Tag: Humanitarianism (Page 3 of 4)

Call for Papers: MCC at 100: Mennonites, Service, and the Humanitarian Impulse

August 25, 2016 / Sean Eedy

October 23-24, 2020.

In 1920 Mennonites from different ethnic and church backgrounds formed the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) to collaboratively respond to the famine ravaging Mennonite communities in the Soviet Union (Ukraine). Over the ensuing century, MCC has grown to embrace disaster relief, development, and peacebuilding in over 60 countries around the world. MCC has been one of the most influential Mennonite organizations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It has operated as a mechanism for cooperation among a wide variety of Mennonite groups, including Brethren in Christ and Amish, constructing a broad inter-Mennonite, Anabaptist identity. Yet it has also brought Mennonites into global ecumenical and interfaith partnerships.

Sonya de Laat published in online “Atlas on Humanitarianism and Human Rights.”

July 14, 2016 / Sean Eedy

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).

CNHH in Conversation with Dr. James Orbinski

April 26, 2016 / Sean Eedy

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.

“Eye-opening if not revelatory”: Teaching and Learning Humanitarian History

April 1, 2016 / Sean Eedy

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

World Conference on Humanitarian Studies

March 15, 2016 / Sean Eedy

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.

‘Journals’ Just Added to the CNHH

March 11, 2016 / Sean Eedy

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.

German Diaspora Aid in the Post-War and its Meaning for Today.

January 27, 2016 / Sean Eedy

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.

My Visit to Plan Canada’s Head Offices in Toronto

August 8, 2015 / Carlos Uriel Contreras Flores

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.

Second Canadian Workshop on the History of Humanitarian Aid

August 8, 2015 / Carlos Uriel Contreras Flores

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.

Welcome to the New Website

August 6, 2015 / Carlos Uriel Contreras Flores

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.