27 May 2025

Thematic Focus: Humanitarian Assistance

Short pieces:

"The end of aid: What the Global South needs to do," The New Humanitarian, 20 May 2025 [text]

Falling back into the shadows? How to keep internal displacement on the humanitarian agenda (The Conversation, May 2025) [text]

Humanitarian aid depends on good data: what’s wrong with the way it’s collected (The Conversation, May 2025) [text]

*The UN Relief Chief Makes a Splash, but is He Right for the Job? (PassBlue, May 2025) [text]

*The Window for Host Communities and Refugees Survives, but What Does the Future Hold Under GROW? (CGD Blog, May 2025) [text]

New open access books:

Fragile Aid: Development Cooperation in Weak States and Conflict Contexts (Oxford Univ. Press & UNU-WIDER, April 2025) [open access]
- "An important question for the future of aid concerns its role in fragile states and conflict-affected areas. While considerable research points to a record of effectiveness that is mixed at best in these contexts, the imperative of external support for development and humanitarian needs persists. Bringing together findings from a diverse set of expert analyses, this volume sheds new light on the record of aid under fragility and spotlights two key implications for research and practice going forward. First, more systematic unpacking of the considerable diversity that exists across fragile contexts is needed to better understand past experience and its lessons for future practice. Second, the foreign aid effectiveness principles provide important insight into how aid can be improved, but there are fundamental challenges to their application in fragile contexts."

Navigating the Archival Archipelago: Politics of Record-Keeping at the ICRC, eCahiers de l’Institut, no. 57 (Geneva Graduate Institute, April 2025) [open access]
- "How should we understand the politics and practice of record-keeping in a humanitarian institution? What institutional dynamics does the operation of an archive reflect? Disrupting the assumption that archives are static spaces, this paper explores how archives (defined as both the site and material) are entangled in the operations of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). By attempting to analyse the archive as an entity through sources it holds about its creation, interviews with archivists and staff at the ICRC and observation in archival spaces, this paper illustrates the possibilities of an ethnographic approach to archival politics."

Reports: 

Aid Sector in Transition: Challenges, Ethics & Adaptation - Reflections from the Global South (Community World Service Asia, May 2025) [text via ReliefWeb]

Anticipating conflict: An evidence review of the Start Fund’s dynamic approach to anticipating the humanitarian impacts of conflict-induced displacement and election-based violence (Start Network, May 2025) [text via ReliefWeb]

Funding refugee-led organisations: six strategic steps for government donors (ODI, May 2025) [text]

NGO Guide to: Understanding and influencing the IASC system at country level (International Council of Voluntary Agencies, May 2025) [text]

Protection Programming Modalities and Activities in Cluster Settings (Global Protection Cluster, May 2025) [text]

Journal articles & book chapters:

"Exploring barriers to circularity in humanitarian supply chains," International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, In Press, 21 May 2025 [open access]

"Humanitarian action: A moral economic periodization of famine relief," Chapter in The Politics of Famine in European History and Memory (Routledge, May 2025) [open access]

"Humility, autonomy, and simplicity: three principles for humanitarian design," Third World Quarterly
Latest Articles, 2 May 2025 [open access]

Multimedia:

What’s Next for U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Assistance? (Just Security Podcast, May 2025) [access]

*UPDATED

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