Social Science Research Council

The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) sponsored a monthly seminar series in 2004-05 entitled “The Transformations of Humanitarian Action” as a key component of its broader effort to promote social science work on Humanitarian Emergencies. The hope is that this heightened attention will lead not only to top-quality research on the topic but also to work that will be of relevance to the range of constituencies that are involved in humanitarian action.

Although modern humanitarianism has steadily grown and constantly changed ever since its origins in the 19th century, global developments since the 1980s have caused the field to undergo radical changes. The end of the Cold War has created a greater space for humanitarian action. The growing role played by states in the financing and delivery of humanitarian assistance has increased the resources available for humanitarian action but also compromised the independence and impartiality of relief agencies.

The emergence of complex humanitarian emergencies has created a greater demand for humanitarian intervention and caused relief, human rights, and development agencies to mingle in the same space and articulate a relief-rights-development linkage. Much of the humanitarian community has increasingly accepted that it should provide more than immediate relief and taken on the goal of addressing and ultimately eliminating the root causes of conflict. The size, scope, and scale of humanitarian action has expanded dramatically, altering the fundamental organization and purpose of humanitarian action.

This period of expansion has also produced substantial doubts regarding the effectiveness of humanitarian action. Humanitarian organizations are increasingly forced to address the negative consequences of their noble intentions, to provide tangible evidence that they cause more good than harm, and to identify and eliminate those strategies that leave populations at continued risk. As they expand the scope of their activities, humanitarian agencies are affecting more populations than ever before; this accumulating power has led to growing calls for their accountability. These questions regarding their effectiveness and accountability have tarnished the legitimacy and moral authority of humanitarian action. In response, humanitarian organizations have attempted to answer the challenge by professionalizing their activities, setting standards, and undertaking evaluative assessments.

Each seminar in the series included brief papers on aspects of these transformations, presented by two experts, typically one by a scholar at an academic institution and/or addressing mainly the scholarly community, the other by an expert based in an organization involved in humanitarian action or addressing mainly the practitioner community. These papers and the discussions they triggered demonstrated the value of developing an on-going conversation between scholarly and practitioner communities and stimulated the development of networks between university-based social scientists and those immediately involved in organizing and delivering humanitarian assistance. Social scientists have generally neglected this important area of global action, but to do research on this fast-moving field requires insights that can be provided only by the participants themselves. Practitioners can benefit from the sustained conceptual analysis and careful attention to issues of empirical inquiry offered by the social science community. The mutual engagement has the potential to create mutual learning across these institutional spaces and perspectives.


2004-05 Transformations of Humanitarian Action Seminar Series Schedule