Bücher der Reihe Routledge Humanitarian Studies

Utilising a wide variety of perspectives and examining a range of contexts, the book considers how humanitarians assess and engage with authoritarian practices and negotiate access to populations in danger. Useful for students and practitioners with the fields of international politics and humanitarian studies.

This multidisciplinary volume offers an in-depth exploration of accountability in humanitarian action. It explores how three contemporary narratives of global governance ¿ human rights based approaches/international law, new public management, and technology ¿ intersect with different dimensions of UNHCR's accountability endeavor. Drawing on case studies in Afghanistan, Australia, Colombia, the EU, Mauretania, Morocco, Turkey, Uganda and UNHCR headquarters in Geneva, the volume considers the similarities, differences and overlaps between these accountability-strategies as they play out in UNHCR's global field of action.

This book offers new and long awaited insights on how the poorest and most vulnerable people in urban societies, cope with an increasingly risky environment. It questions dominant ideas of experts about what it means to act rationally and safely in a context of risk. Through powerful case studies, as well as an incisive theoretical point of view, the book gives policymakers and scholars of risk and disaster a categorization that helps to come to grips with heterogeneous risk-behaviour and that helps to analyse and understand why different people respond differently to a single risk-event.

This book applies the concept of human security to the specific case of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident that struck Japan on 11 March 2011, which has come to be known as Japan¿s `triple disaster¿. This left more than 15,000 people dead, displaced more than 300,000, and was the most expensive natural disaster in recorded history. This volume illustrates the different forms of human insecurity that appeared and were exacerbated, as well as more encouraging signs of human empowerment and reform that have also occurred. The book develops the human security approach not only through extending it to natural disasters, but also by demonstrating how it can be developed by adopting an interdisciplinary perspective.

This book sheds light on why and how new humanitarian actors engage in humanitarian action and how their humanitarian activities are perceived in their (transnational) organisational environment. It provides detailed international and empirical comparisons between the `new¿ humanitarians and traditional humanitarian actors, in particular those which focus on the relative level of commitment to humanitarian principles. It thus elucidates the role of the humanitarian principles in promoting coherence and coordination in the crowded and diverse world of humanitarian actors.

This book demonstrates how a focus on children¿s rights can help practitioners to safeguard children during humanitarian crisis. Combining insights from both research and practice, this book will be an essential read for humanitarian students and practitioners.

In The Humanitarian Machine aid workers reflect on their own experiences of working in crisis. As they write about their work and the ways in which they each approach the challenges of helping people, they comment on some of the most vexing issues facing the humanitarian sector.

This book investigates the experiences and vulnerabilities faced by adolescents displaced by humanitarian crisis. It will be a vital guide for humanitarian students and researchers, and for practitioners seeking to build effective, evidence-based policy.

In The Humanitarian Machine aid workers reflect on their own experiences of working in crisis. As they write about their work and the ways in which they each approach the challenges of helping people, they comment on some of the most vexing issues facing the humanitarian sector.

This book explores the emerging trend of citizen-led forms of helping others at the borders of Europe. It is key reading for advanced students and researchers of humanitarian aid, European migration and refugees, and citizen-led activism.

In addressing humanitarian crises, the international community has struggled in making the transition from short-term relief to long-term rehabilitation and crisis prevention. This book aims to shed light on this continuum of humanitarian crisis management, and should interest researchers of humanitarian studies and disaster risk-management.

This book is is structured thematically around key approaches to disaster research from a range of different, but often complementary academic disciplines. Each chapter presents distinct approaches to disaster research that is anchored in a particular discipline; ranging from the law of disasters and disaster historiography to disaster politics and anthropology of disaster. The methodological and theoretical contributions underlining a specific approach to disasters are discussed and illustrative empirical cases are examined that support and further inform the proposed approach to disaster research.

An estimated two billion people live in countries affected by fragility, conflict and violence. Extreme poverty is increasingly concentrated in these areas, and governments and international agencies seek avenues to enable socio-economic recovery and to support people as they try to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. People, Aid, and Institutions in Socio-economic Recovery: Facing Fragilities provides an in-depth understanding of people¿s strategies in the face of conflict and disaster-related fragility and examines how policies and aid interventions enable their socio-economic recovery ¿ or fail to do so. Through field-based research, the book captures the complex and unfolding realities on the ground, exploring the interfaces between economic, social and institutional change. This provides a rich and unique vantage point from which to reflect on the impact of recovery policies. The book provides a set of cross-cutting findings that aim to inform policy and practice. The detailed case studies of the book lay bare key dynamics of recovery. Set against the findings from two chapters that review the literature, the cases provide evidence-based lessons for socio-economic recovery.The chapters combine qualitative and quantitative methodologies and form a valuable resource for researchers and postgraduate students of disaster management, conflict, humanitarian aid and social reconstruction, and development management.

As humanitarian needs continue to grow rapidly, humanitarian action has become more contested, with new actors entering the field to address unmet needs, but also challenging long-held principles and precepts. This volume provides detailed empirical comparisons between emerging and traditional humanitarian actors. It sheds light on why and how the emerging actors engage in humanitarian crises and how their activities are carried out and perceived in their transnational organizational environment. It develops and applies a conceptual framework that fosters research on humanitarian actors and the humanitarian principles. In particular, it simultaneously refers to theories of organizational sociology and international relations to identify both the structural and the situational factors that influence the motivations, aims and activities of these actors, and their different levels of commitment to the traditional humanitarian principles. It thus elucidates the role of the humanitarian principles in promoting coherence and coordination in the crowded and diverse world of humanitarian action, and discusses whether alternative principles and parallel humanitarian systems are in the making. This volume will be of great interest to postgraduate students and scholars in humanitarian studies, globalization and transnationalism research, organizational sociology, international relations, development studies, and migration and diaspora studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners engaged in humanitarian action, development cooperation and migration issues.

This book offers new and long awaited insights on how the poorest and most vulnerable people in urban societies, cope with an increasingly risky environment. It questions dominant ideas of experts about what it means to act rationally and safely in a context of risk. Through powerful case studies, as well as an incisive theoretical point of view, the book gives policymakers and scholars of risk and disaster a categorization that helps to come to grips with heterogeneous risk-behaviour and that helps to analyse and understand why different people respond differently to a single risk-event.

Despite the key importance of accountability for the legitimacy of humanitarian action, inadequate academic attention has been given to how the concept of accountability is evolving within the specific branches of the humanitarian enterprise. Up to now, there exists no comprehensive account of what we label the ''technologies of accountability'', the effects of their interaction, or the question of how the current turn to decision-making software and biometrics as both the means and ends of accountability may contribute to reshaping humanitarian governance. UNHCR and the Struggle for Accountability explores the UNHCR''s quest for accountability by viewing the UNHCR''s accountability obligations through the web of institutional relationships within which the agency is placed (beneficiaries, host governments, implementing partners, donors, the Executive Committee and UNGA). The book takes a multidisciplinary approach in order to illuminate the various layers and relationships that constitute accountability and also to reflect on what constitutes good enough accountability. This book contributes to the discussion regarding how we construct knowledge about concepts in humanitarian studies and is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and professionals in the areas of anthropology, history, international relations, international law, science, technology studies and socio-legal studies.

This book is is structured thematically around key approaches to disaster research from a range of different, but often complementary academic disciplines. Each chapter presents distinct approaches to disaster research that is anchored in a particular discipline; ranging from the law of disasters and disaster historiography to disaster politics and anthropology of disaster. The methodological and theoretical contributions underlining a specific approach to disasters are discussed and illustrative empirical cases are examined that support and further inform the proposed approach to disaster research.

This book applies the concept of human security to the specific case of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident that struck Japan on 11 March 2011, which has come to be known as Japan¿s `triple disaster¿. This left more than 15,000 people dead, displaced more than 300,000, and was the most expensive natural disaster in recorded history. This volume illustrates the different forms of human insecurity that appeared and were exacerbated, as well as more encouraging signs of human empowerment and reform that have also occurred. The book develops the human security approach not only through extending it to natural disasters, but also by demonstrating how it can be developed by adopting an interdisciplinary perspective.

Humanitarian crises, whether they result from conflict, natural disaster or political collapse are usually perceived as complete breaks from normality, spurring special emergency policies and interventions. This book questions this assumption, arguing that there are both continuities and discontinuities between crisis and normality. Using a wealth of international case studies from a team of leading experts, the book examines what this means for the social and political dynamics of institutional response, international policy and aid interventions in crises.

Humanitarian crises, whether they result from conflict, natural disaster or political collapse are usually perceived as complete breaks from normality, spurring special emergency policies and interventions. This book questions this assumption, arguing that there are both continuities and discontinuities between crisis and normality. Using a wealth of international case studies from a team of leading experts, the book examines what this means for the social and political dynamics of institutional response, international policy and aid interventions in crises.