The Master´s Goodwill: New strands of humanitarian aid - Still not enough
Channel: medico international
Date: 2023-02-10

Online event series Decolonizing Aid - Planetary Solidarity beyond Aid. Critical perspectives on development and aid. Recording from 29.01.2023.

The ambivalences in humanitarian aid are of particular difficulty: on the one hand, it follows the acute moral imperative to alleviate suffering; on the other, it is a continuation of colonial practices that are in large part responsible for creating crises and embedded in the world order that keeps these disasters alive. In doing so, they depoliticize the contexts of suffering and the struggles on the ground. It also raises the question of what it means to help "firefight" in a world that is constantly burning. Despite all the reforms in humanitarian aid, forexample through the 2016 Humanitarian Summit, the questions remain.If we look at humanitarian aid from a justice- and human rights-based approach rooted in an anti-capitalist and decolonial understanding of the future, several questions arise: How can humanitarian aid be challenged and changed to meet this future? How can we imagine humanitarian aid in transition? Which aspects do we need to protect, which to abolish? Given the not-so-unlikely future of a burning planet: Will humanitarian aid become obsolete as a response to disasters? Can humanitarian aid become part of the transformation?  Tammam Aloudat is one of the leading voices in the field of decolonizing global health especially in the realm of humanitarian aid. As a physician and humanitarian worker with 20 years of experience working with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) working in conflicts, natural disasters, forced displacement, and disease outbreaks both in projects and in the headquarters. He has worked on issues ranging from medical standards and quality of care, humanitarian ethics, palliative care, to access to medicines. The president  of the Board of MSF Netherlands and former managing director of the global health center of the geneva graduate institute also co-founded the Action to Decolonise Global Health (ActDGH).