The New Humanitarian

COVID-19 dominated headlines in 2020. The pandemic shocked the world, exacerbating existing crises, overshadowing new ones, and creating all kinds of knock-on health, economic and social effects.

Against the backdrop of 2020, what can we expect in the year ahead? What will be the continued fallout from COVID-19? What other crises and trends are on the horizon?

For this online conversation, explored our annual Crises to Watch list and asked leading thinkers in the humanitarian space what should demand our attention.

Heba Aly, Director, The New Humanitarian (moderator) - Eilidh Kennedy, Director, IARAN- Julia Sanchez, Secretary General, ActionAid - Sherine El Taraboulsi-McCarthy, PhD, Senior Research Fellow, Overseas Development Institute - Sudhanshu Shekhar Singh, Founder, Humanitarian Aid International - Comfort Ero, Program Director, Africa, International Crisis Group

They say two things in life are certain: death and taxes. But taxes – and how they’re collected – are anything but certain, and certainly not fair.

Every year, nearly $500 billion in tax is lost to corporate and individual tax abuse, enough to vaccinate the world against COVID-19 three times over, or provide basic sanitation to 34 million people. Another $5 trillion is projected to be lost in the next 10 years as multinational corporations and the ultra-wealthy use tax havens to underpay taxes.

But the international tax justice movement is picking up steam, buoyed by a recent vote at the UN General Assembly to start negotiations on an international tax treaty. The move, spearheaded by The Africa Group and largely opposed by the OECD, which groups some of the world’s wealthiest countries, has been described as “the biggest shake-up in history to the global tax system”.

What are the implications for humanitarians? And what could it mean for aid-dependent countries to recoup trillions of dollars in lost tax revenue?

Co-hosts Heba Aly and Melissa Fundira also share listener reflections from the podcast’s last episode on Westerners stepping aside from top positions in favour of historically marginalised leaders. They also share a long-awaited statement from the International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), the NGO network whose executive director spoke openly about wanting to be replaced by a non-male, non-Western candidate, only to be succeeded by another white man.

Guests: Hassan Damluji, co-founder of Global Nation; Alvin Mosioma, associate director of climate, finance, and equity at Open Society Foundations

____

Got a question or feedback? Email [email protected] or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism. ____

SHOW NOTES

• UN Moves Toward a Global Treaty on Tax
• Developing countries and Europe in dispute over global tax role for UN
• What does the OECD global minimum tax mean for global cooperation?
• OECD tax reforms risk violating human rights law, UN experts warn in special intervention
• Lost government revenues due to tax abuse – the impact on the determinants of health and mortality rates
• Global Solidarity Report 2023

One and a half million people have been uprooted by the conflict between the M23 rebel group and the national army in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many are now living with host families, little-heralded frontline responders who play a central role in relief efforts across the region. Nicholas Bahati Ndoolé, a humanitarian worker based in the city of Goma, is one such host. In this First Person essay, he shares the many challenges his family faces, and explains why he feels he must shelter his relatives.

The continuing conflict in the DRC is featured in The New Humanitarian’s annual list of ten crises that demand your attention now, which highlights places in the world where needs are rising, aid budgets have been cut or are insufficient, and where people feel forgotten by the international community. Over the coming months, our First Person series will feature aid workers and people affected by the crises on this year’s list.

When crises hit, a host of questions arise, among them: Who needs humanitarian aid? How much? Who delivers it? And who has the power to make all of those decisions?

How aid agencies and the media choose to frame this information doesn’t always help.

For the last year, researchers at ODI’s Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG) have been trying to understand narratives and the role they play in humanitarian response and policy. What they’re finding so far is that human stories are more powerful than data when it comes to influencing change in the sector, and yet humanitarians don’t take their role as storytellers seriously enough.

In this bonus episode, we get a snapshot of HPG’s ongoing exploration of humanitarian narratives from one of its main researchers, and we bring together a local organisation founder, a researcher, and a journalist to discuss the power humanitarians have to shape the stories that affect crisis response.

Guests: John Bryant, research fellow at ODI’s Humanitarian Policy Group; Leen Fouad, research officer at ODI’s Humanitarian Policy Group; Mohamed Ali Diini, founder of Iftiin Foundation and chair of the Shaqo Platform; Patrick Gathara, senior editor for inclusive storytelling at The New Humanitarian.

____

SHOW NOTES

• Understanding the role of narratives in humanitarian policy change | ODI
• Change without transformation: how narratives influenced the humanitarian cash agenda | ODI
• What is a humanitarian crisis, really? | Rethinking Humanitarianism
• Gaza: a litmus test for the humanitarian sector’s commitment to decolonisation? | ODI
• How do you break the mould around international aid? Try genuine trust

____

Got a question or feedback? Email [email protected] or have your say on Twitter using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism.

Our First Person narratives aim to dig into the humanity of humanitarian challenges.

In this episode, Yusuf Sa’adu, a shopkeeper in Warawa in Nigeria’s Kano state, points out that “whoever has abundant water has wealth”. He shares how water scarcity made him lose out on education and still impacts personal relationships.

“If you are experiencing water stress, you will not be able to do a lot of things”, Yusuf explains.

The New Humanitarian aims to amplify the voices of refugees, asylum seekers, and people affected by conflict and disaster – placing them at the centre of the conversations about the policies and events that shape their lives. Find more first-person stories at TheNewHumanitarian.org.