What I learned from putting together Aid Worker Voices

Posted on: October 13, 2016 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: Aid Worker Voices book

What I learned from putting together Aid Worker Voices Aid Worker Voices was published back in September, 2016 and since then I have been busy extending the research with more in-depth interviews with local aid workers and other posts based on more thought and research about a wide variety of topics. Look soon for update posts about local aid workers here in North Carolina, what is it like to be a LGBQI+ aid worker, and some thoughts about the sector overall. On the margins I am an academic that studies and teaches about aid and development and founded a program with a global development focus, and this puts me decidedly only on the fringes of “the humanitarian aid and development industry.”  What I have learned from working with J (aka Evil Genius) on our survey, writing dozens of posts about the data and, finally, putting together Aid Worker Voices is that though I have a…

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Five long years seeking justice

Posted on: August 24, 2022 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: Uncategorized

[Note: this post was intended as an op-ed. Mohammad Azizul Hoque of the Centre for Peace and Justice in Dhaka, Bangladesh contributed to this essay. Hoque and his colleague Tasnuva Ahmad wrote an excellent article on this important five year anniversary.]   Five long years seeking justice August 25, 2022 marks the five year anniversary of the Rohingya genocide. This ethnic and religious minority has spent five long years seeking justice. The facts are both clear and stark. Five years ago the Rohingya people were  the victim of a genocide by the military junta controlling Myanmar. Beginning  August 25, 2017 nearly 800,000 Rohingya fled across the border into Bangladesh. Some 140,000 Rohingyas were internally displaced in the melee and herded into IDP camps, where they have remained ever since. Though the Rohingya diaspora nearly global in reach, most are  concentrated in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and  India, with the vast majority…

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Reactions to “Vale the Humanitarian Principles: New principles for a new environment”

Posted on: October 2, 2019 | By: Tom Arcaro | Filed under: Uncategorized

“We can never construct the best world in which our compassion can immediately translate into an end of suffering, but we can try to build a second-best world based on hard-headed assessments of the needs and options.” –Fiona Terry, Condemned to Repeat: The Paradox of Humanitarian Action, p. 216 “It is presumed that market solutions are always to be preferred, that governments and regulators are generally incompetent, and that great wealth reflects superior intelligence or insight, rather than having anything to do with entrenched privilege or power.” -page 6 Reactions to Vale the Humanitarian Principles: New principles for a new environment   Overview and thoughts Australian academics Matthew Clarke and Brett Parris recently published Working Paper 001 for the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership at Deakin University. They take us up to 35,000 feet and offer nothing less than what they immodestly call “new principles” to guide humanitarian work. Thoughtful critiques…

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