Comment archive

Friday, 14 Jul 2023
AI in Aid: Framing Conversations on Humanitarian Policy

Kristin Bergtora Sandvik and Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert identify a problematic lack of engagement with AI in the humanitarian strategies of donor countries and offer a set of pointers for framing conversations on AI in aid policy. At present, no major donor country engages extensively with artificial intelligence in their humanitarian ...

Friday, 17 Feb 2023
Governance and Survival after the Earthquake: The Political Complexities of Humanitarian Assistance

The earthquake in Turkey and Syria on 6 February is tragic beyond what we are able to fathom. The World Health Organization’s Europe branch has labelled the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and a secondary 7.6 magnitude aftershock as the region’s “worst natural disaster” in 100 years. By 17 February, there have ...

Friday, 10 Sep 2021
Broadening the Concept of Humanitarian Accountability

Since the 1990s, Western humanitarian organizations have increasingly been concerned with developing tools to assess the efficiency of aid delivery, to establish minimum standards and benchmarks for aid projects, and to convincingly communicate their organizational transparency and accountability to stakeholders. As an extension of these debates, attempts have been made ...

Monday, 12 Jul 2021
Humanitarian Biometrics in Yemen: The complex politics of humanitarian technology

The introduction of biometrics in Yemen is a prime example of challenges related to the use of biometric solutions in humanitarian contexts. The complexity of the situation in Yemen needs to be acknowledged by policy makers and other stakeholders involved in the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the country. The humanitarian ...

Thursday, 3 Jun 2021
Russia Readying for Compromise on the UN Humanitarian Aid to Syria

The UN Security Council is due to make a decision on a particular and particularly controversial issue pertaining to the humanitarian disaster in Syria by July 10, and Russia positions itself as the key part of the problem and a necessary contributor to a solution. The discord in the UN ...

Sunday, 11 Oct 2020
A Nobel for the WFP: A Non-Political Peace Prize for Humanitarian Multilateralism?

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the World Food Program for its “efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and ...

Thursday, 30 Jul 2020
The Politics of Humanitarian Aid to Myanmar

I felt like I had defeated the dictators when I walked out of Yangon’s Mingeladon airport for the first time, more than 20 years ago. Unnoticed, I had sneaked out of the queue and avoided the mandatory exchange of three new, unfolded, and spotless 100-dollar bills into the FEC monopoly ...

Monday, 20 Apr 2020
Context matters – Why Africa should tailor its own measures to fight COVID-19

This piece is part of our blog series Beyond the COVID Curve. COVID-19 has quickly changed everything from our daily routines, to the policies of governments, to the fortunes of the global economy. How will it continue to shape society and the conditions for peace and conflict globally in the near ...

Thursday, 16 Apr 2020
Humanitarian Wearables and the Future of Aid in the Global Data Economy

Kristin Bergtora Sandvik examines the politics of humanitarian wearables to understand more about how digitization is reshaping the nature and relations of aid. Utopian visions for change The rise of a global data economy has engendered intense engagements with new patterns of digital extraction and surveillance, giving rise to terms such as ‘data ...

Tuesday, 7 Jun 2016
African Drone Proliferation: The Meaning of Leapfrogging

The ongoing drone proliferation throughout Africa has received little critical attention. However, African drone proliferation has become a vehicle for the production and distribution of forms of legitimacy and of resources that have implications for drone proliferation both within and outside Africa.  More specifically, the percep­tion of Africa as being ...

Monday, 23 May 2016
The Humanitarian Quest for Accountability: Examining the role of UNHCR

The European refugee crisis has been a difficult experience for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). On the one hand, UNHCR has been criticized by civil society and the humanitarian community for not being present on Greek islands. On the other hand, the organization has experienced difficulties in ...

Monday, 9 May 2016
Insecurity in the Humanitarian Cyberspace: A Call for Innovation

Humanitarian practitioners and scholars are currently struggling with how to analyse the opportunities and challenges of technological innovation. This includes not only what technological innovation can do for humanitarianism but also what it does to humanitarian action. Over the last two decades, innovations have fueled the creation of a humanitarian ...

Tuesday, 1 Dec 2015
Attacks on Humanitarian Aid Workers: Five New Findings

More aid workers are being targeted in violent attacks than ever before, but the roots of humanitarian insecurity have nuanced and surprising causes. Syria. Afghanistan. Mali. Central African Republic. Today’s complex conflicts seem to be defined by insurgents, terrorist groups and other violent actors with ideologies that increasingly disregard the ...