History, memory and ‘lessons learnt’ for humanitarian practitioners

Abstract

This article concludes the special issue on the history of humanitarian aid by reflecting on the role of memory and history in relation to humanitarian aid. To address a special issue as a conclusion is to embrace the opportunity to reflect on its papers, aims and ambitions. It is also for us an opportunity to reflect on the role history has for a community of practice often forging ahead in response to the latest demands and emergencies. Historical thinking is now coming into greater salience for the world of humanitarian aid because, we argue, the ‘humanitarian sector’ has grown and aged – and professionalized and institutionalized.

Keywords:

• memory
• humanitarian
• lessons learnt
• institutionalisation
• NGOs

Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful for the support given by the editors of this special issue, to the organizers of the Thai border reunion for their welcome, to Jacques Pinel who unfortunately passed away in August 2015 and to whose memory this paper is dedicated.

Notes

1. We use the concept of humanitarian as defined by practitioners and most recently in the World Humanitarian Summit to define a type of emergency response to sufferings (as opposed to a developmentalist perspective). For a thorough investigation of the meanings of humanitarian and humanitarianism please refer to Didier Fassin, La Raison humanitaire.

2. See, for instance, Destexhe, L’Humanitaire impossible; Ryfman, Une Histoire de l’humanitaire; Gill Calculating Compassion; Barnett, Empire of Humanity; Barnett and Stein, Sacred Aid.

3. Barnett and Weiss, “Humanitarianism a Brief History of the Present” in Humanitarianism in Question, 1–48.

4. Smirl, How Cars, Compounds and Hotels Shape Humanitarianism.

5. Kiernan, Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia.

6. For instance Jack Dunford, “Three Decades of Service on the Thai Border,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7p98dGs4eU (Accessed 15 April 2015).

7. See Young, “My Heart it is Delicious;” Heinzl, Cambodia Calling.

8. http://www.krousar-thmey.org/html/ (Accessed 18 January 2015), interview with Benoit Duchateau-Arminjon (aka Benito), 10 January 2015.

9. Barber, “Feeding Refugees, or War?”, 8–14; Hall and Getlin, Beyond the Killing Fields; French, “From Politics to Economics at the Thai–Cambodian Border,” 427–70.

10. Benson, The Changing Role of NGOs.

11. Herbst, “From Helpless Victim to Empowered Survivor,” 141–54.

12. Becker, Beyene, and Ken, "Memory, Trauma, and Embodied Distress,” 320–345.

13. Soon to be the object of a separate publication.

14. Interview with Jack Dunford, 10 January 2015.

15. See Edkins, Trauma and the Memory of Politics, 16–19; Young, The Texture of Memory; Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning.

16. Williams, “Witnessing Genocide,” 234–54; Laderman, Tours of Vietnam; Ledgerwood, “The Cambodian Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crimes,” 82–98; Hughes, “Nationalism and Memory at the Tuol Sleng Museum,” 175–92 and “The Abject Artefacts of Memory,” 23–44.

17. Carruters and Tranh Huynh-Beattie, “Dark Tourism,” 147–60.

18. On epistemic community, see Adler and Haas, “Epistemic Communities,” 367–90; Sebenius, “Challenging Conventional Explanations of International Cooperation,” 323–65.

19. Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History, and “‘The Killing Fields’ and Perceptions of Cambodian History,” 92–7; Kiernan, How Pol Pot Came to Power, xii–xiv; Kiernan, “The American Bombardment of Kampuchea, 1969–1973,” 4–41; Kiernan, Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia.

20. Fassin and Retchman, L’Empire du traumatism; Carlson and Rosser-Hogan “Cross-Cultural Response to Trauma,” 43–58; David, “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder among Survivors of Cambodian Concentration Camps," 645–50; Hiégel and Hiégel Landrac, Vivre et revivre; Kinzie, “Therapeutic Approaches;” Mollica et al., “Effects of War Trauma on Cambodian Refugee,” 1098–1106.

21. Brauman and Neuman, MSF and the Aid System.

22. Benson, The Changing Role, 70–89.

23. This was in itself not entirely new of course, see Gemie and Rees “Representing and Reconstructing Identities in the Postwar World,” 441–73 or Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee.

24. Davey, Idealism beyond Borders.

25. Crochet, “Le Péril fécal” in Brauman, Utopies Sanitaires, 21–45.

26. Bradol and Vidal, Innovations médicales.

27. Magone, Neuman, and Weissman eds, Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed.

28. Interview with Jacques Pinel, January 2010; Vidal and Pinel, "MSF ‘Satellites’” in Medical Innovations in Humanitarian Situations, 22.

29. Walker and Maxwell, Shaping the Humanitarian World.

30. See Taithe, “Humanitarian History,” 62–72.

31. de Waal, Famine Crimes.

32. Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War.

33. Interview with Arlys Herem, present on the camps from 1985 until 1990 with ARC. Interview 10 January 2015.

34. Laderman, Tours of Vietnam.

35. Ashplant, Dawson, and Roper, Commemorating War.

36. Carruters et al., “Dark Tourism,” 147–60.

37. See Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting; Cubbitt, History and Memory.

38. Letter by Mary K. Taylor cited in Merzinger.

39. Some of them will be chartered in Roddy, Strange, Taithe, Selling Compassion, forthcoming.

40. Shelliem, Jochanan (1979) cited in Merzinger.

41. Hugo Slim, “A Bare Line: Why Critical Theorists are Wrong About Humanitarian Aid”, unpublished, paper presented at the University of Nottingham, 28 January 2014. Hugo Slim is now policy director at the ICRC in Geneva.

42. For instance, Fassin’s work built on a long involvement with humanitarian organisations themselves. Fassin, La Raison humanitaire. 

43. For instance, Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism.

44. Revealing that one of the best examples should be produced by humanitarians themselves: Magone, Neuman, and Weissman, Humanitarian Negotiations.

45. De Torrenté, “The Relevance and Effectiveness of Humanitarian Aid,” 607–634.

46. Taithe, “Humanitarian History?”

47. Lester and Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance.

48. Borton and Davey, “The Use of History by Humanitarians” in Ramos Pinto and Taithe, The Impact of History, 153–68.

49. For an excellent discussion of the difficulties arising from this insider-outsider perspective, see the world of Mosse, “Anti-Social Anthropology?,” 935–56. Thanks to Fabrice Weissman for this reference.

50. See Interview with Arlys Herem.

51. Benson, The Changing Role of NGOs.