Introduction Best is the enemy of good Italian proverb popularised in the French by Voltaire Relief is the enemy of reconstruction Attributed to Otto Koenigsberger by Ian Davis ( Davis and Alexander, 2016 : 32) Is safe the enemy of safer? The expressions ‘Build Back Better’ (BBB) and ‘Build Back Safer’ (BBS) are popular humanitarian shelter straplines. Championed by special envoy Bill Clinton, ‘Building Back Better’ was the ambition after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami ( Clinton, 2006 ) – is also one of the Priorities for Action of the 2015
Established during the Guatemalan Peace Process, the Oslo Accord contemplates the question of compensating the victims of internal armed conflict. Not only was this accord founded on the principles of victims rights, but it also intends to contribute to the democratic reconstruction of Guatemalan society through a process of recognition of victims status and memory – intended to have a reconciling function. The article focuses on the work of two organisations implementing the Oslo Accord and aims to analyse the discourses and practices of the local actors and their perception of the application of victims rights. Civil society actors and members of the National Compensation Programme demonstrate different approaches both in practical work and in representations of what is right. However, revendication of local cultural values is present in all actors discourse, revealing their ambiguous position in regard to state government.
International interventions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that ultimately brought the war to a standstill, emphasised recovering and identifying the missing as chief among the goals of post-war repair and reconstruction, aiming to unite a heavily divided country. Still, local actors keep,showing that unity is far from achieved and it is not a goal for all those involved. This paper examines the various actors that have taken up the task of locating and identifying the missing in order to examine their incentives as well as any competing agendas for participating in the process. These efforts cannot be understood without examining their impact both at the time and now, and we look at the biopolitics of the process and utilisation of the dead within. Due to the vastness and complexity of this process, instead of a conclusion, additional questions will be opened required for the process to keep moving forward.
In 1885, the Berlin pathologist Rudolf Virchow presented three human skeletons from the colony of German South West Africa to the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory. The remains had been looted from a grave by a young German scientist, Waldemar Belck, who was a member of the second Lüderitz expedition and took part in the occupation of colonial territory. In an attempt to re-individualise and re-humanise these human remains, which were anonymised in the course of their appropriation by Western science, the authors consult not only the colonial archive, but also contemporary oral history in Namibia. This allows for a detailed reconstruction of the social and political contexts of the deaths of the three men, named Jacobus Hendrick, Jacobus !Garisib and Oantab, and of Belck’s grave robbery, for an analysis of how the remains were turned into scientific objects by German science and institutions, as well as for an establishment of topographical and genealogical links with the Namibian present. Based on these findings, claims for the restitution of African human remains from German institutions cannot any longer be regarded as a contemporary phenomenon only but must be understood as part of an African tradition of resistance against Western colonial and scientific practices.
, and social workers charged with recording health and welfare needs. 13 Starting their tour on Armistice Day, the Special Survey provided Hine with the opportunity to apply his full set of photographic skills. 14 The photographs Hine made for the Special Survey were meant to be part fact-finding and part public appeal to build support for ARC peacetime relief and reconstruction projects. To achieve this, Hine applied a different narrative structure than he employed while promoting the ARC’s war relief activities within The Red Cross Magazine . He diverged from
, it was clear that the concept of resilience that was behind most of the recovery programming was constructed through humanitarian organisations and foreign experts. For example, the national framework of the government’s strategic plan for post-Haiyan recovery and reconstruction adapts the foreign concept of ‘Build Back Better’, which refers to restoring the economic and social conditions of affected areas at the very least to their pre-typhoon levels and to a higher level of resilience ( RAY, 2013 ). Yet, how can higher levels of resilience be achieved when the
that keeps a country vulnerable to humanitarian crisis, by continuing to stymie the provision of public goods or perpetuating exploitative political economies. For example, in the Sudanese case peace agreements have led to the extension of agrarian capitalism into areas of smallholder farming ( Gallopin et al. , 2021 ); in Syria it is leading post-conflict reconstruction contracts that undermine livelihoods ( Kanfash, 2021 ). Another feature to
the IF is attempting to address. Heaslip and Barber (2016) focus on humanitarian logistics and supply chain management. They have argued that improvements in coordination should not only take place in a response phase of natural disasters, but also during post-disaster reconstruction and during the handover of operations to the affected nation. In a separate work, Barber (2012) makes the point that despite many differences between humanitarian and military organisations, they are actually very similar in their approach to logistics. In their study of civil
principle of neutrality. In both this and the MSF case, as in many others, there is a contradiction between the principle of neutrality and a concern for humanity. Ignoring that contradiction means retreating into a rhetorical bubble, at the risk of being cut off from the real world. In Afghanistan, for example, the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) were civilian military units that supplied the population with services and goods. Set up by NATO, their mission was to win
think it’s important we should enlarge our media through either arts or architecture. For example, you have the big brain around Forensic Architecture, Eyal Weizman. He’s using forensic architecture as evidence in court to show the links to actual crimes. We commissioned him to follow the sequence of the attack of the al-Hamidiah hospital in Syria in 2016. 9 It was very interesting to see how he uses the reconstruction of an event as forensic evidence, using the architectural approach. He also used it for the migration, using distress signals from the phones to trail