Humanitarian Intervention

Words: 457
Pages: 2

1) How is the contemporary landscape of humanitarian actors different from previous eras? What has driven these changes?

The contemporary landscape of humanitarian actors has changed since previous eras. Weiss explains that there are three transformative trends: militarization, politicization, and marketization. These trends are driven by a higher demand for humanitarian relief by a booming population. The new era of humanitarianism is struggling to keep pace with the increasingly complex crisis’s that occur. These disasters are affecting more people and requiring aid for a longer period of time. Modern humanitarianism however, is not always about helping the victims. In many cases, it is about agenda pushing, making a profit, and bias towards
…show more content…
• The International Committee of the Red Cross
• Oldest international humanitarian organization
• Works only in war zones
• Challenges: run by Swedish elites, so they can be biased to their own agendas.
• The UN system
• Key to worlds response to disasters
• Has a bunch of organizations in their system
• Challenges: plays a pivotal role in civil wars and suffers from bias.
• Bilateral aid agencies:
• Challenges: donors are not shy to push their own agenda and exercise their control over these orgs
• Outside Military Forces:
• soldiers remain part of their country so their loyalties are always with their nation and not with the affected group.
• Challenges: obvious bias and difficult to remain neutral
• Provide services others cannot in war zones
• For profit firms:
• “guns for hire”, mercenaries
• challenges: care for profit and not victims, can be illegal
• The media:
• Type of for-profit business
• Challenges: seeks drama to make a good lead story and does not showcase the good humanitarians do
• Local actors:
• Smaller and less financially