What humanitarian aid might look like in 30 years time

What startled me about the response to disaster was not the virtue, since virtue is often the result of diligence and dutifulness, but the passionate joy that shined out from accounts by people who had barely survived. These people who had lost everything, who were living in rubble or ruins, had found agency, meaning, community, immediacy in their

if we consider that humanitarian aid is not an exact science but an art, then the essence of this art is to create and maintain the conditions of its existence—to generate interest, make itself useful, identify conjunctures that could be propitious for change—and to be capable at all times of modifying the balance of power, creating a hiatus, perma

humanitarian approach then consists of a short-term, rapid response aimed at meeting the immediate needs of shelter, safety, or supply.6

Due to a steady increase in climate-driven disruption – intense storm seasons and flooding of densely populated coastal areas in Asia, drought-intensified conflict in the Mediterranean, Maghreb and southern Africa, and fires in South America – hundreds of thousands of people are left homeless and unable to remain in place. In 2026 alone, upwards of

Because acknowledging that humanitarian aid is only possible when it coincides with the interests of the “powers that be” does not have to mean giving way to political forces.