The Power of Ideas: Muslim Humanitarians and the SDGs (HUMA)

While humanitarian needs are increasing, traditional funding for humanitarian aid is diminishing. This requires new partnerships for development and humanitarian aid, recognized in SDG 17, and endorsed by the Norwegian government’s policy.

The United Nation’s Agenda 2030 – setting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - calls for new, global partnerships for sustainable development (SDG 17), recognizing the significance of including private and public, secular and religious actors.  Actors who have earlier been skeptical of universalist agendas (such as human rights), including Muslim humanitarian actors, have now endorsed Agenda 2030. The SDGs thus appear to have broader acceptance than did earlier global agendas. In order to take the global partnership for development seriously, it is vital to understand this rapidly changing humanitarian landscape and how the whole range of humanitarian actors are working.

Project summary

The HUMA project sets out to understand how Muslim humanitarian actors relate to, interpret and respond to the SDGs, focusing on SDG 4 (education), SDG 5 (gender equality) and SDG 17 (global partnerships). The project will shed light on often unspoken differences in ideas, norms and values that underlie humanitarian operations, policies and practices. Through our focus on ideas, norms and values, HUMA contributes to theorizing norms and normativity in the humanitarian field beyond Western-dominated perspectives. 

We do this through a focus on Muslim humanitarian actors’ work in (i) humanitarian relief; (ii) the provision of education and (iii) how gender equality agendas are implemented. The HUMA project will juxtapose perspectives from Muslim humanitarian actors operating on the global institutional level, with those working locally with implementation of humanitarian assistance in the field.