The New Humanitarian (The New Humanitarian)

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster - placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives.

Today’s essay was written and read out by Liban Mahamad. He is a freelance journalist and writer from Somalia. In his essay, Liban looks at the limitations of international aid in Somalia, and in particular at how its short-termism risks perpetuating a cycle of need for millions of Somalis. Liban’s recording also features the natural sounds of Dolow in southern Somalia, where he recorded his essay:

The New Humanitarian

For as long as the international humanitarian sector has existed, its top jobs have been overwhelmingly occupied by white Western men.

And yet, most of the people affected by their decisions come from the global majority.

One, rarely exercised, tactic to address this power differential is for Western leaders to step aside or be willing to turn down coveted top positions in favour of historically marginalised leaders – especially those whose lived experience gives them a better understanding of the very issues international organisations aim to address.

Co-hosts Heba Aly and Melissa Fundira are joined by two guests who voluntarily relinquished their roles in efforts to make way for more representative leadership. They reflect on the defining moments that led to their decisions, how they prepared their exits, the triumphs and disappointments that followed, and how the sector as a whole can operationalise “stepping aside” as a tactic to shift power. 

Guests: Ignacio Packer, Executive Director of the Initiatives of Change Switzerland Foundation and former  Executive Director of the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA); Diana Essex-Lettieri, consultant and former Senior Vice President of Asylum Access.
____

Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.
____

SHOW NOTES

• Ignacio Packer on changing aid leadership: Privilege, power, and leaving ICVA
• Ten efforts to decolonise aid
• From refugee inclusion to shifting power
• UN aid chief seeks more focused and inclusive humanitarian efforts
• The next UN humanitarian chief should be picked on merit
• Offboarding: The Diplomatic Way To Achieve Critical Board Turnover

A Mercy Corps staff member describes life in the sliver of southern Gaza where 1.2 million people are sheltering in desperate conditions.

The author’s name is being withheld for safety given the security situation in Gaza. Their First Person essay is read out by The New Humanitarian's Freddie Boswell.

This essay was written before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to prepare plans for a ground invasion of Rafah and for the ‘evacuation’ of the population from the area. With nowhere left for people to flee in Gaza, there is growing international alarm about the humanitarian impact of an assault.

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster - placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Find more first-person stories at TheNewHumanitarian.org

Palestinian-American writer and journalist Mariam Barghouti joins host Ali Latifi to discuss how both mainstream media and aid policy help muffle Palestinian perspectives.  

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable truths around the world’s conflicts and disasters.

From new conflicts in Gaza and Sudan, to flood disasters in Libya and East Africa, to earthquakes in Morocco, Syria, and Türkiye, humanitarian crises around the world drove more than 350 million people to need help in 2023. While funding to address those needs reached record levels, so too did the funding gap. Only a third of the $57 billion that humanitarians appealed for this year was actually received – the largest shortfall in years.

For the last episode of 2023, we reflect on the year that’s been, Rethinking Humanitarianism-style. Which events have forced a rethink in aid? Have any lines been drawn in the sand? And how has 2023 been a turning point in the way aid is delivered?

Co-hosts Heba Aly and Melissa Fundira convene a roundtable for a wide-ranging discussion on everything from humanitarianism’s more prominent role in the climate agenda, to shifting ideologies on neutrality and mutual aid networks, and of course funding.

Guests: Nazanine Moshiri, senior analyst (Climate, Environment & Conflict, Africa) at the International Crisis Group; Irwin Loy, senior policy editor at The New Humanitarian; Dustin Barter, senior research fellow at ODI’s Humanitarian Policy Group

____

Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.

____

SHOW NOTES

• Inklings | The Gaza effect, 2024 budgets, obscure acronyms
• What happened on COP28’s big humanitarian day?
• Myanmar, Gaza, and why it’s time for humanitarian resistance
• For some aid workers, internal Gaza tensions unearth long-overdue debates
• How mutual aid in Sudan is getting international support
• Why the Africa Climate Summit can’t afford to overlook conflict
• Global Humanitarian Overview 2024: UN launches $46 billion appeal for 2024 as global humanitarian outlook remains bleak

*This episode was originally published on November 9, 2023.

Palestinian peace activist Nivine Sandouka discusses the difficult way forward for building trust between Israelis and Palestinians. Hosted by Irwin Loy.

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. 

When danger comes, foreign aid workers are often flown out, leaving behind local staff to risk their lives. Othman Moqbel is the CEO for Action for Humanity, an international aid agency trying to provide protection equally to all staff. 

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters.

At the European Humanitarian Forum, The New Humanitarian's CEO Heba Aly moderates a panel on principled humanitarian action in Ukraine.

Today’s First Person story comes from Fatma Jaffar, a Yemeni humanitarian worker and the policy and advocacy lead for Oxfam Yemen. Fatma describes the dire humanitarian situation in her country and how Yemenis have kept each other alive throughout nine years of war.

The ongoing conflict in Yemen is featured in The New Humanitarian’s annual list of ten crises that demand your attention now, which highlights places in the world where needs are rising, aid budgets are cut or insufficient, and where people feel forgotten by the international community. Over the coming months, our First Person series will feature aid workers and people affected by the crises on this year’s list.

On the nine-year anniversary of the war in Yemen, The New Humanitarian also launched The Yemen Listening Project, which highlights stories from more than 100 Yemenis answering one question: “How has the war impacted your life?

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster - placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Find more first-person stories at TheNewHumanitarian.org

In the final episode of Season 2 of the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast, host Heba Aly sits down with UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths to discuss his priorities in the role, how he intends to address unequal power dynamics in the aid sector, the increasing influence of donors, and why humanitarians should push back against an ever-expanding scope of activity.

The effects of the war in Ukraine continue to ripple across the globe. We are near the point of no return for those on the front lines of the climate crisis. Soaring public debt is preventing governments from being able to prepare for crises. These trends are shaping the world – and humanitarian needs – in 2023. But what are policymakers doing about them?

Listen to policymakers from both donor and national governments as they discuss their priorities for the year ahead with civil society representatives in this online conversation hosted by The New Humanitarian on 13 January.

—————

If you have thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org.

SHOW NOTES

• Trends driving humanitarian crises in 2023 (and what to do about them)
• Key humanitarian aid policy trends to watch in 2023
• Why these 10 humanitarian crises demand your attention now

Leaders from the political and business world gathered in Davos, Switzerland in late May for the annual World Economic Forum, where the war in Ukraine topped the agenda. Since the start of the Russian invasion, companies have donated more than $1.4 billion in cash to support the humanitarian response, in addition to many other forms of assistance.

In this special episode, host Heba Aly explores whether the crisis in Ukraine is a game-changer for private sector engagement in humanitarianism.

Guests: Valerie Beaulieu, Adecco; Kareem Elbayar, Connecting Business Initiative.

India’s incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been accused of hate speech against Muslims during the election campaign. But Harsh Mander, a writer and peace worker, tells host Ali Latifi that Muslims are being mistreated and discriminated against at all levels of civil and political society. With results looming, he warns that Modi’s India is starting to head in the direction of Nazi Germany. 

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. 

To what extent are massive relief operations contributing to climate-related crises?

In this episode, TNH CEO and podcast host Heba Aly discusses the findings of The New Humanitarian’s eight-month investigation into the size of the aid industry’s carbon footprint. We also hear from two aid organisations trying to green their operations. 

Guests: Journalist Léopold Salzenstein explains the TNH investigation. Kathrine Vad, climate change adviser at the ICRC, and André Krummacher, vice CEO of impact and accountability at ACTED, offer perspectives from two aid organisations faced with the challenge of trying to cut emissions.

For one week every year, some of the world’s richest business people and most powerful politicians descend on the Alpine ski town of Davos, Switzerland. They’re here for the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, which bills itself as the premiere global forum for the public and private sectors to join forces to “drive tangible, systemic change for the future”. 

But systemic change would require them to give up some of their wealth and power, like paying their fair share of taxes, or ending the stranglehold a few, mostly Western countries have over the UN’s Security Council. All the proposals for a more equitable world order that we’ve heard on this season of the podcast depend on those who have power giving some of it up. Are they willing to do so? 

Critics say the global elite’s eagerness to solve the world’s problems lasts only as long as the solutions don't threaten their said wealth and power.

So how are movements to reshape global governance landing with those who represent the status quo? And can advocates and campaigners for change ever really sway the global elite?

Host Heba Aly takes the pulse at Davos to find out. 

Hear from UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, Opens Society Foundations President Mark Malloch Brown, former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark, president of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation Vilas Dhar, director general of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation Patricia Danzi, and others.

—————

If you have thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org.

SHOW NOTES

• Director’s Dispatch: Aid and the elite
• Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years | Oxfam International
• UN boss to Davos: You’re the problem | POLITICO

Ala Majid Khayrullhah, a medical student and climate activist, shares what he witnessed in Libya a month after the devastating floods. 

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster - placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Find more first-person stories on TheNewHumanitarian.org

Exiled from a country plagued by decades of civil war, allegations of genocide and ethnic cleansing, and limits on basic democratic rights, Maung Zarni, an academic, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace prize nominee, explains why the Rohingya cannot rely on protection from within the country. “I'm Burmese myself,” he tells host Ali Latifi. “We have proven incapable of maintaining peace and stability in our own country for the last 75 years”. 

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. 

An economic crisis, compounded by COVID-19 and the 2020 Beirut port explosion, has left middle-class families in Lebanon without food, medicine, and fuel. They are now depending on NGOs to get by. 

In this episode, host Heba Aly looks at how humanitarians are being confronted with a new category of needs, and how it’s changing the way they have to respond.  

Guests: Maya Terro of FoodBlessed, Nana Ndeda of Save the Children

Traditional funding can’t keep up with the growing amounts of humanitarian aid dollars needed to help people in crises around the world.

In this episode, host Heba Aly speaks to three organisations who are meeting the funding crunch head-on by actively experimenting with different ways of financing their humanitarian programmes.  

Guests: Jahin Shams Sakkhar of Uttaran, Juan Coderque of the ICRC, John Kluge of Refugee Investment Network.

Even before Israel’s current siege, 80% of Gazans relied on international humanitarian aid for survival, according to the UN. But under international law, it’s the occupying power’s responsibility to provide food, shelter, medicine, and other essential needs.

Have aid agencies historically let Israel off the hook by failing to challenge the very thing that creates the need for aid in the first place: Israel’s occupation? And if decades of humanitarian response in the region have failed Palestinians thus far, as some argue, but halting it would be catastrophic, as others say, then how should aid agencies pivot?

Guests: Yara Asi, assistant professor in the School of Global Health Management and Informatics at the University of Central Florida, co-director of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, US Fulbright scholar to the West Bank; Chris Gunness, former UNRWA spokesperson

____

Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.

____

SHOW NOTES

• Aid to Palestinians has failed. Here's how to fix it.
• In freezing aid to Palestinians, donors trample a well-worn path
• What's Unsaid | The media's silencing of Palestinians
• Prior to current crisis, decades-long blockade hollowed Gaza's economy, leaving 80% of population dependent on international aid | UNCTAD
• Responding to the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza: Damned if you do... Damned if you don't!

Refugees International, The New Humanitarian, and Asylum Access hosted an event on the sidelines of the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva for a candid conversation about how to truly include refugees in the policy decisions that shape their lives.

SPEAKERS

• Sana Mustafa, Asylum Access CEO (moderator)
• Ana Maria Diez, President of Coalición por Venezuela and Fellow at Refugees International
• Matai Muon, South Sudanese refugee and graduate student
• Mohammed Naeem, Deputy Director of Strategy and Partnerships at American Immigration Council, and Advisor on the U.S. Refugee Advisory Board
• Farhad Shamo Roto, Founder of Voice of Ezidis and Fellow at Refugees International
• Hafsar Tameesuddin, Co-Secretary General, Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN)

 ____

Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.

 ____

 SHOW NOTES

• Flipping the Narrative
• The roots of the refugee protection system are colonial and racist by Sana Mustafa
• Let refugees be economic contributors by Matai Muon

Are more equitable trade policies possible at a time many countries are turning to protectionism?

Why have developing countries and emerging economies not benefited as much from the globalised trade architecture as multinational corporations and international investors? And what needs to change for global trade to be more equitable?

This episode of Rethinking Humanitarianism explores whether a re-imagined global trading system could reduce aid needs in the Global South. 

Guests: Nick Dearden, Director Global Justice Now; Gyude Moore, former Liberian Minister of Public Works and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development. 

A project to turn Kenya's refugee camps - some of the largest in the world - into self-reliant communities where refugees can live, work, and set up businesses among their local hosts was recently launched.

Host Obi Anyadike asks Victor Nyamori, a researcher and adviser for Refugee and Migrants’ Rights at Amnesty International, what he thinks of this idea, dubbed the Shirika Plan. Given his work on legal protection for Kenya’s refugees in Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps, is he optimistic that it will improve their lives?  

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. 

The major part of the humanitarian response at the Poland-Belarus border is provided by volunteers. 

In this episode, host Heba Aly speaks to a Polish activist leading the voluntary humanitarians, and the UN Refugee Agency on their role when it comes to providing humanitarian assistance in Europe.   

Guests: Anna Alboth, Polish activist with Grupa Granica and the Minority Rights Group; Christine Goyer, Poland representative of UNHCR.

Young girls and women are leading the way in driving systemic change, and supporting their communities, but a new report, titled “We need to know the humanitarian sector stands with us”, shows the extent to which they’re being overlooked and underfunded – and makes a plea directly to the sector to change this. The report’s co-author Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah tells host Obi Anyadike that “a real revolution” is required.

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. 

For the first time in the COP summits’ nearly 30-year history, a call for climate reparations championed by the world’s most vulnerable nations has made it onto the official agenda. 

It’s formally called loss and damage, and it entails payouts from developed countries (who have profited the most from burning fossil fuels) to developing countries (who are suffering the worst from the impacts of climate change). 

Will this notion be accepted by rich countries? Or will political realities and developed countries’ reticence water down the original vision of loss and damage?

As COP27 unfolds in Egypt, host Heba Aly unpacks the prospects for loss and damage financing, as well as other avenues to improve global governance of climate financing for the most vulnerable – from debt restructuring to climate claims at the International Court of Justice. 

Hear from The New Humanitarian’s policy editor, Irwin Loy, and our Latin America editor-at-large, Paula Dupraz-Dobias, reporting from COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.

—————

If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org. 

SHOW NOTES

• Loss and damage: Views from the ground at COP27
• A humanitarian lens on COP27: Loss and damage, debt relief, and climate justice
• Q&A: Behind the push to bring the climate crisis to court
• Oh FFS: A guide to climate change acronyms
• The Barbadian Proposal Turning Heads at COP27 | Foreign Policy
• Climate disaster aid scheme ‘Global Shield’ launched at COP27 | The Guardian

What is a humanitarian crisis, as it’s commonly understood? What’s the historical weight of that term? What happens if we change our common understanding of it?

It may seem like a game of semantics, but the answers to those questions are more consequential than we may realise, because they reveal something deeper about who we believe will perpetually be an underclass, what’s deserving of an urgent reaction, and who we see as capable of providing humanitarian assistance.

These are questions Patrick Gathara has been contending with as The New Humanitarian’s first Senior Editor for Inclusive Storytelling. On the season 4 premiere of Rethinking Humanitarianism, co-hosts Heba Aly and Melissa Fundira speak to Gathara about the colonial weight of the term ‘humanitarian crisis’; why events in the Global North are rarely described as such; and how the definition of a crisis can mask – or perpetuate – the deeper systemic injustices that lead to crises in the first place.

Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.

Guest: Patrick Gathara, The New Humanitarian’s Senior Editor for Inclusive Storytelling

How are mass surveillance, biometric data, and other high-tech border measures affecting refugees and migrants?

In this episode of Fixing Aid, host Alae Ismail speaks to a Latinx community organiser and migration researchers on the use of border and surveillance technology aimed at stopping refugees and migrants from crossing European and American borders. She also hears from people on the move who share what it feels like to be watched and tracked at all times.  

Guests: Cinthya Rodriguez, national organiser at Mijente; Niamh Ni Bhriain, War and Pacification coordinator at the Transnational Institute; Petra Molnar, lawyer associated with the Migration and Technology Monitor and associate director of the Refugee Law Lab at York University.

In his last month on the job, Maurer sits down with host Heba Aly to reflect on his decade as ICRC president.

One and a half million people have been uprooted by the conflict between the M23 rebel group and the national army in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many are now living with host families, little-heralded frontline responders who play a central role in relief efforts across the region. Nicholas Bahati Ndoolé, a humanitarian worker based in the city of Goma, is one such host. In this First Person essay, he shares the many challenges his family faces, and explains why he feels he must shelter his relatives. 

The continuing conflict in the DRC is featured in The New Humanitarian’s annual list of ten crises that demand your attention now, which highlights places in the world where needs are rising, aid budgets have been cut or are insufficient, and where people feel forgotten by the international community. Over the coming months, our First Person series will feature aid workers and people affected by the crises on this year’s list.

When you’re a member of the diaspora community, it can feel helpless watching a crisis unfold in your home country. In this episode of our podcast series, Fixing Aid, host Alae Ismail explores how a diaspora-led business turned global concern into emergency aid – delivered straight to families in the middle of Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis.

Guest: Nasrat Khalid, founder of Aseel; Ihsan Hasaand, lead distributor Aseel

“We came mainly seeking safety, seeking to live a decent life. But then we found another war”

Our First Person narratives dig into the humanity of humanitarian challenges. This episode tells a story of the 15,000 Sudanese people living in Egypt’s Masaken Osman area. When the war broke out in April 2023, these tower blocks on the dusty outskirts of Cairo became home to a group of refugees. Meet them as they gather to discuss their current challenges and collective efforts to overcome them.

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster – placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Find more first-person stories at TheNewHumanitarian.org.

For many countries in the Global South, tackling today’s interlocking crises – climate change, the pandemic, the rising cost of living supercharged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – is made practically impossible by sky-high interest rates on runaway government debt.

Enter Barbados. 

No world leader is being invoked more at the moment than Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley, along with her ambitious plan to change the global financial system to end crippling debt and build climate resilience: the Bridgetown Agenda. 

For this episode of our podcast, Rethinking Humanitarianism, host Heba Aly sits down with two people close to the plan: Avinash Persaud, Mottley’s special envoy on finance and investment; and François Jackman, the island nation’s UN ambassador.

Launched in September, the Bridgetown Initiative (as it is also known) lays out a step-by-step roadmap that begins by pressing the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions to unlock financing on more palatable terms for crisis-hit countries so they can better prevent and respond to disasters. It also calls for the setting up of a global mechanism to accelerate private sector investment in mitigation and reconstruction.

Can this tiny Caribbean country of 300,000 people reform the international architecture around debt and disaster relief?

—————

If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org. 

SHOW NOTES

• COP27: Diplomatic baby steps amid mounting humanitarian crises
• Loss and damage: Views from the ground at COP27
• The 2022 Bridgetown Agenda for the Reform of the Global Financial Architecture | Barbados Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade|
• At the UN General Assembly, calls for fairer global governance grow louder
• The Barbadian Proposal Turning Heads at COP27 | Foreign Policy
• The Barbados Rebellion: An Island Nation’s Fight for Climate Justice - The New York Times

Hala al-Karib shares how the days unfolded when the violence started in Sudan, and what some of the root causes are according to her, including the failings of the international community. Today’s essay was written and read out by Hala al-Karib. She is the regional director of SIHA - the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa. 

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster - placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives.

In this episode, host Heba Aly explores whether hyper-local peace deals can be a viable alternative.

Guests: Danjuma Dawop, local peacebuilder at Mercy Corps in Nigeria. Obi Anyadike, senior Africa editor at The New Humanitarian.

Aid worker and psychologist Imogen Wall joins host Ali Latifi to discuss how the way humanitarian organisations are run can do as much damage to aid workers' mental health as being confronted with war, hunger, and rights abuses. 

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable truths around the world’s conflicts and disasters.

Does the humanitarian sector have something to learn from this celebrity’s approach to relief work? 

Chef José Andrés took his cooking skills to disaster zones and began distributing hot meals to people in need, via the NGO he founded: World Central Kitchen. 

Their model is simple: Respond quickly after a disaster by tapping into resources already available in affected communities – local chefs – and without all the bureaucracy of a big aid organisation. 

In this episode of Rethinking Humanitarianism, we explore the pros and cons of taking a different approach to humanitarianism: José Andrés says he treats his beneficiaries like “guests” at a restaurant. He speaks of the need for smaller, more specialised, more agile organisations that don’t try to be everything to everyone and pursue endless growth. And he advocates for an approach where people feel they are not working for an organisation, but for their own communities. Humanitarianism, he says, can’t remain about throwing crumbs to the poor.   

Guest: José Andrés, chef and founder of World Central Kitchen

*This episode was originally published on November 23, 2023.

Human rights lawyer and war crimes investigator Yasmin Sooka joins host Ali Latifi in a conversation about using the word “genocide”, and why language matters – in the middle of a crisis, and in the aftermath of mass violence.

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters.

Our First Person narratives aim to dig into the humanity of humanitarian challenges.

In this episode, Yusuf Sa’adu, a shopkeeper in Warawa in Nigeria’s Kano state, points out that “whoever has abundant water has wealth”. He shares how water scarcity made him lose out on education and still impacts personal relationships.

“If you are experiencing water stress, you will not be able to do a lot of things”, Yusuf explains. 

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster – placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Find more first-person stories at TheNewHumanitarian.org.

Nabil Alawzari is a Yemeni freelance photojournalist working on rights and freedoms.

This discussion was about the current situation in Yemen and Nabil's lived experience there. 

Christian Saunders was appointed as the UN’s special coordinator on improving the response to sexual exploitation and abuse in July. 

The New Humanitarian’s Investigations Editor Paisley Dodds spoke with him on 19 April following his recent trip to South Sudan, where allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation surfaced last year at a UN-run camp for civilians in the northern city of Malakal.

In their wide-ranging interview, Saunders says he believes in “radical transparency”, he doesn’t think the UN should be investigating itself, and he agrees it’s time to retire the phrase “zero tolerance”.

Read more: https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/investigations

and more on this interview here:

https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/interview/2023/04/24/interview-fixing-un-sex-abuse-problem

They say two things in life are certain: death and taxes. But taxes – and how they’re collected – are anything but certain, and certainly not fair.

Every year, nearly $500 billion in tax is lost to corporate and individual tax abuse, enough to vaccinate the world against COVID-19 three times over, or provide basic sanitation to 34 million people. Another $5 trillion is projected to be lost in the next 10 years as multinational corporations and the ultra-wealthy use tax havens to underpay taxes.

But the international tax justice movement is picking up steam, buoyed by a recent vote at the UN General Assembly to start negotiations on an international tax treaty. The move, spearheaded by The Africa Group and largely opposed by the OECD, which groups some of the world’s wealthiest countries, has been described as “the biggest shake-up in history to the global tax system”.

What are the implications for humanitarians? And what could it mean for aid-dependent countries to recoup trillions of dollars in lost tax revenue?

Co-hosts Heba Aly and Melissa Fundira also share listener reflections from the podcast’s last episode on Westerners stepping aside from top positions in favour of historically marginalised leaders. They also share a long-awaited statement from the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), the NGO network whose executive director spoke openly about wanting to be replaced by a non-male, non-Western candidate, only to be succeeded by another white man.

Guests: Hassan Damluji, co-founder of Global Nation; Alvin Mosioma, associate director of climate, finance, and equity at Open Society Foundations

____

Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.
____

SHOW NOTES

• UN Moves Toward a Global Treaty on Tax
• Developing countries and Europe in dispute over global tax role for UN
• What does the OECD global minimum tax mean for global cooperation?
• OECD tax reforms risk violating human rights law, UN experts warn in special intervention
• Lost government revenues due to tax abuse – the impact on the determinants of health and mortality rates
• Global Solidarity Report 2023

Our First Person narratives dig into the humanity of humanitarian challenges.

In this episode, Zeina Shahla, a reporting fellow with The New Humanitarian based in Damascus expresses what it is like to live in the shadow of war. With everyone in Syria living on edge since the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated last month in Tehran, Shahla worries if a regional war is going to break out. 

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster – placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Find more first-person stories at TheNewHumanitarian.org.

Co-founder, former CEO and long-time editor Ben Parker is leaving The New Humanitarian after more than 25 years. In this special episode, host Heba Aly asks him to reflect on his years of humanitarian reporting.

Conflict analyst Hisham Al-Omeisy joins host Irwin Loy to explain how war has become a profitable business in Yemen, even as millions of Yemenis struggle. 

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable truths around the world’s conflicts and disasters.

Could talking about aid diversion actually help people who need aid?  Ashley Jackson is the co-director of the Center on Armed Groups and a former aid worker. She has researched aid diversion in Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere, and joins host Irwin Loy for a candid conversation. 

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters.

Thin Lei Win is an award-winning multimedia journalist specialising in food and climate issues for various international news media and also through her own newsletter Thin Ink. 

Topics discussed included food security, climate issues, what's happening in Myanmar, social media’s hate problem, humanitarian challenges, and more.

For nearly 40 episodes, Rethinking Humanitarianism has been hosted by Heba Aly. But this time around, Aly joins the podcast as a guest.

Since 2007, Aly has worked with The New Humanitarian, and IRIN News before, in many different roles. It’s a journey she started as an intern, and recently finished as the CEO.

In this season finale, Aly joins host Melissa Fundira to reflect on her career and the evolution of humanitarian journalism, how the humanitarian sector has (or hasn’t) changed, and which episode is inspiring her next move. She also fields questions from colleagues and podcast guests. 

Guest: Heba Aly, former CEO of The New Humanitarian
____

Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.
____

SHOW NOTES

• CEO Heba Aly to step down from The New Humanitarian
• The New Humanitarian welcomes new CEO Ebele Okobi

SOME OF HEBA’S FAVOURITE RETHINKING HUMANITARIANISM EPISODES

• COVID-19 and BLM: A new era for aid?
• An interview with the UN’s humanitarian chief
• ‘Give us the money’: Aid as reparations
• What science fiction teaches us about imagining a better world
• Is ‘decolonised aid’ an oxymoron?
• What could an alternative to the UN look like?

What’s Unsaid is our new bi-weekly podcast exploring the open secrets and uncomfortable truths that often surround the world’s conflicts and disasters, hosted by staff editors Irwin Loy and Ali Latifi.

A podcast by The New Humanitarian.

Time and again, guests on this season of Rethinking Humanitarianism have called for systemic changes to the humanitarian system and global governance – from alternatives to the UN to revolutionised global climate financing.

But how can you imagine something you’ve never seen before, while being grounded in the realities of today?

In many ways, this is the domain of science fiction. The writer and activist Walidah Imarisha once said: “Any time we try to envision a different world – without poverty, prisons, capitalism, war – we are engaging in science fiction.” With science fiction, she added, we can start with the question “What do we want?” rather than the question “What is realistic?”

In this first episode of the New Year, host Heba Aly looks to the future to explore how science fiction can bring about paradigmatic change by helping us believe a better world is possible.

She is joined by sci-fi authors whose work speaks directly to the future of global governance and how to better address crises. Kim Stanley Robinson is the acclaimed science fiction writer behind the Mars trilogy, and, more recently, The Ministry for the Future. Malka Older is the author of Infomocracy and The New Humanitarian short story Earthquake Relief. Mexico City. 2051.

—————

If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org. 

SHOW NOTES

• Disaster response 2.0: What aid might look like in 30 years time (by Malka Older, for The New Humanitarian)
• Decolonising Aid: A reading and resource list
• Why Science Fiction Is a Fabulous Tool in the Fight for Social Justice | The Nation
• Kim Stanley Robinson: Remembering climate change ... a message from the year 2071 | TED Countdown

BOOKS AND AUTHORS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (2020)
• Malka Older, Infomocracy (2016)
• Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)
• Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888)
• H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905) 
• Ursula K. Le Guin (see The Dispossessed, 1974)
• Walidah Imarisha (see Octavia’s Brood, 2015)
• Joanna Russ (see The Female Man, 1975)
• Cory Doctorow, Walkaway (2017)
• Neon Yang, The Tensorate series (2017-19)
• Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries series (2017-21)

Israel has continued to choose violence, despite a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, an independent journalist of Palestinian descent, tells host Ali Latifi that “this is not just a humanitarian crisis. It’s a global moral crisis.”

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. 

Viewed from Western aid capitals, the international humanitarian system is overwhelmingly secular. But for much of the rest of the world, people’s lived realities are very different. As Amjad Mohamed Saleem, a development and peacebuilding entrepreneur tells host Obi Anyadike, being a person of faith in the aid industry is a “dynamic struggle”.

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. 

Calls to reform the UN Security Council – and the UN system as a whole – were more forceful at this year’s UN General Assembly, but will anything come of them? 

Migration policies are making borders tougher to cross and pushing people to risk their lives along ever more dangerous routes. Is there a way to stem the rising number of migrant deaths? Eric Reidy, The New Humanitarian’s migration editor, and host Ali Latifi discuss why we’re likely to continue to see a high number of deaths in 2024 and explore better policies to keep people safe. 

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters.

This season, we’re proving a space to reimagine the global governance system  – one that is rooted in justice for the most marginalised and capable of addressing the challenges of our times.

*This episode was originally published on December 14, 2022. 

The call for reparations, which has long reverberated in former colonies, is now gaining momentum in the aid and philanthropy sectors, too.

It’s a call that rejects the idea of aid as charitable giving, and instead reframes it as justice for the ravages of colonialism and imperialism.

But like similar conversations in the United States around slavery, the idea of international reparations for colonialism is a political hot potato. This, despite the many precedents for reparations programmes, including German reparations paid to Holocaust survivors.

Can international reparations be a way forward towards a more equitable world order, or are they too politically charged to succeed, perhaps even counter-productive?

To discuss these thorny questions, Rethinking Humanitarianism host Heba Aly is joined by Uzo Iweala, CEO of the Africa Center; Thomas Craemer, associate professor of public policy at University of Connecticut; and Kizito Byenkya, director of campaigns for the Open Society Foundations. 

—————

If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org. 

SHOW NOTES

• Loss and damage: Views from the ground at COP27
• Will countries hit by climate change finally get payouts at COP27?
• Why climate justice requires reparations
• Reparations as Philanthropy: Radically Rethinking 'Giving' in Africa | Le Monde
• Imperial Reckoning, The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
• The New Reparations Math | UConn Magazine

After 25 years as an international humanitarian worker, Susana Raffalli returned to Venezuela only to find herself at the centre of a humanitarian, political, and economic crisis in her own backyard. She describes the devastating impact that 10 years of crisis has had on Venezuelans and argues that the Latin American country has been largely neglected by the international aid sector.

The ongoing turmoil in Venezuela is featured in The New Humanitarian’s annual list of ten crises that demand your attention now, which highlights places in the world where needs are rising, aid budgets have been cut or are insufficient, and where people feel forgotten by the international community. Over the coming months, our First Person series will feature aid workers and people affected by the crises on this year’s list.

Medical missions are a lifeline to stressed health systems, usually in developing and post colonial states, but they can also be caught up in, and manipulated by, the politics of the powerful. Host Ali Latifi asks Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president and co-founder of MedGlobal, a medical NGO, whether dismissal over medical neutrality is getting worse.

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters.

All contribute, all decide, all benefit: the three pillars of a bold idea to transform how global public goods are financed. Once laughed off as a pie-in-the-sky idea, Global Public Investment (GPI) has been gaining traction in recent years and is increasingly seen as a plausible paradigm shift for a traditional aid system beholden to the whims of wealthy countries and stuck in a failing donor-recipient binary.

Host Heba Aly sits down with two people working to make GPI “technically sound” and “politically attractive”: Solange Baptiste, executive director of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC), and Jonathan Glennie, co-founder of the Global Nation think tank and author of “The Future of Aid: Global Public Investment”.

—————

If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org. 

SHOW NOTES

• How to begin fixing the ‘nonsensical’ humanitarian financing system
• At the UN General Assembly, calls for fairer global governance grow louder
• Global Public Investment Network
• VIDEO | GPI Side Event UNGA 2022 - Transforming International Cooperation to Finance Common Needs

Our First Person narratives dig into the humanity of humanitarian challenges.

In this episode, Ali Latifi, The New Humanitarian’s Asia Editor and co-host of the What's Unsaid podcast, marks the anniversary of the creation of the Taliban’s Islamic Emirate in his home country, Afghanistan. 

Three years on, the country is still in the throes of a humanitarian crisis, with 23.7 million people in need of assistance. Latifi says: “We're in a situation full of paradoxes”. He paints a picture of how traders, TikTokers, and the Taliban co-exist, while noting: “In the Islamic Emirate, everything seems fine – until it's not”.

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster – placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Find more first-person stories at TheNewHumanitarian.org.

As Yemen’s war continues, a new project by The New Humanitarian shares personal testimonies that show how the devastating conflict has changed life for millions, while the rest of the world wasn’t paying attention. And how important it is that we keep listening. 

Nuha al-Junaid, project coordinator for the The Yemen Listening Project, tells her own story of war and migration with guest host and Middle East Editor, Annie Slemrod. 

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. 

More than a year after the renewed push for racial justice, what progress has the humanitarian aid sector made? 

Amid the 2020 global movement for racial justice, aid organisations were criticised for their lack of diversity and colonial structures. Many published statements promising to do better. What tangible progress has the humanitarian aid sector made more than a year after the push for racial justice? 

In this episode, TNH CEO and podcast host Heba Aly shares the outcomes of TNH questionnaires circulated among aid organisations and aid workers. We also hear from an initiative keeping the sector accountable, and from an executive trying to change the sector.

Guests: Lena Bheeroo from Charity So White and the Racial Equity Index, and Peter Walton, CEO of Care Australia.

*As Martin Griffiths serves his last month at the helm of OCHA, take another listen to this episode from January 26, 2022 on his vision for the future of humanitarian aid, and his hopes for a non-British successor.

____

In the final episode of Season 2 of the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast, host Heba Aly sits down with UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths to discuss his priorities in the role, how he intends to address unequal power dynamics in the aid sector, the increasing influence of donors, and why humanitarians should push back against an ever-expanding scope of activity.

____

Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.

____

SHOW NOTES

• Griffiths steps down as relief chief
• UN aid chief seeks more focused and inclusive humanitarian efforts
• The next UN humanitarian chief should be picked on merit

Our First Person narratives dig into the humanity of humanitarian challenges.

In this episode, Mahmoud Shalabi describes the difficult reality of life in his home, Beit Lahia. When the Israeli military issued orders last October for 1.1 million Palestinians to evacuate their homes in the north of Gaza, Shalabi refused to leave. “I believed that remaining in my home would be a form of resistance,” he says. Now, nearly 11 months later, the Deputy Director for programs for the UK-based NGO, Medical Aid for Palestinians, explains why he is ‘exhausted’. 

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster – placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Find more first-person stories at TheNewHumanitarian.org.

It has been six months since a military conflict in Sudan began claiming thousands of lives and triggered, according to the UN, the world’s fastest growing displacement crisis.

As international NGOs and the UN struggle to access certain areas, decentralised mutual aid networks – known as emergency response rooms (ERRs) – have stepped in to fill the vacuum. 

In acknowledgement of this reality,  donors, international NGOs and UN agencies are trying to shift their programmes to support these local volunteer-led networks, but deep-seated bureaucracy – standing in stark contrast to mutual aid groups’ nimbleness and agility – has meant that only a fraction of the millions of dollars promised to them have been received by ERR volunteers.

Co-hosts Heba Aly and Melissa Fundira speak to two guests about unprecedented levels of collaboration between ERRs and the international humanitarian system, how they are trying to overcome the challenges, and how mutual aid groups are spurring a broader shift of power within Sudanese society.  

Guests: Hajooj Kuka, external communications officer for the Khartoum State Emergency Response Rooms;  Francesco Bonanome, humanitarian affairs officer with the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, in Sudan, focal person for the ERRs

____

Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.

____

SHOW NOTES

• How mutual aid networks are powering Sudan's humanitarian response
• Khartoum State ERR
• Mutual aid in Sudan: the future of aid? | Humanitarian Practice Network
• From an assistance model to a community-based aid
• EXCLUSIVE: Sudanese aid workers face hundreds of job losses
• Sudan Humanitarian Fund Dashboard 2023

A visit to Inzargai refugee registration centre in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province prompts host Ali Latifi to explore how governments around the world are weaponising anti-refugee and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Economic and security “frustrations are absolutely real”, Professor Muhammad Zaman, director of the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University, tells him. “The outsider is an easy and convenient way to let some of that steam out, without really solving the problems.”

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters. 

Hosted by award-winning innovations expert Alae Ismail, each episode will focus on people, projects, organisations, or start-ups working in new and creative ways to improve the lives of those affected by conflict and disaster. We will, of course, also be speaking to people on the receiving end of aid, to hear directly about the innovations they think could make things better. 

The UN overstates its claims of climate neutrality and purchases junk carbon credits that do little to cut emissions. This is revealed in a new investigation by The New Humanitarian and Mongabay. Investigations reporter Jacob Goldberg explains why the UN’s climate neutrality claims are problematic, how the investigation evolved, and what the next steps for the UN may be.

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast that explores the open secrets and uncomfortable truths that surround the world’s conflicts and disasters, hosted by staff editors Irwin Loy and Ali Latifi.

Soon after her interview with Degan Ali (Executive Director, Adeso) on whether decolonising aid is an oxymoron, our host, Heba Aly, moderated the launch of the Pledge for Change –  a new set of commitments spearheaded by Adeso and other INGOs to reimagine their role in the aid sector by 2030.

Despite many years of reforms, progress towards more inclusive, efficient, and accountable humanitarian aid has been slow. But new recommendations, based on three years of research by the Centre for Global Development, propose four ways to more fundamentally reform the underlying architecture of the aid system.

In this episode of the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast, host Heba Aly digs into proposed reforms to humanitarian accountability, coordination, financing, and governance. 

Guests: 

Patrick Saez, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development

Alix Masson, advocacy lead of the NEAR Network

Annika Sandlund, head of partnerships and coordination at the UN Refugee Agency

Danny Sriskandarajah, chief executive of Oxfam GB

*This episode was originally published on September 27, 2023. 

Aid worker and psychologist Imogen Wall tells host Ali Latifi that the way humanitarian organisations are run, can do as much damage to aid workers' mental health as being confronted with war, hunger, and rights abuses. 

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable truths around the world’s conflicts and disasters. 

Guests: Michal Czekalski, CEO of Dialo; Zuzanna Gutkowska, NGO relations manager at Tech to the Rescue; Joanna Kucharczyk of Polish Humanitarian Action.

If the aim is to see real change in Afghanistan, shouldn’t the Taliban be included in the conversation? 

In this first episode of What’s Unsaid, we speak to Afghan human rights defender Madina Mahbobi, who says it’s time for the international community to start listening to local voices like hers that are calling for increased engagement with the Taliban. Despite being roundly condemned after making this unpopular case on a recent UN panel, Mahbobi is adamant that people like her must not be deterred: “We should speak about things that are controversial but still a solution to the situation.” 

Guest: Madina Mahbobi, Afghan human rights defender, and founder of the women-led Vision Development Organization NGO in Afghanistan.

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast that explores the open secrets and uncomfortable truths that surround the world’s conflicts and disasters, hosted by staff editors Irwin Loy and Ali Latifi. 

Anthony Langat is a Kenya-based reporter covering environment, climate change, health, and security.

Topics discussed included drought, climate change, conflict, impact on pastoralism in Kenya, and more. 

Iyad Agha, a Syrian now living in Germany, has been working on his country's humanitarian crisis for nearly a decade. The United Nations itself recently said that “Syria is in danger of being forgotten”, while noting that the country is facing the highest levels of humanitarian need since the start of its 13-year war. Some 7.2 million people have been forcibly displaced inside the country, and another 5.1 million are refugees in neighbouring countries. Türkiye is host to 3.3 million refugees who are increasingly subjected to harassment, not to mention arbitrary arrest, detention, and deportation by authorities. In this First Person account, he narrates his experiences as an aid worker in Türkiye, and laments how many times Syrians have had to rebuild their lives.

The continuing conflict in Syria is featured in The New Humanitarian’s annual list of ten crises that demand your attention now, which highlights places in the world where needs are rising, aid budgets have been cut or are insufficient, and where people feel forgotten by the international community. Over the coming months, our First Person series will feature aid workers and people affected by the crises on this year’s list.

Panel guests: Patrick Gathara, media critic; Hugo Slim, humanitarian ethicist; Mel Bunce, City, University of London; Mustafa Alio, managing director R-SEAT.

Is it possible to accurately predict how many people will be forcibly displaced in the future? If so, how might this help aid responses?

In this episode of Fixing Aid, host Alae Ismail speaks to the Danish Refugee Council about the prediction tool they’ve developed with tech company IBM. Exploring both its potential and its limitations, she also hears from a Sahelian pastoralist organisation and a Syrian campaigner about the implications more precise forecasting has for providing better aid to people in need.

Guests: Alexander Kjærum, global adviser and senior analyst at the Danish Refugee Council; Jade Kahhaleh, coordinator at WeExist; Leila Adamou Arouna of Réseau Billital Maroobè.

Calls for arms to take precedence over humanitarian assistance in Ukraine are driving renewed discussions over the limits of aid neutrality.

In this pop-up episode of the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast, host Heba Aly sits down with Yevhenia Cravchuk, a Ukrainian member of parliament, Ukrainian first aid responder Fedir Serdiuk, and Robert Mardini, the director-general of the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

Human rights lawyer and war crimes investigator Yasmin Sooka joins host Ali Latifi in a conversation about using the word “genocide”, and why language matters – in the middle of a crisis, and in the aftermath of mass violence.

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters.

Is there an efficient and secure way for refugees and others who have had to leave their homes and documents behind to establish and access digital I.D.s?  In this episode of Fixing Aid, host Alae Ismail hears from a student who had to flee Sudan without I.D. papers and how that complicated his journey towards claiming asylum. She also speaks to two blockchain technology startups that are working in humanitarian environments to try to create secure methods to access identification.  

Guests: Khalid Maliki, co-founder of Tykn; Sharanya Thakur, project manager at Gravity.

Crises are mounting, and their impacts are overlapping and rippling across the globe. Emergency response has grown more complicated, and more costly. What’s the way forward?

Each year, The New Humanitarian publishes our list of trends driving humanitarian needs and shaping crisis response. From military sieges and water scarcity to ‘deterrence’ migration policies and governments’ refusal to deal with ‘pariah’ states, we unpack some of the key factors that will see an estimated 300 million people need emergency aid this year.

On 31 January, we brought together a range of voices from across the humanitarian sector to discuss what’s driving crises, and the next steps in addressing them. This is a recording of that discussion. 

An anonymous aid worker reflects on their time in Palestine as they watch Israel's bombardment and siege of Gaza and the escalating violence in the West Bank.

Today's First Person essay is read out by The New Humanitarian's Elise Campbell-Bates.

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster - placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Find more first-person stories at TheNewHumanitarian.org

Flipping the Narrative is an ongoing series by The New Humanitarian. It aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives.

Today’s essay was written and read out by Sana Mustafa. She is a feminist human rights defender and CEO of Asylum Access. In her essay, Sana looks at power imbalances within the international refugee protection system, and calls for those who have been forcibly displaced themselves to have much more say in the decision-making.

Read more from The Flipping The Narrative series here. 

Humanitarian organisations often push an image of refugees as passive victims in need of help. But refugees themselves say they have voices and need to be listened to. Refugee advocate Jean Marie Ishimwe tells host Obi Anyadike why it’s time for the refugee-led organisation, or RLO, ‘revolution’.

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters.

Is decolonising aid a call for reform, or a call to end aid altogether? Are these two approaches mutually exclusive, or can they co-exist? Is decolonised aid even achievable within our current global governance system? Host Heba Aly discusses these tensions with one of the leaders of the movement to decolonise aid, Degan Ali, executive director of Adeso.

In this episode, TNH CEO and podcast host Heba Aly discusses the difficult balancing act for aid agencies that want to speak out against government abuses in Ethiopia but are worried about the consequences of doing so on their perceived neutrality and their ability to continue delivering assistance to those who need it. 

Guests: Addis Ababa-based journalist Samuel Getachew; Laura Hammond, professor of Development Studies at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London; Awol Allo, senior lecturer in law at Keele University; David Del Conte, campaigner of Stop Tigray Famine at Refugees International.

When crises hit, a host of questions arise, among them: Who needs humanitarian aid? How much? Who delivers it? And who has the power to make all of those decisions?

How aid agencies and the media choose to frame this information doesn’t always help.

For the last year, researchers at ODI’s Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) have been trying to understand narratives and the role they play in humanitarian response and policy. What they’re finding so far is that human stories are more powerful than data when it comes to influencing change in the sector, and yet humanitarians don’t take their role as storytellers seriously enough.

In this bonus episode, we get a snapshot of HPG’s ongoing exploration of humanitarian narratives from one of its main researchers, and we bring together a local organisation founder, a researcher, and a journalist to discuss the power humanitarians have to shape the stories that affect crisis response.

Guests: John Bryant, research fellow at ODI’s Humanitarian Policy Group; Leen Fouad, research officer at ODI’s Humanitarian Policy Group; Mohamed Ali Diini, founder of Iftiin Foundation and chair of the Shaqo Platform; Patrick Gathara, senior editor for inclusive storytelling at The New Humanitarian.

____

SHOW NOTES

• Understanding the role of narratives in humanitarian policy change | ODI
• Change without transformation: how narratives influenced the humanitarian cash agenda | ODI
• What is a humanitarian crisis, really? | Rethinking Humanitarianism
• Gaza: a litmus test for the humanitarian sector’s commitment to decolonisation? | ODI
• How do you break the mould around international aid? Try genuine trust 

____

Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.

*This episode was originally published on January 11, 2023. 

Time and again, guests on this season of Rethinking Humanitarianism have called for systemic changes to the humanitarian system and global governance – from alternatives to the UN to revolutionised global climate financing.

But how can you imagine something you’ve never seen before, while being grounded in the realities of today?

In many ways, this is the domain of science fiction. The writer and activist Walidah Imarisha once said: “Any time we try to envision a different world – without poverty, prisons, capitalism, war – we are engaging in science fiction.” With science fiction, she added, we can start with the question “What do we want?” rather than the question “What is realistic?”

In this first episode of the New Year, host Heba Aly looks to the future to explore how science fiction can bring about paradigmatic change by helping us believe a better world is possible.

She is joined by sci-fi authors whose work speaks directly to the future of global governance and how to better address crises. Kim Stanley Robinson is the acclaimed science fiction writer behind the Mars trilogy, and, more recently, The Ministry for the Future. Malka Older is the author of Infomocracy and The New Humanitarian short story Earthquake Relief. Mexico City. 2051.

—————

If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org. 

SHOW NOTES

• Disaster response 2.0: What aid might look like in 30 years time (by Malka Older, for The New Humanitarian)
• Decolonising Aid: A reading and resource list
• Why Science Fiction Is a Fabulous Tool in the Fight for Social Justice | The Nation
• Kim Stanley Robinson: Remembering climate change ... a message from the year 2071 | TED Countdown

BOOKS AND AUTHORS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (2020)
• Malka Older, Infomocracy (2016)
• Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)
• Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888)
• H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905) 
• Ursula K. Le Guin (see The Dispossessed, 1974)
• Walidah Imarisha (see Octavia’s Brood, 2015)
• Joanna Russ (see The Female Man, 1975)
• Cory Doctorow, Walkaway (2017)
• Neon Yang, The Tensorate series (2017-19)
• Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries series (2017-21)

Menaal Munshey shares how dubious blasphemy accusations in Pakistan make people feel unsafe and lead to vigilante violence. Today's First Person essay is written and read out by Menaal Munshey. 

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster - placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Find more first-person stories on TheNewHumanitarian.org

Today’s First Person story comes from Moussa Kondo, executive director of the Sahel Institute. Moussa recounts how drastically life has changed for everyday people in Mali, where years of conflict, climate change, and political isolation have left more than 7 million people in need of humanitarian assistance.

The worsening political instability in the Sahel is featured in The New Humanitarian’s annual list of ten crises that demand your attention now, which highlights places in the world where needs are rising, aid budgets have been cut or are insufficient, and where people feel forgotten by the international community. Over the coming months, our First Person series will feature aid workers and people affected by the crises on this year’s list.

A refugee in Malawi shares how their treatment makes them worry about their security and feel like they don’t belong.

Today’s essay was written by a refugee living in Malawi. In order to protect their security, the author’s name is not public. Therefore, their essay is read out by The New Humanitarian’s Senior Editor for Inclusive Storytelling, Patrick Gathara. 

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster - placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives.

To read more first-person stories, go to TheNewHumanitarian.org

San Thai Shin is a Rohingya researcher and volunteer teacher in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. In his essay, San looks at how restrictive policies suppress refugees’ economic potential, forcing many into a situation of dependency rather than allowing them to contribute to the societies they live in. 

Matai Muon shares how policies suppress the economic potential of refugees, which forces many into a situation of dependency instead of allowing them to contribute to the societies they’re currently living in.

Today’s essay was written and read out by Matai Muon. He is a South Sudanese refugee. Although he is currently studying in the United Kingdom, this essay was recorded from his home country of South Sudan where he is conducting research. 

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster - placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Read more first-person stories on TheNewHumanitarian.org

Laura, a Colombian refugee living in Ecuador explains why narratives around migration in Latin America need to change. In her essay, Laura shares her experience of how people displaced within Latin America are overlooked as the dominant media narrative is about those heading north for the United States.

In order to protect their security, the author uses a pseudonym, Laura, and her essay is read out by The New Humanitarian’s Sofia Kuan.

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster – placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives.

The call for reparations, which has long reverberated in former colonies, is now gaining momentum in the aid and philanthropy sectors, too.

It’s a call that rejects the idea of aid as charitable giving, and instead reframes it as justice for the ravages of colonialism and imperialism.

But like similar conversations in the United States around slavery, the idea of international reparations for colonialism is a political hot potato. This, despite the many precedents for reparations programmes, including German reparations paid to Holocaust survivors.

Can international reparations be a way forward towards a more equitable world order, or are they too politically charged to succeed, perhaps even counter-productive?

To discuss these thorny questions, Rethinking Humanitarianism host Heba Aly is joined by Uzo Iweala, CEO of the Africa Center; Thomas Craemer, associate professor of public policy at University of Connecticut; and Kizito Byenkya, director of campaigns for the Open Society Foundations. 

—————

If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org. 

SHOW NOTES

• Loss and damage: Views from the ground at COP27
• Will countries hit by climate change finally get payouts at COP27?
• Why climate justice requires reparations
• Reparations as Philanthropy: Radically Rethinking 'Giving' in Africa | Le Monde
• Imperial Reckoning, The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya
• The New Reparations Math | UConn Magazine

Megan Janetsky is a Colombia-based reporter and photographer covering migration, women's issues and human rights in Latin America.

Topics discussed included crises and trends in Latin America, the COVID-19 hangover, social media, migration, political shifts, emerging crises, and more.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed that the current global health architecture is not fit for purpose. While rich countries hoarded vaccines, low and middle income countries were left behind, coping with massive global healthcare inequalities.

Despite lofty promises, COVAX, the global initiative launched during the pandemic to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of tests, treatments, and vaccines failed to deliver on its promises. 

This episode of Rethinking Humanitarianism explores how the global health architecture can be adjusted to make it more inclusive, and better placed to respond in a more equitable way during a future pandemic. 

Guests: Petro Terblanche, managing director of Afrigen; Fifa Rahman, civil society representative at the ACT-Accelerator

Palestinian peace activist Nivine Sandouka discusses the difficult way forward for building trust between Israelis and Palestinians. Hosted by Irwin Loy.

What’s Unsaid is a bi-weekly podcast by The New Humanitarian, where we explore open secrets and uncomfortable conversations around the world’s conflicts and disasters.