(characterised by many participants as #AidToo), with a focus on British organisations. I argue that the aid industry exists in a historical, social and political space that is particularly volatile when it comes to sexual abuse, harassment and assault. The power hierarchies of the industry make it difficult to call out this abuse and easy to cover it up – powerful men are protected by their image as humanitarian saviours and enabled by organisations that rely on public goodwill for
March 1968 [ Farmar, 2002] . Canadian engagement with the crisis was reliant on similar, faith-based connections. The links that Presbyterians, for example, had established in the East in the 1950s – including, importantly, with some of the Biafran leadership – were significant in the birth of Canairelief in late 1968 [ Bangarth, 2016] . The major British NGOs – particularly Oxfam and Save the Children – also worked alongside, and provided funding for projects run by
the UK cuts: A tragic blow for “global Britain” and the world’s most vulnerable people ’, 29 April , https://unitingtocombatntds.org/news/a-tragic-blow-for-global-britain-and-the-worlds-most-vulnerable-people/ (accessed 19 October 2021 ). Weiss , D. et al . ( 2021
to turn it into a political issue, which runs the risk of raising the stakes. On the other hand, by endowing the hostages with greater commercial and political value, mobilisation campaigns may serve to protect their lives and pressure those with the power to facilitate their release. British journalists have noted that the lack of information and public advocacy on behalf of aid workers David Haines and Allan Henning, who were abducted in Syria by
to delineate the two. When the celebrated British philosopher Onora O’Neill gave the 2002 Reith lectures, she predicted these challenges to come: It is quite clear that the very technologies that spread information so easily and efficiently are every bit as good at spreading misinformation and disinformation… [people] may not heed available evidence and can mount loud and assertive campaigns for or against one or another position whether the available evidence goes for or against their views. ( O’Neill, 2002
conflict-affected communities in the context of artist–academic collaborations brings up even more unique opportunities and challenges – especially in terms of trust, access and risk. Yet, issues of awareness-raising, capacity building and narrative ownership are perhaps all the more urgent in conflict settings. As Alison Baily (2019) has demonstrated in their review of the British Council’s programming in conflict-affected places, The Art of Peace: The Value of Culture in
to beg for Emperor Louis Napoleon’s help in saving his colonial investments. We can look at the use by German forces in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war of the Red Cross as a bombing target, or the contrast between The Hague Conventions and the use of poison gas during World War I, or prior to that the creation of a concentration camp system by the British in South Africa. Indeed, we can go back to the famines the British at worst engineered, and at best tolerated, in India, killing millions of people. Or the Germans and the Herero, or the Belgians
within the humanitarian sector. But this should not blind out the fact that there’s a lively museum scene beyond Geneva which has grown steadily over the last thirty, forty years. In the UK, the British Red Cross showed a small exhibit at its headquarters, then in Surrey, already some time before the Geneva museum opened, and hired a professional archivist by the mid 1980s. A few years later, it added a professional curator to the team, and, over time, developed a new public
Introduction Humanitarian films in the 1920s served to blame or impel audiences, without naming or shaming perpetrators most of the time. Instead of being proper political advocacy, early humanitarian cinema displayed more educational advocacy, which aims to impose a transformative agenda based on solidarity. Advocacy developed more systematically as a form of humanitarian communication in the 1970s and 1980s. It was influenced by the French and British schools of humanitarianism ( Dolan, 1992 ; Edwards, 1993 ; Gorin, 2018 ). While British NGOs such as
nightmarish natural disasters, the suffering of slaves, or the horrors of war. Within weeks of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake that destroyed much of the city and killed thousands, woodcuts and engravings portraying the horrific event were everywhere in Europe. It was one of the ‘first great mass media events’ ( Sliwinski, 2011 : 88). Decades later, British abolitionists would disseminate the disturbing graphic of bodies packed into the hull of a slave ship, often viewed as a 3-dimensional model. Goya did