History of Global Arms Transfer, 14 (2022), pp. 9-15

Racism in the Development andHumanitarian Aid and Advocacy Sector†
By TAMARA ENOMOTO*
The Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 served as a catalyst for debate on not
only police reform in the United States but in other fields and sectors, including
the development and humanitarian aid and advocacy sector. Often looked upon asa ‘do-good’ sector, raising issues of racism and discrimination entrenched in the
sector once seemed incongruous. However, as the Black Lives Matter movement
brought to the fore the systemic, structural, and widespread nature of racism, thelogical conclusion was that this sector may not be immune to racism. Calls
mounted for the sector to tackle the impacts of racism, organizations were openly
called out for their racist practices and systems, and a number of testimonies wereposted on social network platforms. This article introduces some of the major
issues raised in the last two years and points out some quarters of the sector inwhich it still seems difficult to openly discuss racism.
As the Black Lives Matter movement spread across continents and sectors after the deathof George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on 25 May 2020,1 we have been seeing moves
to challenge racism embedded in the development and humanitarian aid and advocacy
sector. Although the sector’s organizations, especially non-governmental organizations(NGOs), initially issued statements and articles in support of the Black Lives Mattermovement and affirmed their commitment to educating the public about racism, this was
soon followed by a cascade of critical comments on racism prevalent in the sector itself.2
This article reviews some of the major issues discussed in the last two years and points out
those quarters of the sector in which issues of racism are rarely discussed openly.

I RACISM IN THE DEVELOPMENT AND HUMANITARIAN SECTOR
When the Black Lives Matter movement sought to expose the systemic, structural, andwidespread nature of racism, a logical conclusion was that the development andhumanitarian aid and advocacy sector may not be immune to racism. While such criticism† This article is partially based on a presentation at ‘Online Symposium: Past, Present and Future of
Humanitarian and Development Aid: Rethinking the Aid Sector with Binalakshmi Nepram’ on 4 February 2021.
The author worked at Oxfam and was in charge of humanitarian policy and advocacy from 2003 to 2015, hasbeen a consultant to Terra Renaissance, a Japanese NGO, since 2015, and has been involved in international
advocacy campaigns and networks on arms control. Some parts are based on the author’s experience. The
research conducted to write this article was funded by JSPS KAKENHI, grant numbers 16K17075, 18H03606,
21K13250, 22H00920, and 22H03828.
* Author’s Affiliation: Tamara Enomoto, Professor, Organization for the Strategic Coordination of Researchand Intellectual Properties (Research Institute for the History of Global Arms Transfer), Meiji University.
1 Silverstein, ‘The global’.
2 Bruce-Raeburn, ‘Opinion’; Peprah, ‘Opinion’; Slim, ‘Is racism’.

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provoked resistance and discomfort in some quarters of this sector, others have claimed
that continuing to ignore the presence of racism is no longer an option.3 In fact, there has
been a growing call for the sector to tackle the impacts of racism, white supremacy,colonialism, inequality, gender prejudice, and patriarchy, all of which are deeply entrenchedin our sector’s power structures.4
Past research shows that the system favours white people over their peers of colour byplacing them in positions of leadership, and those at the decision-making table in aid andadvocacy organizations do not reflect the demographic profile of the communities they
serve.5 For instance, survey results released in 2016 found that in the United Kingdom’s aid
sector only 3 per cent of its chief executives were people of colour, and black workers with
degrees earned on average 23.1 per cent less than white workers.6 In another survey, nearly
every participant of colour had a story about how the dominant policies, practices, andcultures had marginalized them.7 From experiences of overt racial discrimination to microaggressions and adverse workplace cultures, the participants described racism they had
experienced while working in the development sector.8 As asserted by Lena Bheeroo et al.,‘[t]he shocking irony is that international NGOs purport to promote human rights andequality for all communities around the world, yet our workforces have a systemic racism
and inequality problem.’9
Following the Black Lives Matter movement, structural racism and racist behaviours andattitudes that were overlooked in the sector have been widely discussed in social media
under hashtags such as #DecolonizeDevelopment, #AntiRacistInAid,#RethinkingHumanitarianism, and #AidToo. Aid and advocacy organizations have beencalled out openly. For instance, over 1,000 current and former members of Médecins sans
Frontières (MSF) signed a searing open letter, suggesting that the organization was run bya ‘privileged white minority’ and that it had ‘failed people of colour, both staff andpatients’.10 Former and current staff members of other organizations, including Amnesty
International, 11 Catholic Relief Services, 12 International Women’s Health Coalition(IWHC),13 Nobel Women’s Initiative,14 and Women Deliver,15 have also issued statements
and testimonies about the widespread and persistent nature of racial discrimination,
exclusion, and white supremacy in their organizations and in the sector as a whole.
In aid-recipient countries, local staff members are routinely hired by aid organizations on
short-term contracts with limited access to safe, secure working and housing conditions,while those from the donor countries are given safe housing and access to resources.16
Internal reports of unequal treatment and injustice are ignored or dismissed.17 Racism,
inequality, gender prejudice, and patriarchy in the sector have created an infamous hotbed
for sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of people in aid-recipient countries committed by
the aid workers who are there to alleviate suffering, not perpetuate it—an issue which has
3 Nwajiaku-Dahou and Leon-Himmelstine, ‘How to’.
4 For instance, see Balk, ‘A time’; The New Humanitarian, ‘Readers react’.
5 Bheeroo, Billing, Ampomah, Mafethe, and Lally-Francis, ‘Time to’.
6 Trades Union Congress, ‘Black workers’.
7 Bheeroo, Billing, Ampomah, Mafethe, and Lally-Francis, ‘Time to’.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Foulkes, ‘Humanitarians’. For testimonies by former MSF staff members, see Majumdar, ‘Bearig’.
11 Parveen, ‘Amnesty International’.
12 Amin, Parker, and Dodds, ‘Exclusive’.
13 Adelman, ‘I’ve seen’.
14 Oppenheim, ‘Nobel Women’s Initiative’.
15 Adelman, ‘I’ve seen’.
16 Agaba and Anonymous, ‘Opinion’; Secret aid worker, ‘Secret’.
17 Ibid.

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Racism in the Development and Humanitarian Aid and Advocacy Sector
been widely reported since February 2018 with the disclosure in The Times18 of a case of
sexual abuse and exploitation by Oxfam staff members in Haiti. Often, such misconductand crimes were covered up; victims and whistleblowers were threatened, while
perpetrators went unpunished.

II ‘LOCALOZATION’
In 2016, at the World Humanitarian Summit, donors and UN agencies signed a document
comprising 51 decisions to make humanitarian aid more effective. 19 This is called the‘Grand Bargain,’ which had 63 signatories (25 nations including Japan, 11 UN Agencies,
five inter-governmental organizations and Red Cross/Red Crescent movements, and 22NGOs), representing around 84 per cent of all humanitarian donor contributions in 2019. It
commits donors and aid organizations to provide at least 25 per cent of global humanitarianfunding to local and national responders as directly as possible by 2020. However, the 2020
Global Humanitarian Report revealed that the overall percentage of funding disbursed
directly to local and national responders fell from 3.1 per cent in 2016 to only 2.1 per cent
(USD 444 million) in 2019. As the majority of humanitarian funding goes to non-national
outside agencies, such as large international NGOs and UN agencies, the ideas andpriorities of those organizations tend to be reflected in how projects are developed andimplemented.
Ideologies, practices, and research agendas of the powerful have been routinely
normalized and legitimized, and the values and norms underpinned by racist and racializing
ideas have been promoted as something universal that must be respected.20 There wereindeed moments in the past when Western humanitarian aid organizations, such as Oxfam
and MSF, questioned Western ideas, such as the core humanitarian principles of neutrality,
impartiality, and independence. In the 1990s, these principles based on deontological ethics
were criticized, especially the neutrality principle, as being potentially harmful and causing
undesired consequences. 21 But the alternative approach—the so-called ‘newhumanitarianism’ based on consequentialist ethics—also looks Western-centric. 22
Supporters of the new humanitarianism argued that humanitarian aid should be provided ina way that brings about good consequences and withheld when it is unlikely to contributeto them, and they justified taking sides with warring parties and expressing political
positions on the humanitarian situations in which they work. However, the question arises
as to who decides what consequences are good, who draws the line between deserving andundeserving victims, who decides which warring parties are just, and who decides which
political positions should be advocated at UN meetings and other influential fora—those
who control and manage the humanitarian aid funding?
In such a sector, whose expertise is valued, whose voices are heard, who holds the leversof power, and who gets a vote? After the Black Lives Matter movement, citizens and aid
workers in aid-recipient countries have come forward on Twitter and other platforms withpainful experiences of having their ideas, suggestions, and knowledge trivialized orignored. Their knowledge was often treated as worth less than the view of Europeans
18 O’Neill, ‘Oxfam in Haiti’.
19 The grand bargain: a shared commitment to better serve people in need, Istanbul, Turkey, 23 May 2016.

https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/system/files/grand_bargain_final_22_may_final-2_0.pdf (accessed on
15 May 2022).
20 Nwajiaku-Dahou and Leon-Himmelstine, ‘How to’.
21 Duffield, ‘Governing’.
22 Ibid.

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TAMARA ENOMOTO
parachuted in after one month of training. As Naser Haghamed, chief executive officer ofIslamic Relief Worldwide, summarized, ‘[t]here would appear to be a persistent notion that
locals in the global South cannot be trusted to carry out the work themselves, and hence theneed for white ‘ex-pats’ to constantly travel overseas.’23
Local actors’ abilities to develop and manage aid projects, to administer funding, and to
define good consequences are often doubted, and their political views about the conflictsituations they face are seen as carrying the risk of negative consequences, such aspoliticization and misuse, while staff members of aid organizations living in the global
North who have little knowledge of the situation on the ground are expected to make good
choices, and aid funds continue to be allocated to their organizations despite their systemic
and persistent failure to prevent sexual crimes, misappropriation of funds, fraud, andnepotism by their own staff members.24 After the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020,
some began to question whether one very deep-seated reason for systemic reluctance tolive up to localization rhetoric might be racism.25

III WAYS AHEAD ?
As many have pointed out in the last two years, it had been taboo for a long time to talkabout racism in the ‘do-good’ sector. 26 As Corinne Gray, Chief Executive Officer ofUncomfortable Revolution and former UN Refugee Agency staff member, rightly put it:
Experiencing racism, no matter how subtle, is hurtful. And, sometimes, we respond in
pain. But so many times, when we address it, the conversation shifts to our tone.
Suddenly, we find ourselves apologising for making a colleague uncomfortable bypushing back against a racist comment. Suddenly, we find ourselves in a world where
the act of calling out racism is more offensive than racism itself.27
The author of this article has directly witnessed such moments time and again in her 19year work in the sector. Certainly, before the surge of the Black Lives Matter movement in
2020, the term racism was rarely pronounced in relation to problems in the sector. As an
example, several years ago, numerous NGO staff members in a ‘humanitarian disarmament’
advocacy NGO coalition pointed out issues abuse of power by its leaders anddiscrimination against its Southern members. Their emails stated emphatically, ‘enough isenough’. As a consequence, they were labelled as problematic, impolite, and moneyseeking trouble-makers by those who were accused. When an NGO worker from the global
South pointed out problems in the same NGO coalition in a face-to-face meeting using
terms such as ‘misuse of power’, she was immediately silenced by a white woman from theUnited Kingdom who vehemently admonished her for using such language. In the same
year, a conference of states parties to a treaty that the same NGO coalition promotes washeld in Geneva, and the theme of the conference was ‘gender and gender-based violence’.
The NGO coalition launched an annual monitoring report at the conference, which included
photos of both men and women, but mostly white men and women, despite its claim to beuniversal and diverse. In addition, where photos of persons of colour were used in this23 Haghamed, ‘Opinion’.
24 O’Neill, ‘Oxfam’.
25 Slim, ‘Is racism’.
26 Gray, ‘Doing’.
27 Ibid.

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Racism in the Development and Humanitarian Aid and Advocacy Sector
report, most were portrayed as faceless and nameless bodies.
In fact, it still seems difficult in some quarters of the sector to openly discuss issues ofracism and white supremacy in their own groups, and the above ‘humanitarian
disarmament’ sub-sector may be one such example. There has been relative silence on
racism-related matters in the ‘humanitarian disarmament’ sub-sector compared to the wider
development and humanitarian aid and advocacy sector, even after the Black Lives Mattermovement of 2020. Some of those interviewed by the author pointed out the difficulties
that ‘humanitarian disarmament’ actors from the global South experience in speaking
openly about racism-related issues in their sub-sector, mainly for fear of causing trouble
with donors of the global North, whose advocacy and campaigning funds typically go togroups’ Secretariats mostly situated in the North and led by white staff members.28 Others
have noted that the cause of the silence among individuals in the North who are involved in‘humanitarian disarmament’ might be insecurities in terms of career and relations with
influential actors in the relatively small community.29 In such quarters, it may be necessary
to focus on creating an atmosphere in which people can more openly discuss racism, white
supremacy, colonialism, and inequality embedded in the groups and networks they haveorganized.
Similarly, the Japanese aid and advocacy sector has been relatively silent on racismrelated matters in their own sector. Although the Black Lives Matter movement has been
reverberating throughout (albeit unevenly) the development and humanitarian aid andadvocacy sector, there has not been much debate on racism-related matters among Japanesepractitioners and researchers. Some in the sector may think that racism is a problem oforganizations based in the West and that it has little relevance for Japanese practitioners
and researchers in the sector. However, it is worth examining whether we are indeed
immune to racism.
This article and the Binalakshmi Nepram’s article in this number, as well as Shinya
Konaka’s article30 and Go Shimada’s article31 in the last number of The Journal of ResearchInstitute for the History of Global Arms Transfer, are part of the results of our efforts to
openly discuss these underexplored issues through organising online events, such as the‘Online Symposium: Past, Present and Future of Humanitarian and Development Aid:
Rethinking the Aid Sector with Binalakshmi Nepram’ on 4 February 2021, the online
seminar ‘Race and Gender in Humanitarian Disarmament with Binalakshmi Nepram’ on 23
July 2021, and the online seminar ‘BLM and the International Aid Community: Reflection
by a Former Aid Worker from Japan’ on 1 December 2021. The author thanks those whohave been involved in the effort, and is determined to continue to promote debate on theunderexplored issues in our sector.
Concurrently, recognizing racism in the development and humanitarian aid and advocacy
sector overall has now shed light on a troublesome question for practitioners andresearchers—how should we address racist structures, systems, terminology, concepts,
practices, and attitudes? As terms such as decolonisation of aid and anti-racism havealready become buzzwords co-opted and utilized by organizations situated in or originatingfrom the global North and may be in danger of becoming catch-all terms for any change
initiative, the sector is clearly at a crossroads as to which path to take.32

28 Interviews conducted between January and August 2021.
29 Ibid.
30 Konaka, ‘Under one tent’.
31 Shimada, ‘Rethinking development’.
32 Mathews, ‘It’s 2022’.

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