Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Entwicklung und Humanitäre Hilfe
Workshop (EN)
03.10.2024 | 09:00 – 16:30 | L’office, Schottenfeldgasse 85/1, 1070 Vienna
Neo-colonial legacies manifest themselves as systemic inequalities in the humanitarian sector. What we can do to make the humanitarian sector more inclusive and locally led, and how can we shift power by shifting control from centralised organizational decision-making in the Global North to a more dispersed set of actors?
„Western norms“ can lead to a hierarchy of knowledge being exported from the global North to the ‚field‘ and rewarded over local knowledge and experience. The division of humanitarians into locals, volunteers and internationals hierarchises humanitarian actors and their knowledge along lines of coloniality, reinforced by intersecting institutional barriers and privileges (e.g. in terms of evacuation plans, access to training, payment, social security, benefits, etc.).
The Indian scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is one of the best known feminist researchers from the Global South who criticized that ‚subaltern women‘ have been ‚muted‘ by their colonial/neo-colonial counterparts and that this leads to ‘speaking for’ the ‘oppressed’ subject, such that the subject undergoes a ‘re-presentation’.
„This means the subject is not presented as they are, but rather presented again through the colonial/neo-colonial gaze of another. […] This is sometimes witnessed, for example, in humanitarian reporting, when we read entire reports or articles about specific humanitarian actions or initiatives, but the only voice carried through is that of the humanitarian ‘reporter’ or organization, perhaps with one or two de-contextualized, short pull quotes from affected people themselves, often focusing on their victimization and/or their gratitude for the provided support. As such, the humanitarian report is not reflecting what an affected person said; it is what the humanitarian(s) took away from the interaction. The initial voice is muted, and the humanitarian speaks for the affected person.“ Saman Rejali [1]
„This means the subject is not presented as they are, but rather presented again through the colonial/neo-colonial gaze of another. […] This is sometimes witnessed, for example, in humanitarian reporting, when we read entire reports or articles about specific humanitarian actions or initiatives, but the only voice carried through is that of the humanitarian ‘reporter’ or organization, perhaps with one or two de-contextualized, short pull quotes from affected people themselves, often focusing on their victimization and/or their gratitude for the provided support. As such, the humanitarian report is not reflecting what an affected person said; it is what the humanitarian(s) took away from the interaction. The initial voice is muted, and the humanitarian speaks for the affected person.“
If ‚localisation‘ fundamentally challenges the hegemonic nature of the international humanitarian system and its understanding of humanitarianism, and instead moves towards a plurality of humanitarian actors and knowledge, it can be a means towards decoloniality and has the potential to improve humanitarian assistance, reduce inequalities and power asymmetries within the sector.
The training will look at what ‚anti-colonial‘ can mean in this context. It will explore what we can learn from the business sector and how we can promote ownership, agency and autonomy, especially among those who have historically been in the role of ‚recipients‘ of aid or ‚beneficiaries‘ of programmes, so that affected people feel that the services provided to them are programmed with them, with their input and according to their needs, without being labelled as ‚vulnerable‘, ‚helpless‘, ‚disempowered‘ or ‚victims‘.
Ivan Atuyambe is a South-South and Triangular Transnational Cooperation Practitioner and Pan African Thought Leader on Youth Governance, Voice, Participation, Equity and Opportunity. His contributions extend beyond youth voice and participation to include delivering high-level technical assistance and capacity enhancement missions for non-state actors globally, curating and hosting high-level Pan-African research, thought leadership and stakeholder engagement initiatives to transform Africa. Notable are his roles as the Task Team Leader for the African Dignity Index—towards a measure of human dignity on the African continent (www.adi.africa).
[1] Race, equity, and neo-colonial legacies: identifying paths forward for principled humanitarian action by Saman Rejali, July 16, 2020. Accessed on: blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2020/07/16/race-equity-neo-colonial-legacies-humanitarian
