NGOs and policy: The effectiveness of functionality and their impact on IDPs

Adaptation and resilience will have to be revisited through the creation of grounded, situated, and pervasive design capacity by communities themselves who are bound together through culture and a common will to survive when confronted with threatening conditions, not by global experts, bureaucrats, and geoengineers who can only recommend the

One of the main themes in this book is the idea that refuge must be understood as not only a humanitarian issue but also one of development. Put simply, it is not just about indefinitely providing food, clothing, and shelter. It has to be about restoring people’s autonomy through jobs and education, particularly in the countries in the developing

So, we need to abandon strategies that undermine dignity, diminish capacity, and create unhealthy dependency. And we need to increase the use of approaches that are truly empowering.

ideology, ignorance, and inertia—the three I’s—on the part of the expert, the aid worker, or the local policy maker, often explain why policies fail and why aid does not have the effect it should.

But by treating people without challenging the political and social origins of their exclusion, is MSF not confining itself to the role expected of it by the authorities?

Often, in a room of people eager to address and solve the world’s many crises, I am gripped by a panicky sadness. The beauty of the intention to solve these many crises is earnest. Still, the attempted actions are placed in abstracted perceptions that do not meet the rich undercurrents of the situations.

To accomplish these critical goals, we need both responsive government and public awareness. This awareness is twofold: it’s awareness both of the challenges that need to be addressed (as opposed to the false challenges that don’t) and of the best ways to meet them.

International efforts to assist refugees largely fall into four areas. The first and most basic is to prevent the conditions that create refugees (or to alter the conditions if they do).