“How do we weigh the unforeseen and often unforeseeable negative results of our humanitarian interventions?” -James Dawes, That the World May Know, p. 16
Primum non nocere [first, do no harm], indeed As background preparation for class I am re-reading William Easterly’s The Tyranny of Experts, and this has lead to re-visiting some fundamental ideas about aid, development, the humanitarian imperative, and, well, what it all means. This reflection has led me again to the question many of us ask at various stages of our career, namely ‘what difference am I making in the world?’ So, for a bit, I am jumping down that rabbit hole once again, knowing already my destination, but unable to stop myself.
The trope ‘move the needle’ has been used in popular discourse for decades now, and has even achieved cliche status in the business world. I have heard this phrase used in countless conversations in academic and administrative circles and not infrequently in casual discussions involving the humanitarian aid and development sector. And, of course, a quick search just now yielded no less than a half dozen ‘Twitter handles’ using the phrase ‘moving the needle’ in some form.
But what does ‘moving the needle’ mean in the context of humanitarian aid and development? Are we/am I ‘making a difference in this world’?
Enter rabbit hole #1
Words are tools to describe and explain to others -and to ourselves- ideas we have in our heads. As ideas go from nascent but increasingly organized clusters of synapses in the brain (deep structure) to verbal or written articulations (surface structure), words must be attached to those ideas and, as Whorf and Sapir taught us long ago, language (both syntax and grammar) do not just passively describe the world they -critically- construct our world.
James Dawes in his book That the World May Know quotes Gilbert Holleufer of the ICRC who told him, “The language disincarnated, it disembodied reality, and they [the affected community] know it. They know we are disembodying their reality, we are dissolving it into words. ….Humanitarian language is part of the threat they have.”
Simply put, words matter.
The phrase ‘move the needle’ is a shorthand way of summarizing a dizzying array of variables, and, as such, necessarily destroys the nuance and complexity underlying these three words, inhibiting and limiting our full understanding of the impact of our actions. Broadly asked, how do the words we use oversimplify and perhaps even skew our understanding of phenomena like ‘charity’, ’empowerment’, ‘aid’ and ‘development’ and ‘move the needle’?
And rabbit hole #2 Four years ago I wrote a long blog post where I posit that our global social system is nonlinear and hence, in the long run our collective humanitarian efforts are part of a massive and complex network of forces which are largely beyond our control. Positive social change is our purpose, but our actions are based on what might be a specious assumption, namely that we can move the needle. See this post for additional thoughts.
In a more recent related post I wrote about neoliberalism and the inexorable moving forward of the many headed hydra of capitalism. One aid worker summarized the point thusly,
“I think humanitarian aid work operates within a system that is built on inequality – we won’t see large scale change happen in the lives of people, in terms of long term development, until we start to challenge the structures and systems that result in this inequity in the first place. And the heart of those institutions is within North America and Europe – until we recognize how dependent we are on the oppression and marginalization of others for our own betterment and benefit (i.e. access to cheap disposable goods, foreign foods and fresh imports, temporary foreign workers to fill low-income job vacancies, etc…), humanitarian aid work is just another cog in this bullshit machinery.”
If our global world is indeed a complex non-linear system, then capitalism is one of the main features of that system. Moving the needle, if possible, would mean chiseling away at the baked in assumptions most have about how we live our lives in this ‘modern’ world, both as individuals and as nations.
Comic relief rabbit hole #3
The ‘saving one starfish on the beach’ trope is a sentiment that appears in many faith traditions (Judaism, for example) and is captured in this statement by Mark Brayne who said, “…it’s not about changing the world; it’s about changing the square meter you’re standing on.” Though this comedy sketch by Studio C is intended as just that, comedy, a good game to play is to think of the real life example played out in metaphor by the actors in each of the scenes. The man with the mustache -his name is Jeremy- represents do-gooders everywhere.
In comes sociology
In most popular culture contexts the phrase ‘move the needle’ is used in a one directional sense, from zero impact to great impact. In aid and development work it is more commonly and soberly thought of as being bi-directional, that is, aid -or more commonly development- can also move the needle in a negative direction. Indeed, we can be doing bad by doing good, as Christopher Coyne puts it.
Though the phrase ‘sociocultural impact statement’ is not used in the aid and development world, this is something sociologists have been doing for a long time. These statements look exactly like an environmental impact statement, and, in the vernacular of sociology, examine all of the manifest -intended- and latent -unintended- consequences of the planned action(s).
Though the Logical Framework Approach has been used in the Global North development sector since the late 1960’s (variations include Goal Oriented Project Planning (GOPP) or Objectives Oriented Project Planning (OOPP)), sociologists have been doing ‘functional analyses’ since the days of Emile Durkheim and more recently in the 1950’s when Robert King Merton gave us more nuanced language.
One basic maxim in sociology and anthropology is that ‘everything is connected to everything else’, and thus it follows that the latent consequences of any action directly or indirectly would impact the entire fabric of the social system where the action gets implemented and, I’ll add, every part of every social system connected to this system. I often tell my students as they do development related ‘gedanken experiments’ (e.g., what if we could 3-d print inexpensive housing?) that the lists of both positive and negative latent impacts are only limited by the researchers’ time and imagination. For those whose intention is to ‘make a positive difference’, learning the latent dysfunctions (unintended negative impacts) can be very consequential and sobering. Sociologists are (and if not, should be) the first line in training professionals doing M&E.
The needle and the damage done
A question. Is MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) making any difference, ‘moving the needle’ in a positive direction in Yemen? Of course, their comms team tells us with compelling quantitative evidence. Lives saved cannot be argued with. But then we have the ghost of Florence Nightingale over our shoulder asking, how much long term damage has been done by providing aid? I feel quite certain that she’d point out the absurdity that Saudi Arabia, the very country leading the war, is also a major contributor for aid to its victims.
Is the humanitarian aid sector moving the needle? Yes, arguably -and paradoxically- in both directions simultaneously.
And, yes, by hyperlinking Neil Young’s song I am invoking the metaphor that oil is heroin and inferring that unchecked neoliberalism is at the root of many (most?) humanitarian crises. My take on Young’s lyric at the beginning of this post: I write driven by devotion to all humanity.
Back to the classroom
So, as an academic teaching about the humanitarian ecosystem, am I making any difference? Is my teaching having a net positive impact on my students, and will they go on to make positive changes themselves? Course evaluations near the end of the semester may provide some data, but the real proof of impact must be seen in long term, lasting impacts on student’s actions, and these data are always hard to capture.
The key phrase in the Dawe’s quotation with which I began this post is “…often unforeseeable…” Given that I -we- act within a non-linear system, perhaps we can never know the eventual outcomes of our actions. I’ll make a final nod to Conrad Lorenz and offer the thought that at least on some level I flap my gums (lecture to my students) the same as the butterfly flaps its wings, unaware of the eventual outcome(s).
As always, please contact me if you have any reaction, comment, or suggestion.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
[Below is a note to a colleague on his way to Bangkok for discussions regarding the Rohingya situation.]
My esteemed colleague,
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men…”
-Lord Acton
I am keenly aware that quoting the words of a colonialist -let alone a British colonialist- to begin this message is perhaps the height of irony. Acton’s words, though, are relevant to my observations below.
I read the document you sent to me [as background for your high level meeting in Bangkok to discuss the situation in Maynmar regarding the Rohingya]. Thank you.
I have been thinking a great deal about the situation in Myanmar and what can be done to create a different political narrative in that country. Enlarging my scope of attention, I see my own country, the United States, being very much influenced by the MAGA Trump followers and those who have come to power with him. I am also looking very closely at Russia and the world that Putin has created and the narrative he is pushing in his war against Ukraine. I think these three situations, Myanmar, the United States, and Russia have a great deal in common. The only big difference is that in Myanmar, instead of having a charismatic figure in control as in the United States and Russia, there is a cabal of older men who cling onto power. They are acting as one and can hide, at least in the eyes of the outside world, in anonymity. What I see in common with these three situations is that there is an entrenched power that stays in control largely by exploiting the fears of people and, at the same time, the greed of those around them.
Let’s discuss the case of Russia for a moment. The outside world, with the exceptions of China and India and a few other countries, has largely condemned what Russia is doing and have put political and economic measures in place to punish the behavior of Putin. As I write this it appears that Putin is very willing to take his entire country down with his egotistical desire to push his narrative and retain power. All the sanctions in the world have not and will not dissuade him.
In the case of the United States, we have the charismatic figure of Donald Trump who emerged in the mid 20 teens and has virtually taken over the entire Republican Party and is controlling the political narrative of the those on the right. He will not back down, and he will not be defeated in the sense that all the sanctions in the world, just like with Putin, won’t do anything to him. He will bring down the United States and democracy before he quits his efforts to retain power.
Now, I realize I am very naïve about the inner workings of the Tatmadaw, but I must assume that those at the head of this military are psychologically very similar to both Putin and Trump. And as is with sanctions against Trump and Putin, I feel any sanctions against the Myanmar military will only yield more extreme measures on their part. Neither Trump nor Putin nor the leaders of the Tatmadaw will go quietly into the night. From a cynical perspective it appears that legal measures are impotent gestures that fall off the Trump/Putin/Tatmadaw egos like so much tiny drops of rain onto a huge umbrella, just bouncing off little noticed.
So, the question for those of us who have a humanitarian heart and seek social justice is what do we do in the face of this recalcitrance? We certainly can’t just do nothing, but we don’t want to continue doing things that are only symbolic gestures affirming our own sense of righteousness.
I have deep faith in the human spirit, and I do believe that the moral arc of the universe though long does bend toward justice. I am heartened by the news of various grassroots groups in Myanmar continuing the fight even though certain death awaits them. I have the same deep respect for the protesters recently in Moscow who were carried away to jail cells and serve as a motivation for others to come out and protest. In the United States we also have people continuing to fight for social justice. We have an election coming up in just over a month and that I’m hoping we will finally find an answer to this populist and authoritarian MAGA madness. I hope that collectively we in the US can come to our senses, so to speak.
So back to the question, what can people like you and me who believe in social justice and believe in the beauty of the human spirit do in the face of the reality that exists now on the ground in Myanmar? Just as in any battle one must be ever creative and flexible in strategies and a tactics, fighting on as many fronts as possible. Certainly, looking for legal measures such as what The Gambia has done it is necessary.
I’m sure you are aware of many of the similar kinds of legal actions being taken by individuals, organizations, and nations against Myanmar are taking place. All of these are good. All of these are necessary. All of these are good. But are all these enough?
For my part I am doing both my duty as a US citizen and as a global citizen to encourage my political representatives to take whatever actions they can change the behavior of the government in Myanmar. But as I said above, I think that the leadership in Myanmar, like Putin and Trump, will not be cowed or convinced by any such measures. Those corrupted by power do not respond to reason. They are entrenched in their power webs and will always remain blind to any moral logic other than their own twisted way of looking at the world.
So as you head to Bangkok I wish you well. I have every faith that the collective wisdom in the room will lead to some productive discussions and outline some viable actions to take. There’s a small part of me that feels that the best thing that I can do is to support the resistance movement on the ground in Myanmar, support those who are putting their life on the line to fight the Tatmadaw.
So, there you have it, the scattered thoughts of a late career sociologist.
In solidarity,
Tom
Thomas Arcaro
Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Elon University
Elon, NC 27244
He/him/his
“It would be advisable to think of progress in the crudest, most basic terms: that no one should go hungry anymore, that there should be no more torture, no more Auschwitz [or Gaza or Cox’s Bazar]. Only then will the idea of progress be free from lies.”
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
On this World Refugee Day 2022 let us not forget that all refugees have a right to an education
Listen to a poet
As a sociologist I am fully aware of how complex social reality is. In this ever globalizing world where cultural histories are now blending together, the task of capturing all the detailed nuance of one’s life is a daunting undertaking. Poetry is a time honored tool women and men from all over the world have used to artfully articulate observations about their lives and about the culture(s) in which they live and act. Poets are lay sociologists using an alternate language structure to share powerful insights. My goal with this essay is to comment on education as a basic human right and I can think of no better way to start than to use poetry.
Roshidullah Kyaw Naing, Rohingya poet
Below are two poems by Rohingya refugee Roshidullah Kyaw Naing, soon to be published by Notion Press Publishing [printed with author’s permission]. I have been asked to write the Foreword to his book entitled The Painful Life of Rohingya. I think his words are a powerful testament to why education is necessary for all.
Education For All
Education should be given to all Education is important for all It belongs to every humans It’s fundamental human right
Education is important in human lives It is the key to be successful in life Without it life is darker Give first priority in education
Peace through education It can make you vigorous It can help you to identify things It can show you
To communicate with each other It can help you to visit around the world It can keep you on right way It can keep you healthy
Never forget to learn Education in your life It’s the most powerful in the world It’s the backbone of the world
Value Of Education
Education is a hand-light of the life Without it the world is blind and dark Try to be educated so that you can make The whole world bright with your light.
The rights of refugees
According to the UNHCR, across the globe there are more than 84 million forcibly displaced people, 35 million (42%) of which are children. 26.4 million of those displaced are refugees. It is estimated that 6.4 million of these refugees live in refugee camps, over two-thirds (4.5 million) living in planned and managed camps, while the rest (2 million) are sheltered in self-settled camps (UNHCR).
Humanitarian resources devoted to caring for refugees in UN sanctioned camps are critical in maintaining a safe and healthy environment. In many cases the time spent in a refugee camp can typically be measured in years and, in some cases, even decades. This is the situation of many Rohingya refugees now in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, some of which arrived last century.
The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol represent the foundation of international law related to refugees. Those recognized by the UNHCR as having refugee status have many rights, perhaps the most important of which is non-refouelment. Under international human rights law refoulement refers to
“…any form of removal or transfer of persons, regardless of their status, where there are substantial grounds for believing that the returnee would be at risk of irreparable harm upon return on account of torture, ill-treatment or other serious breaches of human rights obligations.”
A second critical right of all refugees is the right to education, especially in early childhood. Of refugee children under the UN’s care, roughly 48% remain out of school due to many factors, not the least of which is chronic underfunding. The most recent estimate puts the funding gap at 52%, and to say humanitarian resources are stretched is a gross
Over time and in various contexts there have been different interpretations and approaches concerning education at the humanitarian level. The 2018 Global Compact on Refugees and the 2030 Agenda frames education’s goal to “enable them [refugees] to learn, thrive, and develop their potential, build individuals and collective resilience and contribute to peaceful coexistence and civil society” (UNHCR 2019). Though Bangladesh, the temporary home for approximately 1 million displaced Rohingya, is not a signator of the 1951 Refugee Convention, various judicial rulings have implied broad acceptance of varying degrees on several key elements.
Here is Article 26 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 26 Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.
Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
World Refugee Day 2022
The theme for World Refugee Day 2022 is the right to seek safety. Becoming a refugee is a horrible forced choice taken as a last resort by people no longer safe in their homeland. Once becoming a refugee the immediate goal is safety and security. The main longer term goal, however, is repatriation, going back to their previous lives and homes but now free from danger. This dream of repatriation remains strong in the vast majority of refugees but its fulfillment is delayed, sometimes by years and even decades. The need for some level of a normal life is strong, and an educational system, especially for younger children who crave order and routine, is an essential part of that normalcy. For the older children and young adults resuming educational opportunities is a pathway toward a better future both individually and for their community.
‘Robbed generation’
Gertrude Stein is credited with coining the term ‘lost generation’, first used to describe those disoriented by the social upheaval of World War I. The term ‘stolen generation’ refers to the First Nation peoples in Australia who were taken by government officials from caring and able parents as an effort at ‘assimilation.’
What do we call the
Photo credit: Youths for Rohingya Development (RYD)
countless children who have grown up in refugee camps, denied a normal cultural life and oftentimes lacking access to primary, secondary, and tertiary educational opportunities? ‘Culturally robbed generation’ may be accurate, if not as pity as the other two examples. In any case, the fundamental right to have a coherent cultural life with dignity is surely taken from those in refugee camps, so using the phrase ‘robbed generation’ seems accurate.
My personal connection
For me teaching sociology has always been a humanitarian act in the fundamental sense of that word. The ‘critical Hydra theory’ I have been using in my teaching the last several years explicitly emphasizes ‘respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms of all humans,’ especially those who have been historically marginalized. During my long career in all my classes I have sought to promote understanding, tolerance, and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups and have even been more inclusive by encouraging the understanding of human diversity in all its many manifestations. In the last year I have been fortunate to partner with staff from the Centre for Peace and Justice in Bangladesh and have helped conduct two very successful online classes for Rohingya and Bangladeshi learners. Our hope is that in the future all youth everywhere will have access to appropriate educational opportunities.
As I lifelong educator I have devoted my entire career to helping shape the minds of young people. I am devoted to education because I have seen the impact the classroom experience can have both on the individual and on her/his larger community. The impacts I have seen here in the United States are the very same I have seen in Bangladesh; the importance and impact of education crosses all cultural barriers.
The impact of education
We know from various sources of data that,
Education has many outcomes, and one obvious and important outcome is the actual content including learning to read, write, and acquire basic numeracy skills. But more importantly, being in a classroom gives learners a purpose and a future. It gives them a sense of hope and the possibility of progress and growth not just physically but intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally as well.
Education, especially as presented the critical thinking as a major focus, is one of the main forces capable of neutralizing all of the privileging forces faced by many learners.
Education is a radical feminist act. We know from various sources of data that young girls who attend school are empowered on many levels. SGVB is lower among educated females not just in refugee camps but in all settings and cultures.
Children who regularly attend school are far less likely to engage in destructive and delinquent behavior that makes them easy prey for those who would exploit them.
Children who regularly attend school are more disciplined, and have higher self esteem compared to those who do not attend school.
Education, especially secondary and tertiary education, is critical for developing and maintaining community cohesion.
Education, especially secondary and tertiary education, is critical for nurturing leaders equipped to listen carefully and thoughtfully to those around them and to respond to the needs of their communities. Critical thinking skills are essential for visionary and effective leaders.
One main tool of those who seek dominance over a population, especially those who rule with an authoritarian hand, is to deny access to education. An educated population has, metaphorically, a strong immune system, able to fight off ‘infections’ like corruption and false consciousness which can lead to an acceptance of the ideas that they are inferior, less human, and less deserving than their oppressors. An educated population is more resilient and able to understand the social forces that impact their lives, becoming better able to act as their own advocates.
An educated population has a common ‘language’ with which to communicated both internally among themselves and externally with, in the example of refugees, the humanitarian and government actors with which they must interact.
Teaching in prison
Early in my career I taught both in a women’s prison and also in a holding facility for incarcerated juveniles. My friends, family, and sometimes colleagues asked about the meaning and value of education in these contexts. As I reflected on this question I looked into my past for an answer. Coming from an extremely poor family, I never saw myself as above anyone else (quite the opposite), and the weltanschauung I developed as a young boy has had a lifelong impact on my pedagogy. Though I am certain at times I have failed, I have approached every class as a meeting of equals and have made consistant efforts to respect and value every learner in every context. I invite my learners to think with me and with each other, embracing the conceptual tools of my disciple to understand themselves and the world around them at a deeper level. I share my commitment to critical thinking and warn them that this approach to learning causes one to question themselves and the culture in which they live and act.
More thoughts on refugee education I continue to learn more about the realities of refugee life through reading poetry written by refugees, my teaching experiences, and through countless conversations with refugees and those who work with refugees. Below are some brief points, any one of which merits a more detailed discussion. [Note: What appears above and below are some of the talking points I will use as a guest for a Webinar on refugee education to be held in late June.]
One major question is funding for any educational structures for refugees. This question cannot be separated from the issue of how refugee populations put stress on the cultural, social, economic, and political fabric of their host communities. The dynamic of this question changes in the two fundamentally different types of hosting. By sheer numbers, the more common model is where the refugee population is absorbed into the host community such as is the case of many Palestinian and Syrian refugees working in and around Amman, Jordan or Kurdish and Syrian refugees in and around Erbil, Iraq. The second model, and the one with which I have the most personal knowledge, is where refugees are gathered in what are effectively open-air prison camps, their rights -most dramatically their right to move about- being dramatically curtailed.
In the most common model, the cost of education must be largely absorbed by the host communities thus making scarce resources such as classroom space and qualified teachers spread even more thinly.
In the refugee camp model the cost of education is borne by the international humanitarian system overseen by the UNHCR with outsourcing to INGOs like World Vision, Save the Children, and the Danish Refugee Council.
In both models, the cooperation of and permission from the host government (and relevant Ministries) is necessary and can sometimes be contentious. At issue are many factors, the most obvious of which is the economic impact.
Although at least some level of primary education is almost universally accomplished in both settings, secondary and tertiary education opportunities are severely limited, especially so for females. The humanitarian sector is chronically underfunded and whatever limited resources are available are allocated to the most pressing needs of the refugees with education -especially anything beyond primary school- almost always being at the end of the funding queue.
Given that many refugees remain in contained camps for 10+ years, one main negative consequence of having education be such a low priority is, as mentioned above, that there are ‘robbed generations’ of children never having had the chance to receive any formal education beyond the first few years. That said, everyone, especially the young, are sponges of information from the media, especially social media. These sources of passive education are highly questionable in their value and are prone to bias and creating a skewed world view. Social media is no replacement for a thoughtful liberal arts-type curriculum where critical thinking skills are learned and honed. Not so with a ‘media’ education.
In my opinion education for refugees cannot and should not be limited to solely Quran-focused madrasas, but rather should be focused on core academic skills and perhaps vocational training. Critical thinking must be free from dogma. There is a need for any curricula used for refugees to be culturally sensitive. In my experience there is a fine line, for example, between respecting cultural practices and condoning overt misogynistic policies and practices, especially in contexts where the refugee population adheres to fundamentalist religious practices. To be specific, in the critical Hydra model that I use in my classes, two of the eight ‘privileging forces’ heads of the Hydra are patriarchy and hetero/cisnormativity. That both of these privileging forces are supported by much fundamentalist dogma can create a challenging classroom situation.
Learning from Pedagogy of the Oppressed
My views on the purpose and pedagogical approach that should be taken in the classroom are informed by and most closely align with the sentiments found in Paulo Frire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. According to Frire, the central focus of any educational experience, especially of those most commonly marginalized, is to have the educator and the learners join hands in an effort to humanize themselves and to address the very process of oppression. Addressing and then effectively neutralizing the issue of power differences within the classroom is essential, and accomplishing this goal helps address power issues in the larger sociocultural context. No easy task, that.
It is very likely that Frire heard the words of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara who said “I am not a liberator. Liberators don’t exist. The people liberate themselves”. As an educator from the Global North I make efforts to fully understand my positionality and to constantly work to move beyond the false messages that my cultural indoctrination provided to me regarding all aspects of human diversity. My interaction with marginalized learners is not an act of ‘saviourism’ but rather a humanitarian partnership to expose oppression at all levels.
One tool that can be used is to have a learner based model. Not students, but rather learners, including and emphasizing a two way, non-hierarchical learning process.
The gap between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’
There is a constant and even epic struggle between what our aspirational documents (the quintessential example of which is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) advocate and what, given practical and political realities, is being accomplished regarding all social justice issues. Sociologists use the terms ‘ideal culture’ and ‘real culture’ to make this distinction, with ‘ideal culture’ reflected in our mission statements and constitutions and ‘real culture’ the actual state of human affairs. Indeed, much social justice work can be seen as efforts to close the gap between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’. Assuring the right to education is clearly no exception.
Providing education for refugees is one dimension of fulfilling the humanitarian imperative, the enactment of which is guided by core principles. The humanitarian principles have historically been listed as humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. Expanding on the principle of impartiality, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states,
“Humanitarian actors must not take sides in hostilities or engage in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature.”
Regarding the principle of independence they say,
“Humanitarian action must be autonomous from the political, economic, military or other objectives that any actor may hold with regard to areas where humanitarian action is being implemented.”
Adhering to these principles, especially impartiality and independence, is more aspirational than practical; humanitarian efforts are always complex and any actions taken -or, for that matter, not taken- are deeply impacted by both international geopolitics and the regional/national political realities. Providing education to refugees though a seemingly neutral humanitarian act can become very political on many levels.
One need only look at the situation in Bangladesh and the controversies surrounding education within the sprawling Rohingya refugee camps near Cox’s Bazar. Not a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the Bangladeshi government avoids the word ‘refugee’ referring rather to “Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals” (FDMN). Since the UN and INGO entities that would provide education in the camps are there at the invitation of the Bangladeshi government and can be ‘disinvited’ if they do not follow Bangladeshi government policy, education in the camps has become inherently and increasingly challenging as the humanitarian actors walk a delicate balance between the principled and the practical.
In an attempt to provide educational opportunities, an Orwellian-esque game of chess is currently being played where NGOs and INGOs label some education focused activities using language that avoids being red flagged by the Bangladeshi government.
As a side note, several years ago I worked on a documentary describing the educational efforts of the EZLN, the ‘Zapatistas’, in Chiapas, Mexico. The main focus of the documentary was on a group of Elon University students who had partnered with the Zapatistas and helped paint a small school near Oventic. The title of the documentary was Painting Without Permission. Those of us making efforts to provide educational opportunities within the refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar could be described as ‘teaching without permission.’
Final note
If you have made your way through all of the above, kudos to you! This post is a ‘brain dump’ of reflections related to the basic human right to education, specifically as it relates to the nearly 1 million refugees in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. I beg you patience and your comments. Feedback can be sent to arcaro@elon.edu.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector
Available now on Amazon and Kindle is my latest book Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector. This is a beta version and I will be deleting, editing, and perhaps adding in the next several months. Please let me know if you’d like to be a beta reader or would like a review copy. This is a compilation of blog posts from the past several years covering a wide range of topics.
Here is the the Introduction
Since publishing Aid Worker Voices in 2016, I have been blogging frequently about the humanitarian aid world. In addition to interviewing countless humanitarians, reading a constant flow of books, articles, and web pages, I have also taught a global social problems course for the last five years. In this class, I have always focused on the nature of the humanitarian system and have frequently invited into my class as guest speakers some of the humanitarians with which I have had the honor of speaking.
This book is a compilation of some of the blog posts that I have written and published in the last seven years. These posts have focused on various aspects of the humanitarian aid system and frequently on things that most would consider to be on the margins of the humanitarian system. As an academic, I squarely inhabit one of these margins, that is, those who study and write about the humanitarian world.
For the most part the chapters are in chronological order based on when they were written, with changes in this pattern due to a clustering of chapters based on topics or themes addressed.
As I write this, the Covid crisis is still impacting the entire world. In my part of the world it is a major public health crissue, but also very much a crisis that disproportionately affects those who have been marginalized. This is true around the world, and in fact, in many places in the world it’s not necessarily a health crisis but rather a poverty crisis. For instance, in Ghana they are calling it the poverty virus. The first section of this book takes a look at some aspects of how the coronavirus has impacted the world.
Through my research, I have been honored to meet online and speak with a large number of Rohingya refugees, most of which are living right now in Bangladesh in Cox’s Bazar. As part of my interviews with these young men and women, I learned that they were doing a good deal of work with and for major INGOs in the camp. That is to say, they were doing humanitarian work. Without permission, I have coined the term ‘refugee humanitarian’ to describe these people. In this section, I report on some of our discussions and describe the pressures under which they live their lives.
I’ve had many humanitarians visit my classes via various platforms like Skype, WhatsApp, and Zoom. These discussions have always been very rich, and I have learned along with my students things about the sector that you can’t find in books. I have also looked at what I’ll call local humanitarian workers in one section where I have the opportunity to become friends with interview officials who are dealing with refugee placement within the United States.
All in all, what you will find in this book are ruminations from a sociologist and researcher about the humanitarian sector. My goal has always been to act as a conduit of information from the sector to whatever public was reading my work.
In several chapters you will find references to the ‘Hydra’ of privileging forces. I have recently published Confronting Toxic Othering which is a compilation of blog posts about the Hydra and how this monster is fueled by toxic othering.
A special feature of this book is that it will continue to expand as the weeks and months pass. As I have time and motivation to tell more stories and to analyze the sector based on interactions I have with humanitarians in the field, refugees in camps, or students in my classes I will add more chapters. Look for a second edition in about a year.
This book is dedicated to humanitarian workers everywhere.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
“I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope”
-Cornel West, American author and activist
Thoughts on witnessing
The act of witnessing
As a first year grad student in 1975 I served as a teaching assistant to a large lecture section of Introduction to Sociology. Mid way through fall semester the professor covered the topics of race and ethnicity. One bright fall day, without much contextualization, he screened for the class the very powerful 1955 documentary “Night and Fog.” I had not seen this film before nor any like it. I was struck by the stark, brutal, raw, and emotionally wrenching depiction of Nazi death camp atrocities and, frankly, did not know how to react, how to process what I had seen or to deal with what I had witnessed. I had no idea this was just the beginning of a lifetime of intense exposures to humanitarian disasters, a lifetime of witnessing. I was too young then to realize that the Holocaust was not the first or even biggest genocide. Belgium’s King Leopold killed approximately 10,000,000 in the Congo decades earlier. Mass killings justified by racism fill human history.
One essential aspect of witnessing is empathy, the capacity to place oneself in another’s position. In sociology we are taught about Max Weber’s use of the concept of Verstehen or ‘interpretive understanding.’ Later, deepening this concept, the sociologist George H. Mead argued that to truly understand the world we must ‘take the role of the other.’
Witnessing, in the manner I describe below, is positive, mindful, and empathetic understanding. But sometimes this can be emotionally and intellectually hard, and empathy overload can become real, numbing, and even debilitating.
Adama Dieng, Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide
For my entire life I have watched with horror genocide after genocide, pogrom after pogrom. The killing fields in Cambodia (1975), Rwanda (1994), Srebrenica (1995), Kosovo (1999), Darfur (2003), and Myanmar (2017) grabbed headlines, but for each of these examples are dozens of lesser know mass killings of one group or tribe by another.
Though films like Night and Fog were intended to shock the world into confronting racism, the killing keeps happening all over our globe.Though the trope ‘Never Again’ is repeated after each major tragedy, it is, sadly never true. Perhaps Adama Dieng, Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide got it right when he said “‘Never again’ has become ‘time and again.’”
Prisoners of hope My acts of witnessing over the years have beat me down, and I struggle watching ‘time and again’ a humanity capable of deep and disturbing depravity. But here I am, working always for a more just world. Why? Those wiser than me provide guidance:
“I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope” wrote American activist Cornel West. I find myself grateful to him for perfectly capturing my sentiment.
No one can speak for all humanitarians, but in my 2014 survey of over 1,000 practitioners I heard this basic message again and again in their answer my question about how their sense of idealism has been impacted by working in the sector. One middle aged male expat said,
“The more I see, the more it is clear needs to be done, there is a sense you can’t let the beneficiaries down; also you feel driven by the poor decisions of politicians, to be there to pick up the pieces: provide physical aid, but also provide hope to the donors and the beneficiaries, that no matter how awful it is, someone came forward, when I see other humanitarians doing that it also restores my hope and a sense of even though it is awful the symbol of taking action against it is a powerful force for positive change. This gets me deeper into the job, no turning back.” (emphasis added)
Another, a young female, offered,
“My idealism is more informed than before I became an aid worker, and more aware of the difficulties/realities of being one, but overall I still have the same level of hope that keeps me here even when the going gets tough (which is often).” (emphasis added)
Like Cornel West, after a lifetime of witnessing large scale grotesque atrocities, I find it hard to be optimistic. But, yes, to ward off the terror of chaos, hope allows for one more day of watching, working, and, in my case, teaching about global social issues and the humanitarian imperative as a way of responding. Those working in the humanitarian sector must constantly bear witness to human disasters, many of which are conflicts borne of hate and racism, but they must show up day after day doing their job, easing pain whenever possible, at least for a moment. Though many become realists and pragmatists after months and years on the job most are also prisoners of hope.
Painting by Eleanor Arcaro-Burbridge.
An Angel
In the spring of 2021 as I watched the news coming out of Myanmar I found myself paralyzed by too much information. I remain in contact via WhatsApp, Facebook and other communication platforms with many in -or with intimate knowledge about- Myanmar. I hear and see in real time news of shootings in Rangoon, Sittwe, and other locations, including Mandalay where Angel, a young activist, was killed. I am watching another genocide, this time against the various ethnic groups in Myanmar and now survivors of this horror now refugees are recovering from a devastating fire in their refugee camp homes near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, this at the same time as the Myanmar military fire live ammunition at innocent protesters.
Made famous by a series of photographs capturing her death, the young woman “Angel” gave her life protesting the military coup, fighting for a real democracy in her homeland, hope in her heart.
“Everything Will Be OK” only if we show the same level of courage that she did, fighting to her last breath for democracy in Myanmar. She witnessed injustice and responded with her life. Should any of us do less?
Witnessing by seeing each other When one bears witness they engage in contact with another. This engagement, if it is truly witnessing in the sense that I’m talking about it here, means that there will be appropriate follow-through regarding what has been witnessed. This witnessing can be face-to-face or, increasingly in this cyber connected globe, it can be virtual. A WhatsApp or FaceTime conversation can bring two people together and serve as a witnessing moment, albeit digitally so. That an exchange of witnessing is done virtually does not or should not diminish the sense of responsibility that is inferred by the act of witnessing.
Over the last couple years I have been doing an incredible amount interviewing with humanitarians from places like Bangladesh, Jordan, Iraq, Ethiopia, and Myanmar etc., and each time I have borne witness to what is happening to them and they in turn have borne witness to what is happening with me here in the United States, most specifically regarding how we are responding to the Covid pandemic. Many of them responded to our discussions by emphasizing that since I am older and immunocompromised I needed to take care of myself and to avoid becoming Covid positive. I am frequently reminded to wear my mask, socially distance, and take other appropriate precautions. We saw each other. But those acts of witnessing have been hard in that all that I have been able to provide in response to that witnessing is verbal support, in my writing, and on rare occasion working on small fundraisers that support this or that cause (most recently in an emergency response to needs generated by fires in the refugee camps).
Inherent in being a witness on the global scale is that you always see much more need than can be addressed. Humanitarians always fall short of their goal. Humanitarians always fail to meet all needs, that is implicitly scripted into virtually every humanitarian response. Perhaps the best that can be done is to make explicit the limitations of humanitarian efforts, but even in that case the feeling of falling short is palpable.
Témoignage,sawubona, and George Floyd
Within the humanitarian sector it is MSF (“Doctors Without Borders”) that is most known for being directed by the call to speak out when atrocities occur. They explain,
“The word témoignage comes from the French verb temoigner, which literally translates as ‘to witness’. MSF practices témoignage by acting as a witness and speaking out—whether in private or public—about the plight of the people we treat.”
Another instructive definition of witnessing is the Zulu greeting ‘sawubona’ literally translated as ‘I see you.’ This traditional greeting is more than pro forma politeness. Used when greeting a friend or stranger ‘sawubona’ infers a deep recognition of the connection that has been created; each making the greeting come into being to each other complete with full human dignity . It says, “I see the whole of you—your experiences, your passions, your pain, your strengths and weaknesses, and your future. You are valuable to me.” Seeing another, in this sense, is a dialogue, an act of acknowledging the humanity of the other.
“By bearing witness — and hitting ‘record’ — 17-year-old Darnella Frazier may have changed the world,” wrote Washington Post journalist Margaret Sullivan. Ms Frazier, the teen who filmed George Floyd’s murder and helped insure the conviction of Derek Chauvin, has emerged as a cultural hero to many. She took out her phone and pressed ‘record’ because she ‘saw’ George Floyd and reacted by an act of witnessing that indeed changed the world. I’ll repeat the rhetorical question I asked above about Angel’s action: should any of us do less?
Empathy and witnessing Although humanitarians working in ‘the field’, especially in conflict zones, frequently encounter human suffering, the sheer volume of what they experience for the most part precludes authentic one-to-one sawubona-esque witnessing. Indeed, the témoignage approach used by MSF is much more commonly employed relative to the plight of classes of people like victims of sex and gender based violence (SGVB). Indeed and ironically, quickly and efficiently getting the most support out to the highest number of those in need in any humanitarian response involves not seeing individuals. The humane and human act of slowing to make an authentic connection to one person is irrational in the larger scheme of effective aid delivery. Bizarrely, empathy toward one individual can indicate a lack of empathy for so many others. In this situation the humanitarian is caught in what sociologist would term ‘role conflict’ where the role professional conflicts with the the role friend, neighbor, or simply fellow human.
All that said, the humanitarian -and all of us- are called to see other as subjects, not objects, and living up to this calling can be difficult and trying.
As the saying goes, we all do what we can. At the end of the day if we have made every effort to acknowledge and respect the humanity and dignity of those around us, bringing out our inner Angel or Darnella as much as possible, we are part of the global humanitarian and humanization process much needed in our world.
For my part I have found myself increasingly making efforts to witness. On several occasions I have pulled my car over when observing a police interactions, most especially those involving BIPOC2, now acutely aware that these interactions can turn violent or fatal for the person being interrogated by the police. I don’t claim to be as thoughtful and courageous as Darnella Frazier, but I will admit to being inspired and motivated by her actions.
As we walk through the night and fog which is our world today should any of us do less?
1Both German words, Schadenfreude means taking pleasure in the misfortune of others and Gluckschmerz means being upset by the luck or fortune of another person.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
Martian thoughts on the humanitarian sector and humanity
NASA.gov
Nearly a year ago in February 2021 three vehicles launched from Earth visited Mars, and two of them landed on the surface. For some of us, these events served as a small respite from COVID worries, impeachment trials, military coups, and far too many massive humanitarian needs across the globe.
Talk of space travel has always excited my imagination and so, in that spirit (and as an homage to Horace Miner) I offer my thoughts on what a Martian might think if they were to visit their neighbor and ask about this idea called the ‘humanitarian imperative’ and other related matters.
Martian: Thank you for allowing me this visit to Earth. Since humans seem to be the apex life form in terms of brain power, may I ask you some questions about ‘humanity’?
Sociologist Arcaro: You are very welcome. Please feel free to ask anything you’d like.
Martian: A quick scan of your planet indicates there are about 8 billion humans and that many hundreds of millions are at mortal risk due to both natural disasters and human to human conflict. Our data also indicate that over 5 million human children under the age of 5 die each Earth year -nearly 14,000 every 24 hours- from preventable causes. Are you taking care of those most in need of assistance?
Sociologist Arcaro: Yes, we have a comprehensive system of humanitarian organizations providing aid to many in need. About $35 billion USD is required this year by the aid industry to provide food, shelter, medical care, education, security, and other needs to about 160 million people targeted for aid.
Martian: Our research revealed that this ‘humanitarian system’ is chronically underfunded by as much as 40%, and that many in dire need remain unseen by this system due to a curious and inefficient prioritization system. Why isn’t there full funding for all who need humanitarian assistance?
Sociologist Arcaro: The humanitarian organizations are doing as much as then can with limited resources.
Martian: Contradiction. You appear to have ample resources. I see that in one nation alone nearly that much -$21.5 billion dollars- was spent on this mysterious Valentine’s Day holiday. The profits for the makers of a game called Fortnight make about $5 billion in one year. You humans spend about $12 billion per year watching each other have sex. Your ‘humanity’ seems quite full of contradictions. One of your great leaders made a point of saying that all oppression is bad in obvious ways for the oppressed but also hurts the oppressor, draining their humanity.
Also, we see that one of your humans had their net worth increase by $121 billion dollars in one year. This is 3.5 times more than the entire ‘humanitarian aid industry’ spends in one year for over 160 million people. How can you humans justify a system which allows for such an immoral accumulation of wealth?
Sociologist Arcaro: There’s a long answer to that question involving many social forces fueled by deeply entrenched economic and political ideologies, most prominently neoliberalism. In short, neoliberalism argues that the free capitalistic market will efficiently identify and find a way to effectively monetize the satisfaction of all human needs and that only a bare minimum of government regulation is needed. To insure proper motivation individual entrepreneurs must be rewarded for their ideas and efforts based on what this free market allows. Humanity has not systematically addressed the morality issues around massive pooling of wealth. The assumption is that jobs that hold high responsibility and take extensive training or exceptional skills are paid proportionately more for their work.
Martian: Given the life-critical work that they do are humanitarian workers paid well?
Sociologist Arcaro: Some of the very top positions like Country Director or Chief of Party can make nearly $100,000 per year or more, but the vast majority of humanitarian workers, especially those from and working in the Global South (also know as the majority world) make far less, likely about USD$20,000 per year. Relative to the importance of the work they do humanitarian workers are not paid much, I guess.
Martian: Contradiction. Your free market system pays essential workers like humanitarians or teachers far less -by orders of magnitude- than the basketball players we see on your broadcasts. Humanitarians get small compensation -USD$10,000 per year- where the average NBA professional basketball player makes nearly USD$8,000,000. You are telling me that men that play games are worth 800 times more than men and women who save lives?
We also see that your local, national, and international media reports extensively on various sporting activities and individual athletes, and in the US of A you have an unofficial holiday called the ‘Super Bowl.’ Why is there no such coverage of the activities of humanitarians? Who tells their stories? Your way of prioritizing the distribution of both material and non-material wealth and status are riddled with contradictions.
Sociologist Arcaro: That’s a pretty broad statement, but you may be correct.
Martian: You have a United Nations that produced a detailed ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights‘ that is a wonderful statement demanding a just world for all humans, but since that document was published in your year 1948 there have been dozens of genocides and wealth disparities have gotten so much more extreme. Contradictions.
We see that you have sent yet more vehicles to our planet. This effort surely came as the fruit of much cooperation. We also see that you have an international space station orbiting your planet. How is it that you can have that shining symbol of cooperation and coordination above you and quite the opposite on the planet below?
Sociologist Arcaro: We do have moderate to good cooperation and coordination among those in the scientific community, and there are some transnational organizations, notably the United Nations, whose mission is to facilitate unified actions, but ‘free enterprise’ and hyper aggressive nationalism retards many efforts to address major global issues.
Martian: Yes, we see this. One major example is a tragic and flaccid response to your climate crisis problems. If current trends continue human life will barely be possible on your planet by the year 2100. How is it possible that you are not responding to this suicidal behavior?
Sociologist Arcaro: Many on our planet are afflicted with what I can the ‘mentality of exploitation’ that allows for and even encourages environmentally irresponsible behavior. Many would agree that you are right, that collectively we are committing suicide. A recent movie -‘Don’t Look Up’ provides one description of the mentality that grips our planet. Many scientists agree with the premise of the movie. Sad, I know.
I am assuming that Martian nature is similar to human (Earthling) nature. Have you done a better job on your planet caring for those in need? If so, how? Is there a ‘Martianatarian imperative’ like our humanitarian imperative?
Martian: We have what is called the Wholeness Award. It goes to the person or organization whose way of being-in-the-world is such that their words and actions match most perfectly. Although in our early history we went through a period where basic Martian feelings like greed, lust, and gluttony were able to flourish, various positive rewards like the Wholeness Award slowly moved our global Martian culture in a positive direction. Whenever we interact with each other in any situation -work, family, recreation- we all give positive reinforcement when positive Martianistic words and actions match. Over time we slowly tamped down negative and destructive Martian impulses of gluttony, greed, and lust. Our social institutions found ways to reward positive behavior and shame behavior that reflected these counter-Martianistic behaviors. We also developed many norms, policies, laws, institutions and rules for behavior which fight against any actions which marginalize other Martians or the Martian planet itself.
The difference between the Martianatarian imperative and humanitarian imperative is that your humanitarian imperative has a wide gap between what you say and what you do. The Martianitarian imperative has no such gap. Your planet has normalized and glorified gluttony and greed, ours has normalized and glorified wholeness values.
Arcaro sociologist: I hear you. There are some humans who believe as you do, but they are not in major positions of power, alas.
Martian: We still have so many questions for you Earthlings….
How is it that you have such awards for people like the Nobel Peace Prize but some of the winners have acted in a way that is directly contrary to your humanitarian imperative? There are many examples of this, most recently the 1991 Peace Prize winner was directly involved in a genocide. Aung San Suu Kyi was lauded “for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights” but supported the marginalization of many ethnic groups in Myanmar and the genocide of the Rohingya.
How is it that you have so many pogroms and genocides, people killing other people just because they worship a different God or have a different color skin?
How is it that you seem to worship national sovereignty? On Mars we see ourselves as one family whose fate is jointly shared. You seem mired in nation versus nation competition that is wholly dysfunctional.
So, on Mars it does not matter where are you are born. You have the same rights and same opportunities to live a life of dignity. It appears that on your planet where are you are born can lock you into a life of marginalization on one hand or, if you’re born in certain what you call ZIP Codes in the United States, your future seems quite bright. How is it that a mere accident of birth can either doom or bless a person for their entire lifetime?
In your language you would say ‘hypocritical’ that there is a very disturbing inconsistent gap between how you describe the world in your documents and how you act, that is, the gap between your ideal culture -what you put into your official documents-, and your real culture, your actual behavior. Why is there such a gap?
I see that you talk about this idea of a humanitarian imperative. On Mars we have the Martianitarian imperative. What that means is that we all have a responsibility to each other to provide basic dignity, basic needs, and basic opportunities for growth on all levels. It appears in your documents that the humanitarian imperative implies the same thing, but your actions do not make sense to us.
I am very curious about why extraordinary sums of resources are put into war and comparatively little (by orders of magnitude) resources are put into maintaining peace and maintaining justice, living up to the humanitarian imperative. Just the top ten nations on your planet spend nearly $1.4 trillion dollars per year on weapons and defense and yet only $35 billion is spent on humanitarian aid. How can you explain that massive gap to me, please?
We have more questions, but let us make an observation. Your humanity seems in trouble. We are sorry to see your plight. But it is of your own making and all we can say in terms of advice is to listen to your wise leaders who preach love and acceptance and reject ideologies that lead to global suicide. Find ways to denormalize gluttony and greed, to tamp down the more negative parts of your nature, and to flourish as a species in harmony with the other life forms on your planet.
Arcaro Sociologist: Thank you for your observations and your advice. For the sake of humanity I hope that if you visit us again in the future we will have addressed our many cultural contradictions and some of the important questions you pose.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
“We must make public health decisions based on science, on fact.”
-humanitarian worker with a major INGO
To know the world as a humanitarian
Some general thoughts on epistemology
“How do you know that?” is one of the most common questions we ask each other. Stated in its simplest terms epistemology is the study of how we know what we know and how we know we know what we know.
Recently I was fortunate enough to get my second Covid-19 vaccine shot; I am now fully vaccinated. When someone asks me how I know that the vaccine works they are asking essentially an epistemological question. My answer is that I know based on the science behind the vaccine and the testing that was done in numerous and ongoing studies to amplify, clarify, and extend the information we have on the efficacy of the vaccine.
That is to say, I am using science as my epistemological foundation. Science gathers information systematically, objectively, and thoroughly. Science is also open to changing conclusions based on new results and new information. Facts remain ‘true’ unless or until they are contradicted by new scientifically gathered data. Scientific knowledge in this sense is not necessarily static, but rather but rather a dynamic and flexible way of knowing the world.
Some scientific facts have stood the test of time. For example we do not disagree on the basic chemical elements and their composition in terms of electrons and protons. These are established facts that transcend history, ideology, culture, or nationality. Other scientific facts, particularly those based on human populations, can be more slippery to pin down and demand ongoing investigation, questioning, and revision concerning what is considered fact.
When you get into social scientific information the problem of fact is even more slippery. Human society is both reflexive and nonlinear as a system; it changes very rapidly and often unpredictably.
Another one way of knowing is faith. Faith simply asks you to take truth as it is given by some external source or higher power, be that a god or a news channel, and take that as reality. The contrast between science and faith as epistemologies could not be more stark. One is flexible, rigorous, objective, thorough, and ongoing, and the other one is dogmatic, relatively inflexible, and demonstratively not grounded in empirical fact.
As we have conversations with our friends, neighbors, colleagues, and associates it is incumbent upon us to consider the epistemological foundation of the ‘facts’ they cite. The epistemological source makes a difference. This is especially true when talking about public health concerns. I took the vaccine and continue to practice social distancing and mask wearing because the science behind these protocols is sound.
Discussion with a humanitarian worker
RecentlyI had the pleasure of talking with a colleague and friend from Bangladesh. We first talked about general matters of our families etc. but then turned to the Covid pandemic and how the number of positive cases are rising rapidly in Bangladesh.
This global pandemic is influencing the entire world, but unevenly so. Many nations are having difficulty gaining access to the vaccine, and the distribution of shots is incomplete, difficult, and sometimes politically contentious.
We talked about a couple matters, including the fact that one of the biggest hurdles in this pandemic is the information -or lack thereof- that is being passed on from the public health sector to the population. On example is when and to what degree one is protected from the virus after being vaccinated. There are some people who believe that immediately after getting the vaccine they are fully protected, which is demonstratively and scientifically not the case. There are many stories in the press both in the US and in Bangladesh about people dying after getting vaccinated, and these stories cause concern because they may be true but ignore the fact the vaccine is not fully effective until two weeks post second shot and, in any case are not 100% effective. These stories create the public perception that the vaccine does not work, but the fact is that protocol was not followed and the individual was not fully protected after one or two days post first shot.
Another topic we talked about was the matter of faith. After my friend was vaccinated a neighbor questioned his wife about his faith. She asked if he really had faith he did not need a vaccination because God would protect him. He explained me that his interpretation of the Koran was such that Allah would protect, but first humans need to to protect themselves. That is to say there were different interpretations of religion, one of which matched with the scientific protocols and the other one demonstratively did not. Religion, when interpreted in such a way as it complements of scientific knowledge, can be a very powerful tool in helping to control the Covid pandemic. But when religion is interpreted in such a way as it contradicts science this is a major problem and public health issue.
We talked about how the situations were very similar between the United States and Bangladesh, and that in both countries there were those perpetuating information not based on science and hence harming the effort to save lives through good protocols and good vaccination acceptance. We need to live in a world where the epistemological bases upon which people make their decisions is sound, grounded in fact, and introduces truths that we can all live with.
Making sure that your humanitarian response is relevant includes understanding how those you work with and for know the world in which they live and act, most definitely so the affected populations. At times creating bridges between faith based and scientific ways of knowing is the most important work that can be accomplished.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
“My intent has been, is, and will continue to be, that those who read my works shall think and meditate upon fundamental problems, and has never been to hand them completed thoughts. I have always sought to agitate and, even better, to stimulate, rather than to instruct.
Neither do I sell bread, nor is it bread, but yeast or ferment.”
—Miguel de Unamuno
More thoughts on the Hydra: Hydra Theory 101
Preface Humanitarians in all contexts need to be mindful of how privileging forces come in to play in virtually every interaction, person to person or organization to organization; within one’s organization or between the home organization and the affected populations. Awareness of cultural context is paramount, and understanding the Hydra is a useful tool. Standard training for any humanitarian includes defining and identifying examples of ethnocentrism. ‘Ethno’ means group and thus ethnocentrism is seeing everything from the value system and perspective of one’s own group or culture. Just as you will be hard pressed to be an effective humanitarian being ethnocentric, the same goes for being myopically centered in other ways. Think now of the heads of the Hydra.
Probing deeper with more questions The Hydra analogy can be useful and discussions should always be grounded using practical examples that resonate on both the personal and organizational level. That said, I think there is a place for ‘Hydra Theory 101. Here are some additional thoughts and questions related to privileging forces, each a good point of departure for a deeper understanding. To be clear, all of the short explications I add to each is barely scratching the surface of what could be more deeply explored. [See here for all Hydra related posts.]
Racism the most significant privileging force?
Granted the basic fact of the complex and powerful intersectionality of all eight forces, each is unique. As they are depicted in the image of the Hydra, each head is the same size, inferring equivalent danger and harm. But can that be true? Certainly in this time of #BLM it be argued that racism and the xenophobia it gives rise to is far more powerful than most of the other privileging forces? But what about the other forces? Which is worse, sexism of racism, and by what measures? Can ableism be put next to classism in terms of harm?
What factors are involved?
Elsewhere I have argued that differentiation almost always deteriorates into stratification. Within the framework of sociocultural evolution it is not until recently, that is about 6000 years ago, that humans began to organize them selves into non-nomadic states. Prior to that we lived in much smaller groups mostly characterized by and egalitarian way of life. With the rise of agriculture and the domestication of animals and plant materials came this new form of social organization. It is in this context that all of the heads of the Hydra became much more virulent, and the transition from differentiation to stratification happened time after time. At the macro level a long view of world history indicates that many forms of differentiation resisted any such transition for tens of thousands of years, with perhaps hetero/cisnormatity and anthropocentrism being two examples. Anthropologists describe many cultures which functioned very well rejecting the concept of gender binary and which lived with an ethos that humans were are part of nature, and needed to respect other life on the planet.
On a more micro level, during face to face interaction for example, some differences in privileging statuses can remain benign for long periods only to degenerate into toxic othering. With rare exceptions, people have some privileged statues in most social interactions relative to the others present. Indeed, one can on both sides of the othering dynamic. The array and complexity of relative privileging statues increases exponentially as the number of participants increases. Every interaction has the possibility of being a microaggression1, intended or, more frequently, unintended. How does the flow of interactions become impacted by harmful comments (verbal or non-verbal)?
On both the macro and micro levels, under what circumstances are these processes accelerated? Remain inhibited? Avoided all together?
Which are easier to grasp?
Are some of the privileging forces more obvious to the typical observer and hence easier to grasp than others? Do most people even accept the premise of anthropocentrism?I think it is good to ask if the groups of individuals who are likely to be marginalized have their voices heard and under what conditions. Do most people even accept the premise of anthropocentrism, for example?
Religions normalizing and institutionalizing privileging?
Are some privileging forces more deeply woven into our major religions than others, for example sexism and heteronormativity? Certainly in their most fundamentalist forms all three Abrahamic religions appear to support racism, sexism, and heteronormativity at least as interpreted by the Taliban in Afghanistan and evangelicals in the US. Both seem quite certain that women and non-heteronormative people need to be treated as inferiors. That said, the Abrahamic religions originated based on ideologies of love and compassion. How is it that the baser emotions of hatred and fear and come to dominate the fringes in our modern cultures?
Unchecked capitalism and neoliberalism fuel the Hydra And now we have to address the elephant in the room and ask the question, ‘Are some of the forces exasperated by and/or understood more easily relative to the forces of capitalism and neoliberalism than others?’ My cards on the table, I do believe that unchecked capitalism and neoliberalism have glorified and normalized gluttony and greed. We live in an absurd world where one person has more money than anyone could use in hundreds of lifetimes. Neoliberalism is in ideology based on the assumption that a free market is efficient in proportion to levels of government regulation: less control, more freedom and efficiency. A free market, unhindered by governments or governmental regulation, will be able to organically identify and then find ways to monetize the satisfaction of all human needs. Capitalism is the economic system which drives the neoliberal agenda. Neoliberalism may indeed be the idea that swallowed the world.
I have written in some detail that all of the heads of the Hydra have in common the act of ‘othering’, and that social differentiation -any differences humans may have- almost inevitably degenerates into stratification where one group justifies dominating the other. All of the ‘isms’ represented by the Hydra are made possible by othering and the subsequent justification of the domination of one group by another.
If othering is the heart of the Hydra then perhaps capitalism and neoliberalism are the food, the fuel.
Let’s go through each of the eight heads of the Hydra and imagine how capitalism and neoliberalism make them more toxic, more dangerous.
Patriarchy: Does capitalism support the patriarchy? Can feminism and capitalism coexist? How do patriarchy and capitalism jointly reinforce the oppression of women? These are just a few of the many questions that must be asked, and there are scores of scholars, past and present, doing just that, most answering with a strong affirmation that capitalism contributes to sexism.
Racism: Some argue that racism and capitalism are conjoined twins. The North Atlantic slave trade is just one example; there are countless others. This is worth extensive discussion and is indeed the premise of countless books and articles.
Colonialism/Paternalism: A recent article in The Guardian “The Invention of Whiteness: the long history of a dangerous idea” does a very good job sketching out how ‘whiteness’ was invented and then used to justify racism and its place in the rise of the colonial powers. William Easterly’s The Tyranny of Experts (see chapter 4) is an earlier description of same. The research on this topic is copious, compelling, and a must read for anyone wanted to ‘decolonize’ the humanitarian sector.
Classism/class privilege: Well, this one speaks for itself. Charles Darwin and Karl Marx had much in common but nothing more significant than the fact that they both articulated fundamental algorithms. Biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky argued that “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.” In that same vein and following the lead of the economic determinism articulated by Marx, I will argue that nothing in society makes sense except in the light of capitalism. This of course includes all of the damage done by the glorification and normalization of gluttony and greed.
Ableism (physical, mental, and intellectual): As I write this there are waves of critique aimed at the United States for hoarding of vaccines. Disasters -in this case a global pandemic- always hit those on the margins the hardest, especially physical or health related events. That Covid has been horrific for those who are disabled is not in question. Capitalism is based on a myopic quest to maximize profits, and hence have both an economic and ideological interest to exclude workers based on perceived disability.
Ageism: Linked to ableism, ageism is woven into the very fabric of modern capitalism where workforces value youth. Capitalism profits from making us fear aging.
Anthropocentrism: We are on the brink of environmental collapse. The climate crisis is real and is causing increasingly frequent extreme weather events which generate the need for a humanitarian response. The recent Zoom meeting of global leaders is likely to yield more talk than action largely because the mantra of capitalism is to protect jobs at any cost. Our mentality of exploitation is driven by our quest for ‘freedom’ from oppressive government interference, the very core philosophy of liberalism. Destruction of the planet will proceed apace if there’s a buck to be made. Convince me otherwise.
Each of the above discussions is worth having in more detail, of course, but I think my point has been made: the heads of the Hydra are all fueled by capitalism and neoliberal ideas.
Additional questions to consider:
With respect to intersectionality, are some forces more salient than others, i.e., have more multiplicative properties?
Are some of these forces more culturally universal than others? Indeed, as our world becomes more globalized and homogenized by transnational trade, communication, and media consumption I will argue that toxic privileging forces exist in varying degrees in all world cultures.
People can have privileged statuses, of course, but so can organizations. Does an INGO based in the Global North have more sway in, for example, a cluster meeting?
By taming these individual heads I mean ‘bending the moral arc’ by changing behavioral norms, instituting policies, passing and enforcing local, national, and international laws, and other proactive measures. Which heads are easiest to tame and which are the hardest? Related, do (for example) passing laws related to one head make change relative to the other heads easier? Doing anti-sexism laws impact laws related to racism or vice versa, for example?
Hydra Theory 101 I started this post with a quote from my favorite philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno. He said, “Neither do I sell bread, nor is it bread, but yeast or ferment.” And that is exactly what I am offering here, an invitation to press to its edges this Hydra metaphor. From these abstract ideas and challenges I suggest we now turn to something more straightforward.
A group exercise using the Hydra Below is a group exercise which may help individuals deepen understanding of the Hydra’s privileging forces. This exercise can be used with everyone from young undergraduates to seasoned humanitarians. A facilitator will need to frame the exercise and act as a guide through the questions and subsequent discussion, taking notes as examples are given and points are made.
Noting your privilege: an exercise
Though not a high percentage of our overall population, globally there are many people who would be on the marginalized side of all seven (now eight counting anthropocentrism) heads of the Hydra. One can imagine a for example, an elderly, poor, blind, non-white, lesbian from the majority world (aka Global South). That point granted, the vast majority of people across the world ‘enjoy’ one or more privileged statues.
For this exercise identity all of your privileges. One by one describe a situation where you gained some benefit or advantage from each. Now consider the following questions:
Assuming you enjoy more than one privileged status, are there situations where you were not sure which
privilege have gave you an advantage in a particular situation?
Were there situations when you realized in the moment that you were enjoying this privilege?
Were there situations when you realized only later after reflection that you had enjoyed this privilege?
Do you think others in the situation who shared your privilege were aware of the fact that you were gaining advantage based on your privilege? How do you think they felt?
Do you think others in the situation who did not share your privilege were aware of the fact that you were gaining advantage based on your privilege? How do you think they felt?
In each situation, how did you feel about gaining advantages based on your privilege?
As you move through your day how common is it for you to go from a situation where you have privilege to one where you are marginalized?
To what degree were you aware that you could use your position of privilege to be an ally to others? What does it mean to be an ally?
Describe a situation where you simultaneously were both privileged and marginalized.
What norm changes, new or revised policies laws, and/or additional enforcement of any existing or new policies and laws can you suggest that might defuse awkward, unfair, and/or marginalizing privileging asymmetries?
The facilitator can bring the discussion to a close by listing all of the major points made, highlighting particularly useful and relevant examples, and by underscoring the need to examine useful, practical and effective ways to encourage interactional patterns which minimizes the impact of these privileging forces and maximizes the chance for structural changes which mitigate the perpetuation of the negative impacts of these forces.
Identifying examples of taming the Hydra Looking at this grid, participants are asked to contribute examples of actions which have helped ‘tame the Hydra’ and bend the moral arc toward justice. Examples can be from history or recent activities, and the overall goal of this exercise is to create a database of examples which may inspire others to act.
Here are some examples, mostly from the US.
Patriarchy: At the national leveling the US, Title IX states that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” This law had the intended impact, not fully realized at yet of literally ‘evening the playing field’ for female athletes in the US.
Race/ethnicity
1Microaggressions in Everyday Life (2nd edition 2020) by Derald Wing Sue and Lisa Spanierman explore microaggressions in the context of higher education in the US. Their insights are easily transferred to other settings and I think this book might be useful for those in the humanitarian sector.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
Humanitarian refugees gut punched by fire
In the last couple years I have been honored to work with many Rohingya refugees. Countless interviews, text chats, and discussions have led to writing a series of blog posts, having one (Pan Thar) as a guest in my sociology class, and even co-authoring a poem with another (Ro Anamal Hasan).
We have spent the last year trading stories and fears about the Covid-19 pandemic. These (mostly) young women and men have inspired me and challenged my understanding of what it means to witness.
Photo credit D.W. Morwan, Rohingya refugee
I heard about the fire by reading their many feverish updates on Facebook and Twitter; my heart sank. As a 12 year old I was awoken by my father in the middle of the night, our apartment aflame. We made it out, but the trauma of that night lives with me. Even with that memory I can only imagine what the many affected Rohingya are feeling now.
Paul Farmer of Partners in Health used the phrase “acute-on-chronic” to describe the 2010 earthquake event in Haiti. This massive Cox’s Bazar fire can be similarly described, a gut punch to a Rohingya population already weakened by genocide and displacement.
Read below for details about this fire and for suggestions on how you can help immediately.
Some details about the March 22nd fire in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp Monday, a massive fire swept through large sections of the world’s largest refugee camp located in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Raging uncontrolled for 10 hours, the fire left 50,000 refugees displaced from an area where approximately 2,000 structures had housed families, small businesses, makeshift schools, and a large 24 hour health clinic (these numbers may change as more details emerge). Tragically and ironically two World Food Program (WFP) nutrition centers and one General Food Distribution building went up in flames as well.
Here and here and here are news accounts of the event. Watch here a short video shot by my close contact Zayed Jack using his camera phone.
The humanitarian response The response from the UN and INGOs has begun, and as I write this food is being distributed, temporary shelters
IOM shelter in CXB Photo credit Zayed Jack
are being erected, and cluster meetings of all the major response actors are taking place. To be expected, there are immediate needs left unmet given the many logistical challenges being faced in responding to this event.
Refugee humanitarians saving lives
As with all other humanitarian disasters, it was the affected community which responded first to the fires. Here are just two examples of heroic action taken by Rohingya refugees I am proud to know.
My contact and friend Zayed Jack reports that as soon as he saw what was happening he helped as much as he could and,
“…rescued many disabled people and took them to safely. But I couldn’t save an old disabled man who was inside his house. When I saw him the fire became so strong that I was unable to go [inside] because of the heat.”
Zayed reports that the UN and major INGOs are reacting to the event, but that many are just now beginning to face the grief of losing homes and, in some cases, family members.
Another Rohingya refugee I heard from is named D.M. Morwan. He lost everything in the fire including all of his documents. He checked in with me and said,
This is what D.M. Morwan’s house looks like now.
“Yes sir I’m okay from fire, but my shelter is not okay, and now I’m sleeping on road.”
When I noted that refugees were the first to respond to the fire he told me, yes, and that he,
“…helped by saving two children from the fire. They were two boys, 5 and 6 years old. I didn’t know who are they but they are human like me that’s why I saved them. I just saved them from the fire and then I investigated then I found their parents. They are okay now.”
Poet and activist Mayyu Ali reports,
“…my family and I are also fully affected by this massive fire. My parents and I fled during the violence in August, 2017 when my home and village were burnt down by Burmese security forces. Since then we have been living in this refugee camp relying on humanitarian aid. We are 7 of us in our family. Yesterday’s massive fire burnt my shelter and the shop of my brother.”
Mayyu Ali administers the poetry site Art Garden of the Rohingya, and he was just one of the many poets, including Zayed, D.M., and my poem co-author Ro Anamal Hasan, who are now suffering from this disaster.
Pan Thar, poet, photographer, and humanitarian is co-founder of Rohingya Youth Community (RYC) and he has rallied this active group of refugee humanitarians to offer a wide range of support to those immediately in need. Although he is still reeling from the fact that his home was completely destroyed by the fire he is using all of his organizational skills to help other fire victims.
The Rohingya I have highlighted above illustrate the fact that in times of humanitarian crisis those affected move into action with speed, urgency, and a thorough knowledge of the cultural nuances of the situation.
Moved to act
As I keep reading more and more fire-related Tweets and FaceBook updates from Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar I am saddened by the sheer volume of pain and suffering now being endured. But at the same time I am buoyed by memories of all of the conversations I have had with these individuals in the past and in knowing the depth of resilience they possess. But I am also moved to act in response to this disaster and have made (and will continue to make) offers of support. As the celebration of Ramadan nears, the power of faith will serve the Rohingya well, and in a few months this most recent trauma will be recovered from with grace and strength.
Photo credit Zayed Jack
In the meantime, now help is needed, and if you are able I ask again that you please support Andy Riley’s GoFundMe page. He says in this appeal that,
“People need immediate assistance, we are working to raise $5,000 to send directly to a trusted Rohingya organizer on the ground. This money will be used to immediately pay for clothing, food, water, shelter, and medical care. The benefit of donating to this GFM is that there is no middleman and nothing will be used for admin costs. Every penny will go directly to those in the Rohingya community that need urgent assistance.”
A second GoFundMe page organized by humanitarian Jessica Onley is here. She writes,
“As always, members of the affected population are amongst the first responders. Networks of refugee youth have spent the last several hours rescuing people, reuniting displaced families, and setting up emergency shelters. Starting tomorrow, they aim to provide meals and other support to the newly homeless.
Humanitarian agencies will undoubtedly provide the bulk of the emergency response but we are setting up this fundraiser to help fill gaps and provide immediate support. 100% of contributions will go directly to the emergency response.
We will provide more updates about the situation as we learn more. Many families are still separated and people are missing.”
If you have comments, questions, or feedback please contact me here.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
A discussion with Ziaur Rahman, Rohingya activist and humanitarian
Humanitarian action As defined by Maxwell and Gelsdorf1 humanitarian action, broadly speaking, is the protection of life and dignity. Inherently multifaceted, humanitarian action includes eight overlapping realms including security, stabilization, development, sustainability, governance, and rights. Where humanitarian action overlaps with both governance and rights lies humanitarian advocacy. They argue,
“Humanitarian action is is always situated in a context of global agendas, and it is often unclear where humanitarian action ends and some other kind of action begins–whether this action is more explicitly political, developmental, economic, or human rights oriented. This question also tugs at the very meaning of ‘humanitarian’- and is by no means resolved.” (p.7)
I cannot agree more, and am constantly challenged by my own shifting views on the meaning of humanitarianism. I’ll readily admit to erring on the side of conflating humanitarian work with direct humanitarian advocacy. On my journey struggling to define ‘humanitarian’ I have taken to listening to and observing the actions of those who are themselves the victims of systemic and violent marginalization and are at the same time advocating for themselves, doing whatever it takes to protect life and dignity.
See here for my series of blog posts on ‘refugee humanitarians’.
In that spirit, I below share a recent conversation with a Rohingya writer and activist exiled in Malaysia. Much has happened in Myanmar since we first talked, and I will have more to say about that soon.
Ziaur Rahman, Rohingya Activist I have been honored to meet many Rohingya women and men in the last couple years as I do research on the humanitarian sector, and I have learned from each something unique and valuable. Ziaur Rahman is in the process of having his memoir published, and in this book he describes his life as a refugee, part of the Rohingya diaspora spread around the world. A refugee for 29 years and technically ‘stateless’ since Myanmar does not recognize Rohingya citizenship, Ziaur has made Malaysia his adopted home. His official identification card is from the UNHCR and he remains in wait for the dim possibility of repatriation back to Myanmar.
Below is our discussion.
Arcaro: Your homeland is known by two names. Which do you use and which do you prefer people like me use, Myanmar or Burma?
Ziaur: “It was changed by the country’s government from the “Union of Burma” to the “Union of Myanmar” in 1989. But Myanmar is now used world-wide so we have also need to use it.” I prefer to use Burma instead of Myanmar.
Arcaro: As a Rohingya can you tell me your reaction to what is taking place right now in Myanmar regarding the military coup and the public response to that. What are your thoughts and feelings about the military is using lethal force?
Ziaur: “The Myanmar military [also known as the Tatmadaw] always creates problems for Myanmar people. It’s the longest standing military dictatorship and applied numerous sanctions against Myanmar but nothing has changed.
I can’t hope for anything good in Myanmar. The military first came for the Rohingya for persecuting and are now persecuting other ethnic
people of Myanmar.
I would be interested in knowing when the next elections will take place, and what measures are being taken to assure fair and free elections for the new elected president of Myanmar for real democracy.
The military control in Myanmar has been very dangerous for my country for decades. The military that now has power in Burma after the coup is the same military that committed genocide against the Rohingya and other Myanmar minorities in Myanmar.
My parents, including my grandparents, wanted democracy in Myanmar. That is what the protestors want. A second demand is to release Aung San Suu Kyi because she was the daughter of Aung San, a true democracy leader of Myanmar. Our grandparents and parents are still fighting for democracy in Myanmar. I am also a supporter of democracy in Myanmar like my grandparents and parents; I am showing solidarity to the people of Burma for peace, democracy and stability because we are the same product of persecution by the military.”
Arcaro: What can be done by outside communities?
Ziaur: The International community and ASEAN should strongly pressure the Myanmar military to end the coup. And give back power to the rightful elected leaders. I think it’s good that Joe Biden, President of the US, is allowing more refugees into his country. I want other countries to welcome us and to sign the 1951 Refugee Convention which allows more protection for refugees. The international community, the UN, and other powerful bodies must work for the opportunity for us to safely and with full citizenship and rights be repatriated to our country.
I would like to recommend that you and others speak out regarding this injustice and the silent genocide of my people in Myanmar.
Arcaro: Do you think that it is possible that sometime in the future you will be able to live back in Myanmar?
Ziaur: “I don’t think i can go back to my country soon. I see some possibilities as people of Myanmar are changing now. I hope one day I can go back to my Myanmar with rights and dignity.
Unfortunately, the current situation will impact refugee repatriation. There are still persecutions like the Myanmar authorities are forcing Rohingya to accept National Verification Cards (NVCs), which effectively identify Rohingya as ‘foreigners’ and strip them of access to full citizenship rights. Myanmar military has been torturing Rohingya to accept NVCs and restricting the movement and livelihoods of Rohingya who refused NVCs. The government’s NVC policies are an erasure of Rohingya identity.
We – the world – have not held them accountable enough. They have been allowed to carry on.”
Arcaro: Do you think sometime in the future it will be possible for all Rohingya people to live in Myanmar again with full rights and safety?
Ziaur: “Yes! Possible, if we work hard. Besides, the people of Myanmar are changing. But I don’t see how change will happen for a very long time. I am also afraid that the military is very powerful, especially racist monks.
My people are facing genocide. Those who are still inside the country can’t move from one village to another village. They are basically imprisoned in Rakhine state.”
Arcaro: Regarding your book2, what do you hope people will feel? Who is your main audience; who do you want most to read this book?
Ziaur: “The readers will know about my birth place in Myanmar, childhood experience, struggle to survive 29 years of refugee life, the country that rejects my story and my people and has never accepted us within its borders and later an activist fighting for the rights of Rohingya and justice for my people.
Already 29 years have passed since I was wrenched away from my homeland, Myanmar; for the past six years I have not seen my beloved mother. My book will expose how we suffered before reaching other countries for just saving our lives. Most Rohingya children go through grief, sadness, and despair after the loss of a parents and no future.
I believe that It will expose the Rohingya’s ongoing situation in Myanmar and also raise awareness on Rohingya refugees in neighbouring countries. And our new generation will be able to understand and imagine my clearly my fight and contribute for my community and country.
My book will be extremely important for students especially for Rohingya and everyone to inspire them how a simple a Rohingya refugee from Myanmar met Prince Charles from England and met Prime Ministers of Malaysia.”
Arcaro: How do you think your story is different from other Rohingya?
Ziaur: “To be honest, it’s not a different story but the same situation for other Rohingyas. I have written it for being a Rohingya refugee 29 years and sold seven times by human traffickers in three countries Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia and also ignoring the risks to speak out for Rohingya rights while being a refugee myself.”
Arcaro: How do you think the experience is for Rohingya who have been relocated to various places in the region? Can you compare life in Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Thailand etc. for displaced Rohingya
Ziaur: “Four million Rohingya population are estimated around the world from which more than 2.5 million are forced to flee and live in diaspora mainly in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and some of them were trafficked to Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia and other countries around the world.
The Myanmar government made us live in the dark and grow up outside of the country. We have been living out of the country for more than two decades with little hope for positive change.
We want to go back to our homeland with safety and rights with dignity. It is very difficult to survive being a refugee. I also have knowledge that almost countries are not accepting refugees anymore.”
Arcaro: What has been your interaction with the UN or other humanitarian organizations that are dealing with the displacement from Myanmar?
Ziaur: “I do stay in touch with humanitarian NGOs including the UN working with refugees and displaced people inside Myanmar and other countries as well. I am doing my parts while being a refugee myself to raise the voice for my community.”
Last thoughts Ziaur -like many others- has been active posting to social media various comments on and responses to the daily anti-military coup protests in Myanmar. His voice calls out about the many and genocidal injustices that have burdened the Rohingya in the past three decades. Perhaps the pro-democracy #MilkTeaAlliance support will urge all involved that the cause of social justice means fighting for the rights of all marginalized religious and ethnic groups not only in Myanmar but in other parts of South Asia as well. Ziaur is but one voice, and his book just another public offering of a very common -and tragic- story, but many voices combined together can make change. Perhaps that is the only thing that ever has.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) is active in Cox’s Bazar and in the US Covid-19 continues to impact all our lives, unevenly so, with those historically on the margins being hit the worse. Many who live in poverty are often forced to make a choice between working wherever they are able and thus risking infection or isolating, staying safe from the virus only to face starvation. MSF, active in nations around the world, has been responding to the coronavirus health needs of millions, including those affected in the United States.
Talking with Hannan in Bangladesh
Muhammed Hannan and I have talked many times over the last year or so, mostly about the MSF response to COVID-19 in Bangladesh where he works as a Personnel Administration Manager for Doctors Without Borders (MSF).1 Based in the capital city of Dhaka, Hannan lives with his family. Thankfully, he and his family have remained free of the virus.
We first talked about the COVID-19 outbreak back in April when the numbers were just beginning to rise. As the COVID-19 pandemic has gotten worse, Hannan and I have talked frequently, and he regularly asks about how I am doing, admonishing me to ‘be careful’ and to always take precautions. Indeed, in my semi-rural North Carolina county the numbers are quite dramatic. With a population of just 160,000 we have had 15,000 cases and over 200 deaths, and the numbers are only now beginning rend slowly downward. The first vaccines have arrived at our local medical center, so there is now a dim glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I am one of the lucky ones having received the first of two vaccinations, my second coming in a couple weeks.
The overall numbers in the US may not have yet reached their peak in this current massive second wave of infections. According to the most recent data collected by Johns Hopkins University there have been over 108 million cases globally with the US accounting for nearly a quarter of all cases with well over 27 million infections. By contrast Bangladesh has ‘only’ 540,000 cases. Some quick mental math leads me to the fact that with about half the population of the US, Bangladesh has proportionately far fewer cases. The US infection rate (population/number of infections per 1 million) is 56,291 compared to 3,262 in Bangladesh,28 times higher than in the US. This is an astounding contrast, even accounting for the lower percentage of individuals being tested there. No wonder Hannan worries about my health and safety.
MSF in the US Nearly a year ago in April 2020 MSF began operations in the US. Here is their public statement:
“In response to the unprecedented challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) began working in key sites across the United States to reach vulnerable groups that often lack access to health care. We ran limited operations in the US between April and October and have now concluded these activities.
MSF teams collaborated with local authorities and community-based organizations on a wide range of projects, including work with people who are homeless or housing insecure in New York; migrant farmworkers in Florida; Native American communities in the Navajo Nation and Pueblos; and neglected and marginalized communities in Puerto Rico. Our teams also worked with staff in nursing homes and long-term care facilities in Michigan and Texas to offer training in infection prevention and control measures and support for mental health and wellness.”
I was first made aware of MSF’s efforts in the US after watching one of their videos on Facebook. After researching and teaching about the humanitarian sector for over a decade it was striking to see that my home nation, typically in the donor or giving role2 was now on the receiving end of humanitarian aid from MSF, an organization I had mostly associated with efforts in places like Yemen, South Sudan, and, yes, Bangladesh.
Asking Hannan for his opinion
I asked Hannan what he thought about the fact MSF has been operating in the US doing COVID-19 related work. His response was serious, measured, and straightforward. MSF, he described, goes where there is need and the local actors can use assistance. He pointed out that in the US the COVID-19 situation is “kind of a disaster”, and that
Hannan hard at work. Photo courtesy of MSF-Bangladesh
“MSF always provides medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters, or exclusion from healthcare; so considering these things MSF might need to working USA too. We always work based on needs. We have a pool of human resources and can respond. MSF goes for an assessment to see what the various actors are doing, what they are capable of, and many other factors. MSF has worked in France and elsewhere in Europe, so why not in the US?”
I asked if he had a reaction to the irony that the US is typically a donor country, the one giving aid. Without even a trace of schadenfreude he said,
“Actually, I think we can consider these things the other way. It’s not about the aid or wealth or some other things, it’s about the human resources and level of experience dealing with this kind of situation. So considering all of these things it is OK for MSF to be there. The US is always helping people around the world but in this case they asked people to help them.”
“MSF collaborated with the UN and the Bangladeshi government. In Cox’s we expected a lot of patients especially from the Rohingya communities, but lately we have not seen that many. There are few cases actually. That is why we put two of our facilities to hibernation, if needed we will re-open it.”
Impact on the workplace
I asked Hannan how COVID-19 had impacted his work, and I learned that indeed some things are universal; his answers reflect the situation of people all around the world just now. He pointed out that it is harder to work remotely, working from home can alter when work gets done and imposes on family life, most meetings are online, socializing with co-workers is minimal, no shaking hands when you do see colleagues face to face, and so on. He describes how MSF in Bangladesh is impacted by COVID-19,
“Working remotely makes it so we must change how we work and so the outcomes are not the same. Also, some of our staff are international workers, expats, and many of these work at the higher managerial levels. So because of quarantine and other factors the expat numbers are down and inconsistent and that has had a negative impact on how well we are able to work, the overall quality. Because of COVID precautions both national and expat staff are taking lots of sick leave and that impacts everything also.”
Turning to an even harder topic: witnessing and advocacy
I asked Hannan about the sociopolitical realities in the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, specifically about the stance MSF takes regarding various issues in the camps. The MSF goal is to always maintain good relations with all of the actors in any location, and in this case that means the Bangladeshi government and other govt. officials, stakehlders and actors in the camps. At the same time, the mission of MSF demands being critical and witnessing.
We talked about the issue of témoignage – or witnessing, a stance that has long been a hallmark of the MSF approach to humanitarianism. Here is the explanation from the MSF web site:
“The word témoignage comes from the French verb temoigner, which literally translates as ‘to witness’. MSF practices témoignage by acting as a witness and speaking out—whether in private or public—about the plight of the people we treat.”
Daily realities make adhering to this witnessing stance highly nuanced and complicated. Information is power and must be used wisely, carefully, and with all perspectives considered.
Hannan explained in vivid detail how MSF collects data on what is happening in the camps. This function largely happens organically as cases come to the clinics and MSF staff hear and record the stories of each patient. Of course these data help track public health related issues , e.g., how diseases are transmitted, where there are ‘hot spots’ of infection, patterns that shed light on sanitation issues that contribute to illnesses.
Earlier in his MSF career Hannan worked as a translator and collected many stories from the Rohingya, at times liaising with journalists to help get specific stories into the media. Even though now he works in Personnel Administration, he knows first hand what is going on in the refugee camps and how MSF acts as an advocate.
Final thoughts
In the last moments of our conversation I asked if simply writing about problem issues in the Rohingya refugee camps would be a problem. Hannan gave no clear answer. Humanitarian work is never simple or apolitical, especially when it comes to work in conflict areas. The ethics of humanitarian work are dense with complex issues and very rarely are there easy answers. The same can be said for writing about humanitarian work and sharing the stories of men like Hannan.
1 Known internationally as MSF, Médecins Sans Frontières was founded in 1971 by French doctors and humanitarians. 2 As I write this the current draft of The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 from Congress includes aid to many low income nations.
Tom Arcaro is a professor of sociology at Elon University. He has been researching and studying the humanitarian aid and development ecosystem for nearly two decades and in 2016 published 'Aid Worker Voices'. He recently published his second and third books related to the humanitarians sector with 'Confronting Toxic Othering' published in 2021 and 'Dispatches from the Margins of the Humanitarian Sector' in 2022. A revised second edition of 'Confronting Toxic Othering' is now available from Kendall Hunt Publishers