ABSTRACT

As humanitarian needs continue to grow rapidly, humanitarian action has become more contested, with new actors entering the field to address unmet needs, but also challenging long-held principles and precepts.

This volume provides detailed empirical comparisons between emerging and traditional humanitarian actors. It sheds light on why and how the emerging actors engage in humanitarian crises and how their activities are carried out and perceived in their transnational organizational environment. It develops and applies a conceptual framework that fosters research on humanitarian actors and the humanitarian principles. In particular, it simultaneously refers to theories of organizational sociology and international relations to identify both the structural and the situational factors that influence the motivations, aims and activities of these actors, and their different levels of commitment to the traditional humanitarian principles. It thus elucidates the role of the humanitarian principles in promoting coherence and coordination in the crowded and diverse world of humanitarian action, and discusses whether alternative principles and parallel humanitarian systems are in the making.

This volume will be of great interest to postgraduate students and scholars in humanitarian studies, globalization and transnationalism research, organizational sociology, international relations, development studies, and migration and diaspora studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners engaged in humanitarian action, development cooperation and migration issues.

chapter |22 pages

Introduction

New Humanitarians Getting Old?

part 1|20 pages

History

part 2|39 pages

New Donor Humanitarianism

chapter 2|19 pages

India as Humanitarian Actor

Convergences and Divergences with DAC Donor Principles and Practices

chapter 3|18 pages

Turkey as a Rising Power

An Emerging Global Humanitarian Actor

part 3|20 pages

Developmental Humanitarianism

part 4|63 pages

Armed Humanitarianism

chapter 5|21 pages

Blurred Lines, Shrunken Space?

Offensive Peacekeepers, Networked Humanitarians and the Performance of Principle in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

chapter 6|18 pages

Rebels without Borders

Armed Groups as Humanitarian Actors

chapter 7|22 pages

The Military, the Private Sector and Traditional Humanitarian Actors

Interaction, interoperability and effectiveness

part 5|43 pages

For-Profit Humanitarianism

chapter 8|23 pages

Business in Humanitarian Crises

For Better or for Worse?

chapter 9|18 pages

Humanitarian Action for Sale

Private Military and Security Companies in the Humanitarian Space

part 6|45 pages

Diaspora Humanitarianism

part 7|44 pages

Faith-Based Humanitarianism

chapter 12|23 pages

International Muslim NGOs

‘Added Value' or an Echo of Western Principles and Donor Wishes?

chapter 13|19 pages

Writing the Other into Humanitarianism

A Conversation between ‘South–South' and ‘Faith-Based’ Humanitarianisms

part 8|37 pages

Regional and Local Humanitarianism

chapter |27 pages

Conclusions

Convergence or Divergence?