In 2015, the Norwegian Refugee Council met Steve Dennis, a Canadian aid worker, in Oslo District court to litigate the extent of their humanitarian duty of care.
Over the last decade, the NRC has gone through a period of exceptional growth and has evolved to become one of the humanitarian sectors most well-known and respected actors. Despite this prominence, there is no critical academic engagement with the organization’s work or its institutional culture. The new article 'Humanitarians in court: how duty of care travelled from human resources to legal liability' tells the story of how a 2012 kidnapping in Dadaab refugee camp in Northern Kenya ended up in a Norwegian courtroom, how the NRC was found grossly negligent, and what happened afterwards.