"Humanitarian action is a profoundly social practice that seeks to understand people's conditions and needs, then work with them as individuals, groups, organisations, authorities and whole populations to achieve improvements in people's personal lives and their collective experience."
This statement by Hugo Slim, a prominent figure in the humanitarian field, on the importance of sharing power in humanitarian action, opens the door to deeper discussions on the intricate power dynamics within the international humanitarian system. In the context of contemporary humanitarian efforts, the 'people' Slim refers to can be understood as the nations of the Global South often left waiting for the Global North to recognise their needs and intervene to improve their circumstances. As for these two spheres, Global South refers to the lower- and middle-income countries that constitute two-thirds of the world's population, while the Global North countries represent the geopolitically dominant nations, having higher GDP per capita. This raises a fundamental question: why are Global South countries still expected to rely on the assistance of Global North actors for survival and development?
Over the past five decades, countries in the Global South have witnessed a severe increase in dependency on humanitarian assistance, placing immense pressure on humanitarian actors. Countries and populations affected by crises, such as Afghanistan, Somalia and Lebanon, rely on this aid for survival. The desperate reliance of these nations and their economies on international aid is to a great extent a consequence of humanitarian crises to which various Northern governments have significantly contributed. Global North organisations and governments, in contrary, often position themselves as the 'humanitarian police', leading global humanitarian efforts. However, the traditional North-led governance of international humanitarianism has limited the influence of Global South actors, reducing them to mere proxies in collaborative humanitarian efforts rather than partners. Recently, the need to rebalance power between Global North and South actors has become critical to ensuring context-specific, timely and effective humanitarian responses, especially as protracted crises proliferate in the Global South. As a result, these actors are now challenging the status quo by asserting their presence and seeking to end the top-down, hierarchical governance in the international humanitarian system dominated by the Global North, ushering in a new era of humanitarian leadership...
Read the full op-ed at Humanitarian Practice Network