New essay: "Dictates of Conscience and the Humanitarian System"

New article about two recent books on the ethics of disaster relief work in Humanity at UPenn Press. Thrust of my argument is that however essential political neutrality seems to aid agencies it is not only illusory (already widely accepted) but that it also enables elite disinvestment and disregard of social contract. 

"From the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit emerged a formal push for a greater localization of emergency response to minimize substitution for local actors and to balance the North/South playing field of donors and receivers. This is the technocratic equivalent of the far older sentiment that aid personnel should “work themselves out of a job.” A laudable aim, and official commitments to correct the asymmetry of dependency on outsiders for relief are long overdue. But simply decreeing that a greater share of palliative care should come from recipient nations misses the chance to call out the primary driver of these crises, their root cause. Where are the public institutions and leaders with direct responsibility for citizen welfare? How can their criminal neglect escape recrimination and corrective action, year after year? These are modern nation states with UN membership, capable of sending their highest envoys to participate in the World Humanitarian Summit and the World Economic Forum.

Little wonder, then, at the widespread suspicion among populations receiving “apolitical aid” that this neutrality coincidentally serves humanitarian neediness and elite interests equally well. Blithely ignoring their social contract, national leaders guarantee humanitarians their “greater good.” This symbiosis is the status quo most legible to local communities. How can relief agencies, in good conscience, do little to address local drivers of misery, calling out failed institutions and cynical leadership? “Do No Harm” may be sacrosanct but is its consequence and corollary—”Leave No Trace”—at all defensible? Decrying aid industry inaction, a form of complicity, by figures outside the system is urgently needed for greater accountability, because internal reform efforts like that of the World Humanitarian Summit are technocratic, averse to radical revisions. Slim’s and Malkki’s works represent small but valuable contributions in this regard."