Sonya de Laat, a PhD student in Media Studies at Western University, Research Coordinator of the Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Group at McMaster University, and member of the CNHH, has an entry entitled, “Congo Free State, 1904: Humanitarian Photographs,” as part of the online “Atlas on Humanitarianism and Human Rights” that was officially launched this month: http://wiki.ieg-mainz.de/ghra/index.php?title=Online_Atlas_on_the_History_of_Humanitarianism_and_Human_Rights. This contribution was part of her participation in last summer’s inaugural Global Humanitarianism Research Academy (http://ghra.ieg-mainz.de).
Tag: Humanitarianism (Page 3 of 4)
by Christine Chisholm and Will Tait
On March 24, 2016 Dr. James Orbinski, former international president of Médecins Sans Frontières, scholar of global health and practicing physician was invited by Carleton University’s Bachelor of Global and International Studies (BGInS) to present the keynote lecture for the official launch of the program. Dr. Chris Brown, director of BGInS, kindly arranged for a meeting with Orbinski before the lecture with CNHH members Dr. Dominique Marshall and PhD candidates Christine Chisholm and Will Tait from Carleton’s Department of History.
by Sarah Glassford
Before taking this course I thought that humanitarianism was just
a nice way of asking for money. You donate and someone tries
to solve a problem. But through the readings and the emergency
relief assignment/exercise it has become clear that the job is less
straightforward than that. – Haley K.
Those of us who research and write in the area of humanitarian history are well aware of the complexities of aid, both on the giving and receiving ends of the equation. But when we have a chance to teach that history, what preconceptions do our students bring to the classroom, and what do they take away with them at the end of the course? Continue reading
The 4th bi-annual conference of the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) was held this past 5-8 March 2016. The topic of this year’s conference was Changing Crises and the Quest for Adequate Solutions and was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. While the Call for Papers for the Association’s 2018 conference is still a ways off, information on this year’s conference may be found at the conference website, including links to the organized panels and papers. Although the conference is still recent, it appears that individual papers may be uploaded at some point in the future.
Under the ‘Resources’ area of the site, we now have a space dedicated to Journals about the history of humanitarianism and humanitarian aid. The first journal added is Humanitarian Alternatives. Please visit their site and read the first issue of this new journal through our Journals page or via the Humanitarian Alternatives website directly.
If you know of other journals appropriate to the CNHH, please tell us know through the Contact Us page.
by Sean Eedy
In the current climate surrounding the refugee crisis in Europe, the European Union is struggling not only with the relocation of these refugees, but also with feeding and housing these refugees and who should pay for it all. At the moment, Germany seems to be the preferred destination of the majority of these refugees and, given the relative economic strength of Germany in Europe and their leading position in EU affairs and institutions, this may perhaps be the most tenable situation. Germany has a system in place to resettle these refugees across the state in proportion to the ability of each Laend to sustain them, but this will become taxing on even the strongest economy and requires the aid of supranational institutions and NGOs. This migrant crisis and the accompanying stresses on German infrastructure have since sparked resurgence in Neo-Nazi activity even before the November 2015 attacks in Paris and Beirut.
By Carlos Uriel Contreras Flores
Hello,
In this post I will let you know my experience in Toronto at the offices of Plan Canada, a visit I made last week.
Some weeks ago, Professor Dominique Marshall asked me to check some irreplaceable documents that Plan Canada had in their offices in Toronto, and that are part of the historical archives of the organization. These are basically letters and photo albums of some of their most important and lasting donors and sponsors.
By William Tait
The Second Canadian Workshop on the History of Humanitarian Aid took place on 30 May 2015 at Carleton University in Ottawa. The event built on a workshop held last year where historians from across Canada, archivists from Library and Archives Canada and Carleton University Archives, a well as humanitarian practitioners from Partnership Africa Canada, Oxfam, and MATCH International Women’s Fund met to welcome Dr Kevin O’Sullivan from the National University of Ireland. Kevin was a catalyst for the first workshop in 2014 when he travelled to Canada to conduct research. In his latest book O’Sullivan has likened Irish and Canadian use of soft power through aid and development1. Under the organisation of Dominique Marshall, Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Carleton and former President of the Canadian Historical Association, a website was created after the 2014 meeting to link a growing online collaboration of aid practitioners, archivists, and academics interested in preserving the history of humanitarian action both in Canada and elsewhere. O’Sullivan returned to Carleton this year to brief the workshop and members of the Canadian Network on Humanitarian History (CNHH) on developments in the field and to continue to expand collaboration with European partners.
Hello!
Welcome to the new website of the Canadian Network on Humanitarian History: aidhistory.ca. In this website you will find the materialization of the wishes of the members of the network, who expressed their feelings and necessities on what the website should include during the Second Canadian Workshop on the History of Humanitarian Aid, which was held on May 30 2015.
By Rebecca Henfrey
Establishing a Program Mandate; what kind of deliverables are we looking for?
- Knowledge Mobilization: One of the most important goals of undertaking these projects is demonstrating their practicality. NGOs want you to be able to show that the knowledge you gather has value and from there the community is invested. If there is a formulaic way to do this and potentially demonstrate how this can aid in funding, it can serve to work for both parties involved.
- Methodology and Information Sharing: This network will be used to share syllabi, teaching resources and materials and workshops. Individuals will be able to blog about their teaching experiences and perhaps elaborate more upon their professional and practical experiences in this field, providing information on their methodologies
- Networking and Twitter: Twitter can not only be used as a teaching resource, it can also be used as a platform to set up courses and integrate teaching about humanitarian agencies an NGOs into ‘mainstream’ courses as it allows professors to broaden their approach.
- Module Development and Shared Classes: One potential project that can be undertaken by multiple individuals is the development of modules that can be placed in a classroom or workshop environment. It would be a helpful resource that could be provided to instructors without requiring them to do too much legwork.
- Cultivation of Collaborative Discussion: The encouragement of collaborative discussion within the website’s forums was identified as a key priority for the program. Finding a way to connect individuals, whether that be for the purposes of scholarly feedback or discussion amongst students, researchers, instructors and other members is very important.
- Growth of Membership: Once a critical mass of members has been reached, the chances of organizing a conference increase. Currently there is a sense of isolation due to the fact that this is a developing field. One proposed way to encourage membership numbers was to engage postgrad students. Because of the emerging and developing nature of this field, it has to be done organically, from the bottom up with engagement alongside deliverance of information.
- Attendance of Conferences: Another mandate of this program was to reach out to other historians and practitioners in the field by attending conferences. CCI was listed as a potential
- Establish methods of relationship buildlng
Final Priorities; as identified and recorded on whiteboard and through discussion
- Establish and maintain trust between NGOs and Researchers
- Keep distance and respect in these relationships
- Look at models of partnership
- ODI
- Non-State Humanitarianism
- Humanitarian history as a part of history of imperialism, globalization, development
- Share readings, contacts
- Organization of academic panels
- Publication of special issues of journals
- Establishment of international networks
- Teach, supervise and discuss
- Interest and organize volunteer work
- Foster inter-disciplinarity in research and work
- Workshop in NGO building next time?
- Organize Archives/Research aids
- Preserve archives
- Identify content of photos
- Identify and collect personal collections
- Conduct oral histories
- Present history of NGO website
- Talks to create interest
- History workshops for new NGO staff, to avoid mistakes and to raise funds
