Description
The Humanitarian Charter– created with the intention of shaping equitable and shared principles of humanitarian aid– was drafted and signed in Europe. Such principles, (eg. neutrality, independence, unity, etc) until recently, have been enacted by aid actors as a priori indicators of ‘good’ humanitarian practice. Simultaneously, western NGOs have increasingly come under scrutiny for how such principles are rooted in western-centric values and interpretations of humanitarianism. Both scholarship and aid practice increasingly calls for more decolonial approaches to and understandings of aid. Yet, research that critiques humanitarian principles is limited in illuminating alternatives to humanitarian principles in practice, particularly by ‘major players’ or NGOs that secure funding for and implement the majority of humanitarian aid globally. This paper seeks to address this gap in research by considering how European NGOs may, even if partially, be contesting the priniciple of humanitarian neutrality through their public-facing communication on the current war in Gaza. I tease out how such discourse is uncharacteristically ‘non-neutral’ in comparison to previous NGO discourse on the Israel-Palestine conflict. To do so, I ask: (1) to what degree does the principle of neutrality actually perpetuate colonialism in humanitarian aid? and (2) how might European NGOs' public-facing discourse on Gaza show an alternative humanitarian practice to that of neutrality? In so doing, I situate this paper historically within the influence of Europe on humanitarian principles and practices, as well as within literature on calls to de-center western-centric humanitarianism and the ‘inherent’ values through which aid NGOs must engage in their work.
