Thinking and Working Politically for Effective Humanitarian Response
sithandiwe mujuru
Have you ever wondered whether Thinking and Working Politically holds potential for more effective Humanitarian Response? If so, please get in touch!
The benefits of thinking and working politically are becoming increasingly accepted across the development sector, in governance and sectoral response efforts. But in humanitarian and emergency settings where the primary focus is getting assistance out as quickly as possible to those most in need, thinking about how to navigate complexity can often go neglected, sometimes arguably, leading to unintended negative consequences and diminished humanitarian outcomes.
Whilst the humanitarian architecture calls on actors to understand some aspects of contextual complexity, including through conflict analysis, taking account of protection issues, gender and social inclusion dynamics, and humanitarian access, factors such as short funding cycles, even shorter delivery timeframes and the operational nature of humanitarian response efforts can arguably undermine and even disincentivise thinking through how to best navigate the complexities when delivering assistance.
So, could TWP offer something to the humanitarian sector in helping to think through how to navigate the complexities more effectively to deliver better outcomes for those most in need? Are there existing approaches being used in humanitarian response that are akin to, or that touch on aspects of TWP? And are there tensions between TWP and the Humanitarian Principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence?
If you’re a humanitarian professional or just interested in the issue and would like to be part of a conversation on the potential of TWP for humanitarian response, please get in touch by email at: L.C....@bham.ac.uk where we’ll follow up with you directly!
Kind regards,
Thandie
Programme and Communication Officer
Thinking and Working Politically Community of Practice
University of Birmingham