Opportunity knocks: why non-Western donors enter humanitarianism and how to make the best of it

Abstract

Non-Western countries such as Saudi Arabia, China, Brazil, and Turkey have all started to take part in global humanitarian action. Their engagement raises a number of fundamental questions: how will the diversification of government donors affect humanitarian activities and principles; and how will it affect the people and governments of crisis-affected countries or humanitarian organizations? This article finds that the rise of non-Western donors involves both risks, such as normative conflicts, and great potential, such as increased access and more resources. It also finds that non-Western humanitarian engagement has become too substantial to ignore and that opportunities can only be seized and risks mitigated if traditional actors actively engage with non-Western donors on a level playing field.

Instrumental Culturalism: The Work of Comparisons across Japan, ‘the West’ and Myanmar

“…Scholars, policy makers and aid practitioners alike have produced analyses of emerging Asian donors, pointing to particular characteristics of their approaches to development cooperation (Asia Foundation et al 2010: 2; Binder and Meier 2011; Brautigam 2009, 2011; DeHart 2012; Six 2009). For example, one common reference is to ‘the China model’, often conflated with the perception of ‘a China threat,’ which is notable for the central role of state-owned enterprises, private commercial actors, authoritarian politics and an adherence to a non-interventionist principle in respect of sovereignty (DeHart 2012; see also Bräutigam 2009, 2011; Shimomura and Ping 2013).…”

The Discursive Governance of Forced-Migration Management: The Turkish Shift from Reticence to Activism in Asia

“…The criticism of the West in both occasions, arguably, relates to the government's efforts to showcase itself as a defender of aggrieved nations and an international actor more conscientious than the West to the domestic and international audiences. Earlier studies also showed how non-Western and emerging powers utilise humanitarian assistance as a priority "because it fits well with their active diplomatic agendas that seek to increase influence through such good international citizenship" (Gilley 2015: 47;Binder and Meier 2011). However, in the case of Turkey, this also implied an appeal to generate pro-government domestic audience affected by how the government stands by the oppressed.…”

Pluralising geographies of refuge

“…Religiously motivated restrictions on assistance, such as that no more than 18 per cent of donations can be spent on administrative costs, have also resulted in different allocation and accounting mechanisms for funds (Al-Yahya and Fustier, 2011). Though some of the cruder distinctions on this topic have been nuanced or contested by other authors (Binder and Meier, 2011), Al-Yahya and Fustier draw attention to the fact that Saudi relief donations do not, for example, draw such a clear distinction between humanitarian and development aid. As Western donors and academics continue to grapple with how to more effectively combine the two (Gabiam, 2012; Otto and Weingärtner, 2013; Mosel and Levine, 2014), models from the Middle East present one functional alternative.…”

“…4 Traditions of assistance that do not rely on victimhood being visibilised and exploited hence often reject the language of a humanitarian system that they consider to be historically and ethically compromised by these connotations (Moussa, 2014; Benthall, 2018). As Binder and Meier (2011) stress, this absence of a shared vocabulary between Islamic humanitarian actors and their Western counterparts perpetuates a myth of complete incompatibility that precludes recognition and the emergence of more symbiotic relationships.…”