecting mostly local personnel. Physical security is certainly one of the most important barriers not only to reach, but also to dialogue with affected populations. Yet we have to ask ourselves whether we WEIRD humanitarians also seek psychological security[5] in social and professional distance to affected populations.
Humanitarianism is an impossible task – saving lives without using coercion. Exploitation of humanitarian workers, either by faulty managers or as self-inflicted, has rightly been described as the wrong answer to this impossibility. However, we WEIRD humanitarians have also to question ourselves how much we seek reassurance and the preservation of self-esteem in the face of an impossible task in the relative security of routine, bureaucracy, trainings, meetings and written reports, and in the open trade of recognition happening within our closed social circles. A good example of this phenomenon is the current preference of Protection Clusters of protection messages over advocacy strategies – the former being written, general expressions of the desirability of particular protection approaches or outcomes consensuated only within humanitarian circles. By usually not being adressed to duty holders (Governments or armed groups), they avoid the risk of failure associated to real advocacy or negotiation.
Deepening relations and dialogue with local society and affected populations often yields lucidity about the inadequacy of the response, and this lucidity carries with it a number of fears. The fear of not being listened to when proposing solutions going against the grain of general consensus. Also the fear of being inadequate in the face of suffering, of being made responsible, of exhaustion and failure when trying beyond one’s means or not even trying because of depression, of losing credibility and even their jobs (in particular for local humanitarian workers), of breaking the consensus and being ostracized.
Thus, lucidity about our real impact can be, in itself, a mental health hazard[6]. It is fair to say that most humanitarians achieve some sort of balance when doing the maximum within their limits. Others fall victim to this risk. Yet others seek refuge in the reassuring routine of meetings, trainings, written communications and shared, accepted language, in the security that no one is likely to rupture this routine because a critical mass find assurance within it. Incompetence does exist among us as in any other profession. Yet it is difficult to blame individual humanitarian workers for what amounts to a systemic flaw.
VII. Outline of an ethics of exposure
Why an ethical reflection?
From an intuitive perspective, any reflection is ethical in nature when it refers to human character and behaviour, values as well as right and wrong thought, speech and action. Ethics refers to principles. Thus, ethical reflections are particularly necessary in any highly complex situation presenting high stakes in terms of human suffering and well-being, and where policy and regulations are clearly insufficient to guide behaviour. The use of nuclear weapons or biotechnology are good examples. The same is valid for the point of contact between the humanitarian industry and the people we serve. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the goal of humanitarianism is ethical in itself: to save lives and reduce suffering.
There are other important reasons why ethical discussions on the relationship between humanitarians and affected populations continue to be necessary. All ethics is about relations. And humanitarians stand in a complex array of relations with the people we serve:
From human to human,
From people with power, to people whose power has been disrupted,
From people and organizations with a duty of care, and those who receive such care,
In particular for mandated organizations, from duty holders to right holders.
There is no question that these relations respond to the principle that human suffering must be prevented and mitigated. Thus, the objective of these relations is ethical in nature. I am also, however, also interested in the quality of those relations, simply as human relations.
Another important ground for a discussion on ethics is the gradual replacement of epic humanitarianism by managerial humanitarianism. There is no a priori judgement of value here. Any industry experiencing evolution and growth will need a degree of professionalization and bureaucratization, and humanitarianism is no exception. There is no question that when trying to prevent or mitigate human suffering, ethics dictates that we must be effective and efficient. The point is rather than evolution and change, by the stakes and the complexity they introduce, require the continuity of an ethical discussion, in particular when moving away from the epic humanitarianism of yore where ethical principles and good intentions where all the rules we needed.
A third, and more specific reason to focus on ethics is the fact that, as we have shown above, a particular class of people (WEIRD humanitarians), with a particular culture, class consciousness and self-interest, has come to dominate the industry[7]. Some of its cultural traits, such as the unreasonable responsibilization of individuals and the social distance from more disadvantaged classes, are directly related to late capitalism and are ethically problematic – in particular in an industry dedicated to disadvantaged people. However, even if we abstract ourselves from these specific traits, the very cultural specificity and the inwards character of this class, together with the growth of bureaucracy, are distorting and disrupting the relation in which we stand with the people we serve.
It is telling how a lot of industry trends on human relations, behaviour, vulnerability and emotion, such as leadership, active listening and mindfulness actually relate to our relation to ourselves or to fellow humanitarians, rather than the relation with affected populations. This is somehow relegated to the field of industry standards. Actually, it is not uncommon to hear humanitarian leaders denouncing atrocities by focusing on their own emotions, rather than the victims’: “XXX is shocked and greatly saddened by…”, “I am horrified to learn that…”, “XXX is outraged at the death…”, etc.[8]
An ethics of exposure
Let us say beforehand that this is not a general discussion on the ethics of humanitarian action. This overview has been done before, including also difficult aspects such as fairness and how to prioritize scarce assistance[9]. What I propose here is merely a course correction, a particular ethical angle that we believe needs much more attention than what has been hitherto the case. I believe, however, that the adoption of an ethics of exposure will also revert on the effectiveness and efficacy of aid, and therefore in our ability to achieve goals which are ethical in nature.
By ethics of exposure I understand that humanitarian workers must be open, sometimes in real time, to the effects of opinions, preferences, initiatives and even emotions of the people we serve. This means that dialogue between humanitarians and affected populations is not a mere exchange or collection of information, but is where things actually happen: creation of trust and social capital, negotiation, complaints, venting and confrontation but also joint decision-making[10]. This also means that affected populations gain at least some capacity to label and define us, the same as we do to them (as refugees, economic migrants, vulnerable persons). An ethics of exposure means simply that the relationship of humanitarians to the people we serve must integrate all the elements of healthy human to human relations.
An ethics of exposure contains, of course, an element of principle. It exposes the paradox that an increase in the professionalization and effectiveness of the humanitarian industry has also led to a progressive de-humanization of its relation to the people we serve. This is, in itself, wrong and in need of correction.
There is, however, no contradiction between this principle and professional effectiveness. People tend to trust those willing and able to have real conversations. This means conversations where we accept the possibility of being affected, changed: because we really pay attention[11], because we can be challenged, persuaded or confronted, and because we can change our opinion, perhaps in real time, and because we lose the fear of changing our opinion in public. This is what we understand by exposure.
Besides of being an ethical value in itself, exposure leads to trust, trust leads to cooperation and cooperation with affected populations leads to more efficient humanitarian outcomes. It will also lead to a much more nuanced, contextualized knowledge of the humanitarian situation and needs. This can only create more trust with affected populations, thereby setting off a virtous circle.
An ethics of exposure also means a wider concept of accountability. This entails humanitarian leaders responding to organized affected populations not only on a service provider-to-individual basis, but also on an organization-to-organization and person-to-person basis where the bonds of trust, cooperation, social capital and commitments made must also be accounted for. Giving an account is also explaining ourselves to someone whose respect we are bound to maintain[12]. Real accountability also necessitates external accountability, i.e. the possibility of being exposed to reputational risk by affected population when they deem this is the only avenue to change. This all entails the possibility of losing control. But so do all healthy human relations.
Applying an ethics of exposure
It goes without saying that decolonization of aid, as well as localization, are constitutive elements of a breaking up the wall between a humanitarian industry dominated by WEIRD humanitarians and affected communities. This means, among other, increasing the presence of local humanitarian workers among the managerial ranks of the industry – as a number of INGOs are currently doing.
The same can be said for more structural reforms such as more active decentralization. This would mean that humanitarian decision-making and coordination is more devolved to smaller territorial units, such as municipalities, where smaller local NGOs and organized affected communities can have more access[13].
Meaningful localization and decentralization of the industry will or will not happen in the near future. Even if it does, it is doubtful that it will benefit local NGOs, civil society and affected populations, rather than powerful States. It is also likely that class and cultural barriers, as explained above, will persist in the near future.
Thus, besides of these much needed structural reforms, we want to propose here three instances of action that would increase the common knowledge between the humanitarian industry and affected populations, as well as the amount and quality of dialogue among them. They refer to considering civil society among affected populations as a key element of accountability; to systematic localization of knowledge management; and to creating social capital beween humanitarians and affected populations.
No AAP without civil society
As we have pointed out above, much of current AAP doctrine follows the service provider-to-client model of the market economy, focused on accountability to individual users and largely shunning collective forms of participation, claiming of rights and external accountability. Considering civil society among affected populations as a key element of accountability would entail:
An attitude of professional and personal curiosity, research and acceptance to forms of collective organization of affected populations,
Considering community mobilization as recognized part of the humanitarian toolkit of humanitarian agencies and clusters,
Promoting active representation of organized affected communities in relevant humanitarian fora.
These ideas are far from being new, and have been more developed previously by the author[14]. They have, however, been obscured in practice by the adoption of a deeply individualistic market model. The short memories of the humanitarian industry as regards the multitude of successful past experiences also do not help. Despite rethoric around the Nexus, support to the emergence or representativity of civil society among affected populations is today considered as development work and rarely prioritized by humanitarian agencies, even in situations where it is quite feasible.
The three points mentioned above are, of course, an ethical and political minefield. There are open questions of neutrality, of the ethics of social engineering, of representation of the more disempowered population groups and on possible entrenchment of unequal social relations as regards e.g. gender and ethnic groups. However, these dilemmas exist to a no lesser extent already within the WEIRD-dominated humanitarian industry. There is actually no principle reason to believe that grassroots movements are less submitted to economic and political pressures than professional humanitarian organizations. At any rate, a culture of exposure, dialogue, and respect for context and local knowledge will certainly provide elements of judgement on with whom, when and how to form these partnerships.
On the other hand, there is a wealth of practice showing that in most cases, responses to ethical dilemmas of participation by grassroots movements are as much practical and context based as they are principle-based. Thus, they can often be overcome by empirical and listening-based learning about social organization, as well as practical solutions based on consensus and avoiding one size fits all solutions. Practice shows that effective participation often happens away from capitals, where doctrinal and policy-based discussions are largely shunned in favour of practical approaches based on local knowledge and experimentation.
Building participation certainly takes time. However, some myth-busting is also necessary here. First, the myth that even initial levels of participation are impossible in emergencies. Second, the myth that all humanitarian settings are emergencies. In many cases, as humanitarian situations mature and stabilize (or become entrenched) knowledge and practice is progressively accumulated which will enable for more in-depth participation. A progressive reduction of humanitarian bureaucracy and process will also certainly liberate valuable time to dedicate to this important goal.
Decolonization and localization of knowledge management
As we have shown above, knowledge management in the humanitarian industry is currently dominated by WEIRD humanitarians, either as professionals within humanitarian organizations or as specialized, standalone outfits. Whereas this may make sense in the first stages of an emergency, where ready-made systems are necessary, it becomes less and less reasonable as humanitarian situations mature.
It is, thus, not surprising that in recent years, specialized standalone organizations have also sprung up which compile data from secondary and – less frequently – primary sources and offer it to operational humanitarian organizations or clusters. Their operational models vary. Some try to acquire a recognized status as information providers in particular operations, which helps with external fundraising. Others seek contracts with humanitarian organizations to provide them with information. A relatively new type of organization, arising from AAP requirements, carry out consultations with affected populations and prepares reports on their views and preferences, under contract from operational organizations, clusters or coordinating bodies.
The phenomenon of subcontracting consultations with affected populations deserves particular attention. These consultations can nowadays be carried out by non-profits based on the Global North, with good access to the main headquarters of the humanitarian industry. No comment is being made here on the quality of their services. It is arguable, however, that their operational model is based on the extraction and marketing of information which, on occasion in unstructured form, is already in the hands of affected populations themselves.
At least in the mid-term, it makes much more sense to recognize and reinforce the abilities of these populations to collect, organize and transmit their preferences and needs. Other concurrent possibilities are working with local NGOs or academia, in particular those with long-term engagement with affected populations. These kind of alliances can be done pre-emptively by humanitarian organizations in disaster or conflict-prone areas. Besides of obvious advantages of proximity and localization, these actors will almost always be better placed to use information and analysis not only for programme development but also for advocacy purposes.
For the purposes of this article, a few practical steps towards localisation of knowledge management would be:
Intense networking and snowballing to identify existing informants or knowledge management structures within affected populations or local society, such as local think tanks, University departments or professors of social science among refugee populations,
A systematic preference for local actors (such as Universities) to conduct needs analysis, research and report-writing in humanitarian crises,
Working with development actors to pre-identify local knowledge management partners in countries prone to humanitarian crises.
Forming social capital with affected populations
It is an accepted principle of the humanitarian industry that WEIRD humanitarians actively network and socialize among themselves. This contributes to increasing trust and cooperation as well as professional advancement. For many humanitarian workers, this also constitutes a key element of well-being, a coping mechanism and even a mechanism of mental health in contexts which are often perceived as insecure, incomprehensible and even hostile. Often, a few educated, urban-based, English-speaking locals also integrate these circles. As we have explained above, there can be a transactional element here, whereby a few local actors gain privileged access to inside information, humanitarian decision-making and finance while providing localisation legitimacy to the industry. There is also an unwritten taboo in the industry, whereby humanitarian professionals are discouraged to relate informally to affected populations, citing issues of conflict of interest and power balance. Yet these issues may equally apply to relations within the industry.
The exclusionary character of these social and professional circles is, in itself, ethically questionable. But even when making abstraction of strictly ethical considerations, the practical downsides are considerable. Writing about corporations, Peter Drucker noted in 1955 that:
[I]t is the inside of the organization that is most visible to the executive. It is the inside that has immediacy to him. Its relations and contacts, its problems and challenges, its crosscurrents and gossip reach him and touch him at every point. Unless he makes special efforts to gain direct access to outside reality, he will become increasingly inside-focused. The higher up in the organization he goes, the more will his attention be drawn to problems and challenges of the inside rather than to events on the outside.
Given the interconnectedness of current humanitarian expatriate communities, it is quite straightforward to extrapolate Druker’s thinking to these circles. Thus, they often form self-contained epistemic bubbles. These bubbles often have two effects. One is to expand and intensify the substrate of culture, viewpoint and standard vocabulary through which WEIRD humanitarians view humanitarian crises. The second, is to entrench and provide quick endorsement (which, often, is as much social as it is professional) to received narratives about what the needs are and what the response should be, often in confirmation of the pre-adopted substrate mentioned above.
Social capital with persons of concern helps provide the direct access to “outside reality” Drucker mentions. It will facilitate not only quality information and informal participation, but also the necessary checks and balances provided by local knowledge. It will also quicken the perception by humanitarian management of subtle but crucial changes in the political and social environment (such as the consequences of elections) necessitating quick adaptive strategies such as preparedness or contingency planning.
There are, thus, all kind of reasons for humanitarians, and in particular humanitarian leaders, to form social capital with persons of concern. There are also clear synergies between local knowledge, promoting civil society as a means to accountability, and efforts by humanitarian leaders to form social capital with persons of concern. Supporting local knowledge also means working with local Universities, NGOs and affected populations to better understand the social tissue and organizational structures of affected populations. This will naturally support efforts for community mobilization and identification of structures and leaders with the necessary ability and legitimacy to represent affected populations in humanitarian decision-making bodies.
The bridge, then, to identify particular persons with whom humanitarian leaders will have interest in creating relationships of trust will then happen naturally. Besides of all the advantages in terms of access to local knowledge and checks and balances in terms of accountability, these kinds of processes also provide transparency as to with whom humanitarian leaders are creating informal relations of trust, and why. This helps allay any concerns as regards conflicts of interest, favouritism and lack of transparency.
Conclusions
Back in 2005, I was discussing with a local peasant during a short lull in the clashes between right-wing paramilitaries and ELN guerrillas, in the Colombian village of Micoahumado. He said “lo que necesitamos aquí es una intervención de los países internacionales” (what we need here is an intervention by the international countries). One may, of course, laugh at the simplicity of the peasant’s language. Or one can just admire the knife-sharp precision with which he described the, very current then, assimilation between a rules-based and a Western-led international order.
A lot of water has passed under the bridge at quebrada Arenal since then. The R2P doctrine has lost a lof of its power. Perhaps with it, humanitarianism has lost some of the focus on protection in armed conflict and mass human rights violations so prevalent twenty years ago. The fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan and the very unequal responses to the pandemic, as well as to the Syrian and the Urkranian refugee crises in Europe, have lost the West a lot of credibility. It has become trendy to speak about the “erosion of the international liberal order” and the loss of credibility of Western leadership in the Global South – including its biggest democracies[15]. From a far more critical perspective, a recent book has analysed the consequences of these developments to the humanitarian system, tracking in detail its complex and yet close linkages to the international liberal order and how they may be disrupted by recent developments[16].
There is no telling how these broad shifts will impact humanitarianism – the same as there was, back in 1989, no way to foresee the impact of the fall of the Berlin wall on the rise of the so-called “humanitarian interventions”. This said, no seasoned humanitarian has failed to perceive that a proven link to the international humanitarian industry no longer provides automatic credibility with authorities and affected people alike in the Global South: one has to work hard at building trust and showing results. Current efforts at building a more multi-polar rules-based world, as well as at decolonizing and localizing the humanitarian industry, may or may not succeed. But in the meantime, and from a more humble perspective, the degradation of relations between the industry and those we serve needs to be urgently addressed. This is an ethical imperative, both in terms of principle and in those of effectiveness of the industry. There is also hope that some real listening and dialogue with those we work for should yield a few clues on where the industry should head in the years to come.
[2] Social organization and representation of any community in policy-making is, of course, an extremely complex issue rife with ethical minefields and possible misuse of power. Yet multiple examples abound in humanitarian work. See https://josepzapater.net/index.php/2022/04/10/accountability-to-affected-populations-the-revolution-will-not-be-televised/
[3] See Mark Fisher, Capitalist realism: is there no alternative?, Zero Books, 2009.
[4] See, among other, Klaus Schwab, Peter Vanham, Stakeholder capitalism: A Global Economy that works for Progress, People and Planet, Wiley, 2021.
[5] The term is used here in its intuitive, common-language sense. It is, however, also useful to refer to Abraham Maslow’s definition of psychological security as “a feeling of confidence, safety and freedom that separates from fear and anxiety, and especially the feeling of satisfying one’s needs now (and in the future).” It is important to remember that in its well-known pyramid of needs, Maslow also included esteem and self-actualization.
[6] One of the most acute observers of human suffering, Simone Weil, noted that “Écouter quelqu’un, c’est se mettre à sa place pendant qu’il parle. Se mettre à la place d’un être dont l’âme est mutilée par le malheur ou en danger imminent de l’être, c’est anéantir sa propre âme. C’est plus difficile que ne serait le suicide à un enfant heureux de vivre. Ainsi les malheureux ne sont pas écoutés.”
[9] See, among other, Hugo Slim, Humanitarian Ethics: a guide to the morality of aid in war and disasters, Hurst & Company, 2015.
[10] Ethics founded on the principle that we exist only as related to others (with God coming in and out of the picture) is a well-known trend in XX century thought, with some basis on phenomenology. Important thinkers are Martin Buber, Simone Weil, Emmanuel Levinas and Franz Rosenzweig.
[11] Simone Weil has written eloquently how difficult it is to pay real attention to those affected by malheur – an untranslatable term pointing not only to suffering, but also to the soul-destroying effects of the persistence of injustice. To Weil, this kind of attention is a form of love that can be reach only through grace. Seasoned humanitarians can really profit from her definition of attention as love. At the same time, they will readily recognize that talking to affected people is an art that can also be learnt through respect, persistence and practice. The concept of attention relates also to liberation theologist Ignacio Ellacuría’s concept of hacerse cargo de la realidad. This also untranslatable term points to the twin duties of understanding and taking responsibility for social reality, in particular human suffering arising from injustice.
[12] Judith Butler has theorized on how exposure to the other “constitutes the conditions of my own emergence as a reflective being”. These reflections are quite fertile in showing how exposure to affected populations may constitute a key element in the self-analysis and reform of the humanitarian industry. See Judith Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself, Fordham University Press, New York, 2005.
[15] See, for instance, Can the West win over the rest?, The Economist, 13th of April 2023, and David Milliband, The World Beyond Ukraine, Foreign Affairs, May / June 2023 issue.
[16] See Juliano Fiori, Fernando Espada, Andrea Rigon, Bernard Taithe and Rafia Zakaria (eds.), Amidst the debris: humanitarianism and the end of the liberal order, Hurst & Company, 2021.
This is part I of a two-part article. The second part will be published on the 25th of April.
Introduction
The humanitarian industry is currently dominated by Western, educated knowledge workers. We share cultural traits and values, reaffirmed and amplified by the constant friction among ourselves – be it in fora in Western capitals, in coordination meetings, in social media or in international hotels in conflict-affected countries. The values we project (leadership, self-care, mindfulness, attention to vulnerability, resilience) share an uncanny familiarity with those promoted by the culture of late capitalism – in particular its more liberal recesses.
The industry has moved away from the epic humanitarianism of yore towards professionalisation. This has, in some aspects, strengthened transparency and effectiveness. It has also contributed to managerialism and bureaucratization. Entire humanitarian positions and even organizations are dedicated to serve the the industry itself, rather than directly delivering aid or protection. It is common to hear humanitarian professionals complaining that “we spend more time in meetings or behind desks than in dialogue with affected populations”.
Thus, the penetration of a very specific culture, the consequent lack of cultural diversity and the growth of bureaucracy are creating an invisible barrier with the people we serve. A lot of effort has been done over the last ten years to build accountability to affected populations (AAP). This is, currently, the choice mechanism to overcome this barrier. Yet current AAP models, following the private sector, focus on accountability to individuals for the delivery of services. Opportunities for social accountability, i.e. initiatives by organized communities holding us to account, are not given the same attention. The same can be said for structured participation in decision-making by civil society representing affected communities.
Localisation and decolonisation of aid is an obvious part of the solution. Yet it is doubtful that it will come to full fruition. Even if it did, barriers of bureaucracy, power, class and culture will remain between the industry and those we serve. To help overcome these barriers, I advocate in this article for the adoption of an ethics of exposure. This means that, for its own good, the industry must open itself to direct influence by the people we work for. This entails, among other, the systematic localisation of knowledge management. It demands also the consideration of civil society within affected populations as a key element of AAP. It calls for the breaking up of the current taboo about establishing social relations, or social capital, with affected populations. A culture of exposure also entails the valorisation of real dialogue to balance the industrialized and disembodied collection of information currently prevalent in the industry.
A few caveats are of the essence here. First, increasing funding gaps have led humanitarian agencies to rely more on the private sector and innovative finance. Notably, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has seen an increase in the proportion of private funding, and within it that of foundations, companies and corporations[1]. There is also increased interest in financing mechanisms with a for-profit component for private donors[2]. Humanitarian organisations have adapted their fundraising strategies accordingly. This might well be at the root of the permeability of the industry to the trends of late capitalism and its imperviousness to other modes of thinking. However, I am less interested here in describing its causes than in identifying its effects and how to overcome the most pernicious of them.
Second, it goes without saying that the humanitarian world is as complex and varied as society itself. Less visible elements of it, such as small volunteer organizations and self-help mechanisms among affected populations, are often the quickest and most effective. In this article, however, I refer specifically to the humanitarian industry. By this, I refer to a particular ecosystem of donors and large global organizations, mostly based in the Global North, with a good capacity for self-organization. This ecosystem purports to shape how aid globally functions. It is also particularly exposed to global cultural trends, including those originating in late capitalism.
Third, the ability of this system to influence how aid actually functions, down to the delivery point, has of course its limitations. Systems are slow to absorb changes, in particular when these have to go through several layers of implementation. Individual organizations need to adapt its own cultures, and may have of course varying levels of interest and willingness to do so. Frontline workers may misunderstand or oppose a new working culture. It is unclear how much organizational culture can shape operations in response to global trends. However, the recent emphasis of humanitarian organizations in organizational culture and change management, paralleling that of the private sector, strongly suggests that it can.
Finally, there is less judgement of value than it might appear in this article. There is a lot about the culture of late capitalism which is, in itself, pernicious. Suffice it to mention the responsibilization of humanitarian workers and communities for their own well-being which is inherent in the current abuse of mindfulness and resilience. However, I am here less concerned about these trends in themselves. They do, actually, contain a lot of good, in particular when cleansed from the patina of global corporate culture. Our concern is how their uncritical acceptance contribute to an epistemic bubble where the search for cultural credibility trumps listening, dialogue, critical thinking, attention to context, empiricism, local knowledge and the use of natural language. The same goes for AAP. It is obviously positive that affected persons can have channels for individualized requests and complaints. It is, however, less positive that the role of grassroots movements, civil society and external accountability is given short shrift in current AAP doctrine.
I. The rise of WEIRD knowledge workers
In 2020, evolutionary biologist Joseph Heinrich quite brilliantly (and polemically) described a category for the WEIRDest people on Earth: those raised in Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies[3]. According to Heinrich, we WEIRD people are individualistic, controlling, analytical, and self-focused. We tend to stick to impartial rules. We condemn those who break them in the name of context, flexibility or the interests of family or friends. We understand phenomena by simplifying and classifying them into pre-conceived categories. The more educated and urbanized non-WEIRD people become, the more they are likely to share their cultural traits.
When looking at Western-educated urban professionals, WEIRD people are best understood alongside the category of symbolic-analytic workers, developed by economist Robert Reich in 1992. Reich gave in 1992 an account of employment categories which seems to be even more directly applicable to the humanitarian industry[4]. Reich divided US employees into third layers:
Routine production, including blue-collar workers as well as routine information processing, such as data entry clerks,
In-person services, such as nurses and childcare workers,
Symbolic-analytic services, including high-level problem-solving and strategic-brokering activities. This layer includes, among other, public relations executives, lawyers, management information specialists, strategic planners and organization development specialists.
Symbolic-analytic workers, or knowledge workers as they are currently known, are highly educated generalists who evolve in an international marketplace. They are, mostly, white male university graduates, with a rising proportion of women and minorities. Their proportion of the global workforce has risen significantly since 1950. They share the following characteristics:
Their education level is higher than the average,
Their services are traded worldwide,
Networking and collaboration with teammates and peers is highly valued,
They have a generalist, adaptable profile adept at carrying out abstract tasks,
Most of their time is spent at working behind computers, in meetings or at the telephone,
They tend to cluster in specific geographic areas, creating new markets for new in-person services,
They tend to sacrifice critical imagination to career advancement,
They constitute a well-connected group, with a strong sense of community and identity, but are economically and socially seceding from the rest of society,
They are rarely in direct contact with the ultimate beneficiaries of their work.
Reich and Heinrich have not, to our knowledge, applied their attention to the humanitarian industry. This has been the task of anthropology. At least since the 90s, anthropologists have focused on the political economy of knowledge production at development agencies. Rosalind Eyben has pointed out at the general lack of exposure of development experts to local societies[5]. She has also underlined how the strong sense of community of development workers is part of the glue cementing common policy positions. Ian Harper, from his side, has noted the inherent parochialism of aid workers as opposed to the day-to-day cosmopolitanism of many locals[6].
The above-mentioned research underlines the strong cultural and even class traits of a quite particular group of people often seeing themselves as embodying cosmopolitanism. This can only increase the misunderstandings and distance towards populations, often seeing clearly through this paradox. Thus, these traits inevitably act as a powerful, if unseen, wall between WEIRD humanitarians and “local”, non-Western societies[7]. Let us now focus on how increasing managerialism and bureaucracy are compounding this trend.
II. The managerial revolution
Industry’s observers have long been mentioning a perception of increasing bureaucratization of humanitarian work. The report to the Secretary-General of the High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing mentioned concerns about efficiency and an existing perception of the humanitarian industry as a “self-serving bureaucracy”[8]. Rather pointedly, also in 2020 the annual meeting of the Grand Bargain signatories reflected on the need to downsize the bureaucracy created by this very process. Later in 2020, analyst Hugo Slim wrote about the evolution from charisma to bureaucracy in the humanitarian industry[9]. More recently, the Independent Review of the Implementation of the IASC Protection Policy noted the complexity and fragmentation of protection coordination structures, as well as their excessive attention to process.
Why does bureaucracy grow? Max Weber has long provided the orthodox explanation. Weber postulated that the increasing complexity and professionalization of companies and the State creates, in itself, the need for a managerial class to ensure the organization of work[10]. Also in a famous 1955 essay, Peter Drucker noted that the larger an organization becomes, the more resources need to be devoted to internal tasks such as coordination and circulation of information[11].
Contemporary to Drucker, a more cynical explanation of the growth of bureaucracy is given in Parkinson’s law, noting officials’ tendency to multiply subordinates and to create work for each other, such as in commenting and contributing to each others’ work[12].
The late anthropologist David Graeber gave in 2013 an alternative, rather unorthodox explanation. In a 2013 article on “bullshit jobs”[13], later expanded into a book[14], he said:
In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.
Graeber postulated that managerial feudalism, the need of persons in power to expand their base of subordinates, explains these “bullshit jobs”. He also pointed to fear of educated people with time in their hands, and a culture of work and self-exploitation as a value in itself. Graeber noted that jobs retaining a sense of purpose and status, such as doctors, designers and managers, are monopolized by a liberal, educated elite. This has fed growing resentment between this elite and productive workers, which as fed in turn the growth of populism.
As it was to be expected, Graeber’s work has triggered all kind of reactions. The Economist opposed the classical, weberian explanation of bureaucracy to Graeber’s claims[15]. Others have conducted empirical testing partially contradicting his thesis[16]. Yet even critics admitted that “Graeber’s work resonates with so many people who can relate to the accounts he gives”[17].
No empirical data exist, to our view, on humanitarians’ feelings on the usefulness and impact of their work. It is worth, however, looking at existing data as well as anechdotal evidence. Bioforce’s 2022 report on Humanitarian Professions noted that:
Humanitarians spend more time responding to compliance requests from donors,
Humanitarians work more closely with colleagues from other humanitarian profession areas,
They use remote management more and more,
They spend less time working on direct implementation and more time on coordination and capacity building with other organizations.
More anechdotally, it is revealing to look at the gentle “tug of war” between two Facebook groups popular among WEIRD humanitarians: 50 Shades of Aid and Humanitarian Clusterposting. The first one adopts overtly liberal values and serves as a discussion group for the concerns of humanitarian workers, including many Western expatriates, focusing often on labour conditions and mental health. The second one serves somehow as a black humour counterpoint. It posts memes about overwork, self-exploitation, bureaucratization, the paradox of combining virtue-signalling with distance from local societies and affected populations, and feelings of meaninglessness of work of humanitarian expatriates. It is difficult not to perceive here an uneasy cohabitation, among WEIRD humanitarians, of a growing class consciousness with the “spiritual damage” associated with performing very abstract yet well remunerated tasks.
Let us now look at a comparatively less studied phenomenon: the exponential growth of a services sector within the humanitarian industry. Akin to bureaucratization, this is contributing to an increased number of person-hours by humanitarian workers spent servicing the industry, rather than directly in delivering aid or protection.
III. The explosion of the services sector
The tertiary sector in the humanitarian industry
The increasing share of the services sector in advanced economies is a well-described phenomenon. Developing countries produce goods, whereas Western economies focus on services, both to individuals and to businesses. The growth of the services sector in market economies is characterized by the ceaseless identification and exploitation of market niches. Thus, tasks previously integrated in the same person or organization are split up to create separate professions or even organizations. The best example in market economies is the growth of big consultancies to help businesses manage change[18].
To our knowledge, no similar comparative data exists for the humanitarian industry[19]. However, it is noticeable the exponential increase, at least since the late 90s, in person-hours, jobs and standalone organizations servicing the industry itself, rather than directly delivering aid or protection. This phenomenon includes a growing percentage of time by humanitarian workers spent in reporting, coordination or managing change, such as the different workstreams arising from the Grand Bargain. It includes new professions wholly inspired by the private sector, such as risk management or compliance, and driven by an increasing exigence for accountability from donors. The ever increasing number of think tanks and consultancies analysing the effectiveness of the industry itself and producing annual reports is also part of this phenomenon.
Humanitarians as a niche market
The burgeoning expatriate humanitarian workforce is itself becoming a small but growing niche market for the services economy within the humanitarian industry. What is noteworthy is that this market is often serviced by consultants originating within the very workforce. I am referring here to the growing niche industry of leadership, coaching and mental health services for humanitarian workers. This industry encompasses a wide variety of subjects, with varying degrees of professional and scientific legitimacy. We will here focus on leadership training and mindfulness coaching, two of the fields whose links to the culture of late capitalism have been most commented recently.
Leadership training has been going through a profound transformation in recent years. This is driven by need for organizations to deal with long-term uncertainty, as well as the growing importance of relational skills and corporate culture. Leadership has also long been de-coupling from management skills, whereby the former points to specific attitudes which that all employees are expected to adopt. This attitudinal shift has brought leadership training closer to life coaching and even secular spirituality.
In a similar way, the humanitarian industry is paying increasing attention to the practice of mindfulness. The trend around mindfulness has been explained by the current anxiety crises prevalent in the Western world, the COVID pandemic and the long march of Buddhist doctrine and practice into a mass marketable and readily consummable product, tailored to adress the anxieties of modern life[20]. A perfect storm is created when we add the stresses prevalent in the humanitarian industry, and the current backlash against its traditional self-exploitation ethics, putting now the focus on care and compassion of self.
Thus, mindfulness training, together with related practices such as yoga, is increasingly on offer by specialized consultants within the humanitarian industry. Actually, leadership and mindfulness training, together with related fields such as professional and life-coaching, have become a career change of choice for mostly middle aged Western humanitarians, seeking to quit the strictures and frustrations of stricto-sensu humanitarian work.
The services industry as a vehicle for cultural transmission
The concepts and practice of leadership and mindfulness, at least as commonly marketed, do share, or perhaps arise from a number of values prevalent in modern Western society. They include the emphasis on personal attitude to achieve success and avoid suffering. They celebrate emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills. They foster the cultivation of social capital as a sine-qua-non condition for success and a studied avoidance of confrontation and of analysing structural causes of social problems or vulnerability. They also include the rise of an ethics of relations over an ethics of outcomes, whereas actions and attitudes are valued according to how they contribute to harmonic interpersonal relations, rather than achievement of results.
The current trends of leadership and mindfulness have been critiziced as ethical linchpins of neoliberalism. A leader combines institutional and personal authority, ability to persuade and being a role model of personal success through attitude. Thus, leaders become a useful vehicle for a culture valuing attitude, acritical respect of authority and relations over professional skill and attention to principle[21]. The concept of leader also has the advantage of sacralizing the personal authority of elites while being open to aspiration by the powerless.
Likewise, willingly or not, the current mindfulness market reinforces the prevalent medicalization of stress and responsibilization of the individual sufferer, rather than focusing on structural causes – such as exploitation, low salaries, faulty security measures or sheer bad management. The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek as gone as far as to label mindfulness as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism.
We have mentioned above the growth of a services industry providing training to humanitarian practitioners on these concepts and practices. Thus, this industry plays an important role in reproducing the values inherent in them. The career transition mentioned above from humanitarian worker to coach or trainer is far from easy. It takes courage, as well as years of persistent networking and presence in social media to build a client base. More importantly, coaches need to be seen as a legitimate personification of the values they transmit. Thus, they offer curated storytelling of their career change as a journey of self-discovery and resilience. Self-marketing comes with persistent pitching of particular values through personal contacts and social media. The particular economy of social media, whereby individual entrepreneurs trade recognition through the curated exhange of likes and quotations, only contributes to the reproduction of certain values as those acceptable in polite society, including that of WEIRD humanitarians.
With the above, we have had a cursory look at how the humanitarian industry has follow the path of the market economy in creating jobs that have less and less to do with direct delivery of goods. The self-referential aspect of these jobs acts also as a catalyst for the transmission of particular values, peculiar to late capitalism and disconnected from other realities. We will now look at how WEIRD humanitarians tend to use culturaly charged concepts not only to see ourselves but also those we serve.
IV. Through a glass darkly: vulnerability and resilience
A very specific set of concepts and practices have found widespread acceptance within the humanitarian industry. As we have seen above, they include the exercise of leadership and mindfulness by humanitarian actors. The same can be said to the understanding of vulnerability and the fostering of resilience among affected people. Irrespective of their instrinsic value, these concepts and practices act as cultural markers, contributing to the self-identification and worldview of WEIRD humanitarians. They have become ubiquitous in documents summarizing the situation of affected populations, delimitating priority groups and establishing priorities for intervention.
I am here not trying to make a case about the impact of these concepts on day-to-day work by humanitarians. I do not have the tools for it. Also, I do not posit that a majority of WEIRD humanitarians actually believe or practice these concepts. I am merely underlining how they have become accepted in mainstream discourse in the industry, and how they may owe quite a lot to the global culture of late capitalism.
The vulnerability-resilience pair
After the “end of history” optimism of the 90s, we live now, admitedly, in a world of insecurity, fragility and risk. The financial crises, the pandemic, the uptick in armed conflict and the growing crises of climate change only confirm this trend. It is telling that, already in 1986, German sociologist Ulrich Beck anticipated it. The pair vulnerability (the problem) and resilience (the solution) has often been touted as the choice response to fragility, from fields as diverse as philosophy, social sciences and public policy.
Thinkers such as Judith Butler and Martha Fineman have celebrated the so-called vulnerability turn as a challenge to neoliberal views of individuals as a self-contained entities, equal both in rights and in capabilities. Thus, the situation and needs of individuals can only be understood if we see them as “embedded in social relationships and institutions”. By the end of the 90s, a growing body of public policy was regularly calling for specific measures for “vulnerable groups” or persons, such as women, children and migrants[22].
The term “resilience” is perhaps even more ubiquitous. Originally rooted in systems theory, resilience can best be described as the ability of a system, such as a forest or a community, to adapt and absorb external shocks. Recently, it has been adopted as a key term by the World Bank, the UN, the IMF and the US Government in strategies ranging from the fight against poverty, climate change and national security. At the same time, it is now also widely used in pop psychology, self-help literature, marketing and social media.
Current criticism
The vulnerability-resilience pair has been widely critiziced, sometimes by the same authors celebrating the vulnerability turn[23]. Fineman has carefully warned that both vulnerability and resilience are not inherent qualities of persons of groups, but must be understood in their social and institutional context[24]. At the same time, Butler has adressed three important criticisms at the use of the concept of vulnerability:
It risks ignoring the agency of individuals and groups,
It is often co-opted by those in power, such as when white nationalists picture themselves as a discriminated group,
The romanticization of vulnerability as ability to open up[25].
As regards “resilience”, Sarah Bracke has pointed as how its usage has smoothly adapted from “systems” to “individuals”. In the way, the term, according to Bracke, has become a key component of neoliberal ethics of the self, whereby responsibility to respond and adapt to external threats is shifted to the individual[26]. Thus, tolerance of shocks such as natural disasters, pandemics, war and cuts in public services is constructed as a virtue. Bracke sees the promotion of these virtues also as a cultural mechanism for the post-colonial submission of the Global South. Brad Evans and Julian Reid have also shown how resilience results from the de-politicization of resistance, whereby we no longer resist the causes of shocks such as organized violence and climate change, but limit ourselves to try and survive them[27].
The pair “vulnerability-resilience” refers, in essence, to people’s own fragility and strength. It looks away from what happened to us, and who made it happen. This is consistent with a long-term move in the humanitarian industry away from facts, causes and culprits, focusing into mitigating consequences. Humanitarian practitioners will recognize this move in two often repeated experiences. One is the persistent misunderstanding in conversations with affected people, in which they want to tell us what happened, and we only want to hear how it affected them – trying already to fit it into pre-defined sectors. The second is the frequent feeling that human rights workers and journalists have consistently better information than protection officers about what happens to civilians in a frontline.
Marketing values
The celebration of resilience has fed a relatively recent trend in marketing techniques by large humanitarian agencies. With very few exceptions, long gone is the exclusive focus on conveying suffering and eliciting compassion, often depicting racialized children. Communication now often focuses on the equivalent of rags-to-riches stories: storytelling about personal journeys from refugee camps to higher echelons of society, often in the Global North, involving personal effort, sacrifice and self-motivation.
The move away from what has been dubbed as “poverty porn” is, of course, a welcome phenomenon. A few important things have, however, been lost on the way. Humanitarian marketing often focuses less on collective than on personal success, defined as rejoining the economic and social order as unquestionably accepted. It rarely involves successful stories of leadership or collective grassroots action to claim rights – which, quite paradoxically, often involve social leaders overcoming fear and suffering over long periods of time. Perverting Hannah Arendt’s dichotomy between refugees as “upstarts” and “conscious pariahs”, it is as the image we are selling is that of “conscious upstarts”. Victim-hood is still valid as an identity-building element. However, it functions now as a building block of the resilient label, rather than as a catalyst of collective identity and activism.
The concepts and practices mentioned above may well have a lot of good in themselves. There is nothing wrong in combining leadership with adequate managerial skills and ethical principles. At the same time, self-care, along with organizational responsibility, is a necessary component of humanitarian workers’ mental health. What is problematic, besides of the negative values they may also vehiculate, is the level of acritical acceptance within the humanitarian industry, amounting to cultural phenomenon. Culture is necessary as a cohesive element of industries and organizations, and also as a tool to understand the world in confused times. However, when not combined with reflection and respect for empirical reality, culture becomes a curse. This curse may well be contributing to the difficulties that WEIRD humanitarians experience to understand, relate and be accountable to those we serve.
Accountability to affected populations (AAP) has rightly been touted as a key concept and practice to improve in this field. Let us now see whether, in its current state, it suffices for these purposes.
[1] See Development Initiatives, Global Humanitarian Assistance report, available at https://devinit.org/resources/global-humanitarian-assistance-report-2022/donors-of-humanitarian-and-wider-crisis-financing/
[2] See notably Humanitarian investing – mobilizing capital to overcome fragility, World Economic Forum White Paper, available at https://www.weforum.org/whitepapers/humanitarian-investing-mobilizing-capital-to-overcome-fragility/.
[3] See Joseph Heinrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
[4] See Robert Reich, The Work of Nations, Vintage Books, 1992.
[5] See Rosalind Eyben, The Sociality of International Aid and Policy Convergence, as well as Ian Harper, World Health and Nepal: Producing Internationals, Healthy Citizenship and the Cosmopolitan, both at David Mosse (Ed.), Adventures in Aidland, Begahn Books, 2011. A couple of examples are useful here. One is how aid workers were mostly oblivious in Lebanon at transnational ties of Syrian refugees – be it pre-existing ties with Lebanese host communities, or with Syrian refugee communities in Istambul, Paris or Berlin. Quite similarly, few aid workers in Eastern Cameroon were familiar with transnational grassroots organizations working for the human rights of Mbororo people since well before the 2008 and the 2014 wars in the CAR. They became quite an important resource in understanding Mbororo society and the social hurdles of return to the CAR for Mbororo refugees.
[6] It is also worth noting how the so-called refugee crises in Europe has sparked renewed interest in the decolonization of knowledge production as regards forced migration. A good example is the Southern Responses to Displacement initiative. See https://southernresponses.org/.
[7] Contemporary ethicist Owen Flanagan has argued that the global cultural dominance of WEIRD people has contributed both to the dominance of their own traits, and their blindness to the ethical diversity of humanity. See Owen Flanagan, The Geography of Morals, Oxford University Press, 2017. Quite a lot of current and late XX century research in ethics and moral psychology is a reaction to the focus on male Western college sophomores in psychological research.
[18] See, for instance, Daniel Markovits, How McKinsey destroyed the Middle Class, The Atlantic, www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/how-mckinsey-destroyed-middle-class/605878/.
[19] The New Humanitarian has recently analysed the phenomenon of H2H (Humanitarian to Humanitarian) organizations. See Backroom aid: the groups helping behind the scenes, https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2022/10/11/H2H-NGOs-innovation-assistance.
[20] The beginnings of this process are traced by Erik Braun in his ground-breaking book The birth of insight: Meditation, modern Buddhism and the Burmese monk Ledi Sayadaw, The University of Chicago Press, 2013. A critical view of the linkages between the mindfulness trend and late capitalism can be consulted in Ronald Purser, The mindfulness conspiracy, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jun/14/the-mindfulness-conspiracy-capitalist-spirituality.
[21] See Mark Learmonth and Kevin Morrel, Leadership as a project: Neoliberalism and the proliferation of leaders, Organization Theory, 2021,
[23] It has been stated that a distinction is to be made between proper and popular or manipulative uses of terms such as resilience and vulnerability. See, for instance, Clare Flanagan-Smith, and Shayne Annet, Resilience: it’s not a fad. However, it can also be argued that, following the principle that meaning is use, the massive co-optation for ideological purposes of an otherwise serious concept incurably contaminates its meaning.
[25] See Judith Butler, Rethinking vulnerability and resistance, in Judith Butler, Zeynep Gambetti and Leticia Sabsay (eds.), Vulnerability in resistance, Duke University Press, 2016.
[26] See Sarah Bracke, Vulnerability and resistance in times of resilience, in Butler (2016).
We propose in this blog to analyze CSOs protecting or assisting forcibly displaced persons through a simple analytical framework composed of three parameters. It is to note that in we use here a fairly wide conception of CSO. It includes also community-based organizations (CBOs), refugee-led organizations and even small groupings of IDPs or refugees engaging in organized mutual help.
The last decade has seen a massive increase in doctrinal work on the issue of accountability of humanitarian actors to affected populations, coming from the IASC, the workstreams of the Grand Bargain, or individual humanitarian agencies. Pressure from donors continues to increase, and important progress is also registered in some operations. Yet, as signalled by a recent report by the Humanitarian Policy Group, “these efforts are all important, but they fall far short of a system-wide shift to ensuring that humanitarian responses are more demand-driven”[1].
The border municipality of Arsal, situated in North Bekaa,
is host to some 32,000 Syrian refugees- the second largest figure of any cadaster
in Lebanon. Both Arsalis and refugees live under difficult conditions. The town
has a history of being marginalized from investment and public services, and
has been affected by the Syrian conflict more than any other municipality in
the country.
Lebanon, host to some 1,3 million Syrian refugees, has been for a few months in the grip of a very deep financial and economic crises. The Lebanese lira, officially pegged to the dollar, has lost nearly 30% of its value since August 2019 in the informal exchange rate. Scarcity of hard currency is hitting hard key imports, vital in an import-dependent economy. The economic recession is estimated to be at 7% for 2019. Local economists estimate at 20 billion dollars the package needed to rescue the economy, while according to the new finance minister, 4 to billion dollars are urgently needed for imports of wheat, fuel and medicine.
The 2016 Grand Bargain for humanitarian work included a commitment to increase support and inclusion of national and local partners in humanitarian response. How has this worked out for UNHCR in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon, where we work with some 350,000 Syrian refugees? We have taken a number of measures to increase support and inclusion, including holding as much meetings as possible in Arabic, and establishing separate, dedicated mechanisms to reach out to local NGOs, also in Arabic. I want, however, to concentrate here in our partnerships with national NGOs for the delivery of protection and assistance.
Allegations and evidence of sexual misconduct and cover ups by aid workers and organizations, including Oxfam, other NGOs as well as the UN, have recently created a storm of criticism and accusations of hypocrisy, exploitation and colonialism against the aid sector. Public financing is being lost and thousands of citizens are withdrawing their support to their charities of choice. Oxfam chief has claimed that the attacks on the organization “are out of proportion to the level of culpability”, hinting at an anti-aid agenda behind the attacks – thereby unleashing a secondary wave of criticism.
