More than a year after the renewed push for racial justice, what progress has the humanitarian aid sector made?  Amid the 2020 global movement for racial justice, aid organisations were criticised for their lack of diversity and colonial structures. Many published statements promising to do better. What tangible progress has the humanitarian aid sector made more than a year after the push for racial justice?  In this episode, TNH CEO and podcast host Heba Aly shares the outcomes of TNH questionnaires circulated among aid organisations and aid workers. We also hear from an initiative keeping the sector accountable, and from an executive trying to change the sector. Guests: Lena Bheeroo from Charity So White and the Racial Equity Index, and Peter Walton, CEO of Care Australia.

Level 3: Stories from the Heart of Humanitarian Crises

RH S2E3 | Diversity in the aid sector

Co-founder, former CEO and long-time editor Ben Parker is leaving The New Humanitarian after more than 25 years. In this special episode, host Heba Aly asks him to reflect on his years of humanitarian reporting.

TNH Special | Reflections of a humanitarian reporter

Despite many years of reforms, progress towards more inclusive, efficient, and accountable humanitarian aid has been slow. But new recommendations, based on three years of research by the Centre for Global Development, propose four ways to more fundamentally reform the underlying architecture of the aid system. In this episode of the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast, host Heba Aly digs into proposed reforms to humanitarian accountability, coordination, financing, and governance.    Guests:  Patrick Saez, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development Alix Masson, advocacy lead of the NEAR Network Annika Sandlund, head of partnerships and coordination at the UN Refugee Agency Danny Sriskandarajah, chief executive of Oxfam GB

RH S2E2 | A new approach to aid reform?

The so-called war on terror has forever changed how aid is delivered in conflict zones, and Afghanistan is the perfect case study.  In the wake of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and the withdrawal of US and NATO forces, many aid organisations have temporarily halted their operations or withdrawn non-essential international staff, just as Afghanistan’s many pre-existing crises are gearing up to become a humanitarian catastrophe. In the season two premiere of the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast, TNH CEO and host Heba Aly looks back on 20 years of humanitarianism in Afghanistan to ask: Was the role of Western aid agencies helpful or hurtful? Were they impartial or complicit?  Guests Ashley Jackson, Afghanistan expert and co-director of the Centre for the Study of Armed Groups at the Overseas Development Institute, and Joel Charny, former executive director of Norwegian Refugee Council USA, rethink the role of NGOs in counter-insurgency and offer some suggestions for the way forward.

RH S2E1 | NGOs and counter-insurgency: The case of Afghanistan

A fictional take on tomorrow's disaster response - when cluster approaches, donor-funded appeals, and foreign-led responses are no longer part of humanitarian assistance.  As read by the author, Malka Older. Produced by The New Humanitarian. 

TNH Special: Earthquake relief. Mexico. 2051

Starting September 15th, Rethinking Humanitarianism is back with new episodes exploring the future of aid.

Season 2 of Rethinking Humanitarianism

HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, COVID-19, emergency care: Public health system ‘breakdown’ could cascade into a wider emergency, aid groups warn.

Myanmar’s post-coup healthcare breakdown

Vaccine doses are trickling in to the region’s COVID-19 hotspots, but there is deep mistrust of rollout efforts and worries over new variants.

As trust fades, Indigenous groups in the Amazon race against time on vaccines

In every episode of the Rethinking Humanitarianism podcast, we ask our guests what they would do if they had millions of dollars – or perhaps a magic wand – to transform the way the world responds to people in need. We’ve heard a panoply of pitches: from politicians sleeping in refugee camps to a global fund for social protection, from networked humanitarianism to the merger of UN agencies. Now, as a wrap-up to our first season (don’t fret, we’ll be back), host Heba Aly puts these ideas to three people in positions to enact change:     Valerie Nkamgang Bemo, Deputy Director, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Raouf Mazou, Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, UN Refugee Agency Per Olsson Fridh, Minister for International Development Cooperation, Sweden   Listen in to hear which ideas pass muster and which get a hard “no”. Podcast in partnership with the Center for Global Development.

RH Episode 10 | The magic wand episode

COVID-19 dominated headlines in 2020. The pandemic shocked the world, exacerbating existing crises, overshadowing new ones, and creating all kinds of knock-on health, economic and social effects. Against the backdrop of 2020, what can we expect in the year ahead? What will be the continued fallout from COVID-19? What other crises and trends are on the horizon? For this online conversation, explored our annual Crises to Watch list and asked leading thinkers in the humanitarian space what should demand our attention. - Heba Aly, Director, The New Humanitarian (moderator) - Eilidh Kennedy, Director, IARAN- Julia Sanchez, Secretary General, ActionAid - Sherine El Taraboulsi-McCarthy, PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute - Sudhanshu Shekhar Singh, Founder, Humanitarian Aid International - Comfort Ero, Program Director, Africa, International Crisis Group

TNH Events | Crises to Watch 2021

So in this episode of Rethinking Humanitarianism, host Heba Aly sits down with donors to talk about humanitarian reform priorities from their vantage point – and how funding policies can be part of the problem.    Aly, director of The New Humanitarian, talks with Michael Koehler, deputy director general of the European Commission’s humanitarian aid arm ECHO, and Ruairí De Búrca, director general of Irish Aid, to find out what it’s like to be in their shoes: what does the political economy of UN reform and localisation look like from a donor perspective; and how would they address rising needs at a time of likely shrinking donor budgets?

RH Episode 9 | Inside the donor mindset

What is the role of a $25 billion humanitarian aid industry in a trillion dollar problem? The size of the challenge is well beyond the humanitarian system. So what kind of rethink is necessary for the way aid agencies work in the face of this impending threat? To answer that question, TNH Director Heba Aly is joined by Paul Knox Clarke, the former head of research at the humanitarian network ALNAP who is now heading up the Complex Humanitarian Crises initiative, and Donna Lagdameo, the senior policy adviser and Asia Pacific focal point for the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.

RH Episode 8 | Aid’s climate challenge

The police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and several other Black Americans forced many around the world to look introspectively and critically at systemic power imbalances. The aid sector was no exception, with growing calls for it to be decolonised.  But movements often falter when it comes time for policy change. Now comes the hard part for both the humanitarian sector and for its critics. How does this dialogue begin to move from slogans to actual change?

RH Episode 7 | Decolonising aid

As we close out a year in which the UN marked its 75th anniversary, we’re taking a hard look at whether reform of multilateral agencies has a chance. Two guests with extensive backgrounds in diplomacy and international service are joining co-hosts Heba Aly and Jeremy Konyndyk on this sixth episode of Rethinking Humanitarianism, the podcast series exploring the future of aid. Fabrizio Hochschild-Drummond, UN under secretary general and special advisor on the UN 75th anniversary, looks at areas of resistance as well as progress in the reform agenda, drawing on his long experience within the UN and in the field. Ambassador Hesham Youssef, a career diplomat with the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and now a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace, discusses power and the influence of southern blocs over the reform process and political agendas. Join them in this episode to delve into just what it is about the governance and power structures of multilateral agencies that makes reform so difficult.

RH Episode 6 | Multilateral reform

So many of the day-to-day realities of the humanitarian sector are driven by money: who gets it, how it's distributed, and what it's intended for. Who benefits from the current models of financing aid? Can alternatives – from local pooled funds to private sector infrastructure – provide better value for money and better outcomes for people affected by crises? What gets in the way of change?  In this episode, we dive into how mistrust, monopolies, and perverse incentives are shaping humanitarian response.

RH Episode 5 | Money talks

A podcast from IRIN's newsroom in Geneva Level 3 — the UN designation for the world's most severe humanitarian crises — brings you an inside look at the conflicts and natural disasters that leave millions of people in need each year, and the policies and people who respond to them. Join IRIN’s journalists in the aid policy hub of Geneva and in global hotspots to unpack the stories that are disrupting and shaping lives around the world.

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Level 3: Stories from the Heart of Humanitarian Crises

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