Rethinking Humanitarianism

Are more equitable trade policies possible at a time many countries are turning to protectionism? Why have developing countries and emerging economies not benefited as much from the globalised trade architecture as multinational corporations and international investors? And what needs to change for global trade to be more equitable? This episode of Rethinking Humanitarianism explores whether a re-imagined global trading system could reduce aid needs in the Global South.  Guests: Nick Dearden, Director Global Justice Now; Gyude Moore, former Liberian Minister of Public Works and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development.   

The COVID-19 pandemic showed that the current global health architecture is not fit for purpose. While rich countries hoarded vaccines, low and middle income countries were left behind, coping with massive global healthcare inequalities. Despite lofty promises, COVAX, the global initiative launched during the pandemic to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of tests, treatments, and vaccines failed to deliver on its promises.  This episode of Rethinking Humanitarianism explores how the global health architecture can be adjusted to make it more inclusive, and better placed to respond in a more equitable way during a future pandemic.  Guests: Petro Terblanche, managing director of Afrigen; Fifa Rahman, civil society representative at the ACT-Accelerator  

For one week every year, some of the world’s richest business people and most powerful politicians descend on the Alpine ski town of Davos, Switzerland. They’re here for the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting, which bills itself as the premiere global forum for the public and private sectors to join forces to “drive tangible, systemic change for the future”.  But systemic change would require them to give up some of their wealth and power, like paying their fair share of taxes, or ending the stranglehold a few, mostly Western countries have over the UN’s Security Council. All the proposals for a more equitable world order that we’ve heard on this season of the podcast depend on those who have power giving some of it up. Are they willing to do so?  Critics say the global elite’s eagerness to solve the world’s problems lasts only as long as the solutions don't threaten their said wealth and power. So how are movements to reshape global governance landing with those who represent the status quo? And can advocates and campaigners for change ever really sway the global elite? Host Heba Aly takes the pulse at Davos to find out.  Hear from UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, Opens Society Foundations President Mark Malloch Brown, former Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark, president of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation Vilas Dhar, director general of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation Patricia Danzi, and others. ————— If you have thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at [email protected] SHOW NOTES Director’s Dispatch: Aid and the elite Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years | Oxfam International UN boss to Davos: You’re the problem | POLITICO

The effects of the war in Ukraine continue to ripple across the globe. We are near the point of no return for those on the front lines of the climate crisis. Soaring public debt is preventing governments from being able to prepare for crises. These trends are shaping the world – and humanitarian needs – in 2023. But what are policymakers doing about them? Listen to policymakers from both donor and national governments as they discuss their priorities for the year ahead with civil society representatives in this online conversation hosted by The New Humanitarian on 13 January. ————— If you have thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at [email protected] SHOW NOTES Trends driving humanitarian crises in 2023 (and what to do about them) Key humanitarian aid policy trends to watch in 2023 Why these 10 humanitarian crises demand your attention now

Time and again, guests on this season of Rethinking Humanitarianism have called for systemic changes to the humanitarian system and global governance – from alternatives to the UN to revolutionised global climate financing. But how can you imagine something you’ve never seen before, while being grounded in the realities of today? In many ways, this is the domain of science fiction. The writer and activist Walidah Imarisha once said: “Any time we try to envision a different world – without poverty, prisons, capitalism, war – we are engaging in science fiction.” With science fiction, she added, we can start with the question “What do we want?” rather than the question “What is realistic?” In this first episode of the New Year, host Heba Aly looks to the future to explore how science fiction can bring about paradigmatic change by helping us believe a better world is possible. She is joined by sci-fi authors whose work speaks directly to the future of global governance and how to better address crises. Kim Stanley Robinson is the acclaimed science fiction writer behind the Mars trilogy, and, more recently, The Ministry for the Future. Malka Older is the author of Infomocracy and The New Humanitarian short story Earthquake Relief. Mexico City. 2051. ————— If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at [email protected]  SHOW NOTES Disaster response 2.0: What aid might look like in 30 years time (by Malka Older, for The New Humanitarian) Decolonising Aid: A reading and resource list Why Science Fiction Is a Fabulous Tool in the Fight for Social Justice | The Nation Kim Stanley Robinson: Remembering climate change ... a message from the year 2071 | TED Countdown   BOOKS AND AUTHORS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (2020) Malka Older, Infomocracy (2016) Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993) Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888) H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (1905)  Ursula K. Le Guin (see The Dispossessed, 1974) Walidah Imarisha (see Octavia’s Brood, 2015) Joanna Russ (see The Female Man, 1975) Cory Doctorow, Walkaway (2017) Neon Yang, The Tensorate series (2017-19) Martha Wells, The Murderbot Diaries series (2017-21)

The call for reparations, which has long reverberated in former colonies, is now gaining momentum in the aid and philanthropy sectors, too. It’s a call that rejects the idea of aid as charitable giving, and instead reframes it as justice for the ravages of colonialism and imperialism. But like similar conversations in the United States around slavery, the idea of international reparations for colonialism is a political hot potato. This, despite the many precedents for reparations programmes, including German reparations paid to Holocaust survivors. Can international reparations be a way forward towards a more equitable world order, or are they too politically charged to succeed, perhaps even counter-productive? To discuss these thorny questions, Rethinking Humanitarianism host Heba Aly is joined by Uzo Iweala, CEO of the Africa Center; Thomas Craemer, associate professor of public policy at University of Connecticut; and Kizito Byenkya, director of campaigns for the Open Society Foundations.  ————— If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at [email protected]  SHOW NOTES Loss and damage: Views from the ground at COP27 Will countries hit by climate change finally get payouts at COP27? Why climate justice requires reparations Reparations as Philanthropy: Radically Rethinking 'Giving' in Africa | Le Monde Imperial Reckoning, The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya The New Reparations Math | UConn Magazine

For many countries in the Global South, tackling today’s interlocking crises – climate change, the pandemic, the rising cost of living supercharged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – is made practically impossible by sky-high interest rates on runaway government debt. Enter Barbados.  No world leader is being invoked more at the moment than Barbadian Prime Minister Mia Mottley, along with her ambitious plan to change the global financial system to end crippling debt and build climate resilience: the Bridgetown Agenda.  For this episode of our podcast, Rethinking Humanitarianism, host Heba Aly sits down with two people close to the plan: Avinash Persaud, Mottley’s special envoy on finance and investment; and François Jackman, the island nation’s UN ambassador. Launched in September, the Bridgetown Initiative (as it is also known) lays out a step-by-step roadmap that begins by pressing the International Monetary Fund and other international financial institutions to unlock financing on more palatable terms for crisis-hit countries so they can better prevent and respond to disasters. It also calls for the setting up of a global mechanism to accelerate private sector investment in mitigation and reconstruction. Can this tiny Caribbean country of 300,000 people reform the international architecture around debt and disaster relief? ————— If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at [email protected]  SHOW NOTES COP27: Diplomatic baby steps amid mounting humanitarian crises Loss and damage: Views from the ground at COP27 The 2022 Bridgetown Agenda for the Reform of the Global Financial Architecture | Barbados Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade| At the UN General Assembly, calls for fairer global governance grow louder The Barbadian Proposal Turning Heads at COP27 | Foreign Policy The Barbados Rebellion: An Island Nation’s Fight for Climate Justice - The New York Times

For the first time in the COP summits’ nearly 30-year history, a call for climate reparations championed by the world’s most vulnerable nations has made it onto the official agenda.  It’s formally called loss and damage, and it entails payouts from developed countries (who have profited the most from burning fossil fuels) to developing countries (who are suffering the worst from the impacts of climate change).  Will this notion be accepted by rich countries? Or will political realities and developed countries’ reticence water down the original vision of loss and damage? As COP27 unfolds in Egypt, host Heba Aly unpacks the prospects for loss and damage financing, as well as other avenues to improve global governance of climate financing for the most vulnerable – from debt restructuring to climate claims at the International Court of Justice.  Hear from The New Humanitarian’s policy editor, Irwin Loy, and our Latin America editor-at-large, Paula Dupraz-Dobias, reporting from COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh. ————— If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at [email protected]    SHOW NOTES Loss and damage: Views from the ground at COP27 A humanitarian lens on COP27: Loss and damage, debt relief, and climate justice Q&A: Behind the push to bring the climate crisis to court Oh FFS: A guide to climate change acronyms The Barbadian Proposal Turning Heads at COP27 | Foreign Policy Climate disaster aid scheme ‘Global Shield’ launched at COP27 | The Guardian

All contribute, all decide, all benefit: the three pillars of a bold idea to transform how global public goods are financed. Once laughed off as a pie-in-the-sky idea, Global Public Investment (GPI) has been gaining traction in recent years and is increasingly seen as a plausible paradigm shift for a traditional aid system beholden to the whims of wealthy countries and stuck in a failing donor-recipient binary. Host Heba Aly sits down with two people working to make GPI “technically sound” and “politically attractive”: Solange Baptiste, executive director of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC), and Jonathan Glennie, co-founder of the Global Nation think tank and author of “The Future of Aid: Global Public Investment”. ————— If you’ve got thoughts on this episode, write to us or send us a voice note at [email protected]  SHOW NOTES How to begin fixing the ‘nonsensical’ humanitarian financing system At the UN General Assembly, calls for fairer global governance grow louder Global Public Investment Network VIDEO | GPI Side Event UNGA 2022 - Transforming International Cooperation to Finance Common Needs

Soon after her interview with Degan Ali (Executive Director, Adeso) on whether decolonising aid is an oxymoron, our host, Heba Aly, moderated the launch of the Pledge for Change –  a new set of commitments spearheaded by Adeso and other INGOs to reimagine their role in the aid sector by 2030.