Sublime

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

Eight years after the publication of In the Shadow of Just Wars,6 it examines the precept that the political exploitation of aid is not a misuse of its vocation, but its principal condition of existence.

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.

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).

“blurred distinctions between the roles of military and humanitarian organisations; political manipulation of humanitarian assistance [and the] perceived lack of independence of humanitarian actors from donors or from host governments”.

State weakness and failure along with civil wars will remain relatively common given the many factors that bring about intrastate conflict and violence. Somalia remains a failed state thirty years after it collapsed, while over the past decade Syria, Yemen, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have all

Should we conclude from these events that the “humanitarian space” is shrinking, as many observers of the humanitarian scene have been claiming in recent years? NGOs, United Nations agencies and donors are unanimous in deploring a “growing tendency to close the door to humanitarians, preventing them from helping victims”.