Bursting the Aid Bubble: Humanitarian Jargon
It’s been more than three years since I started working in the aid sector in Syria. In spite of my humble experience, I’ve come across my fair share of humanitarian jargon that has proven to be impossible to disentangle. I marked the start of my work in the humanitarian community by diving deep into understanding “gender and protection mainstreaming” to find myself a few years later deeply engrossed in the so-called “triple nexus” and the different arguments in its spectrum.
When you first start your journey in that field, you’re taken away by the sheer volume of what you have to learn, you’re absorbed into an enormous multi-cultural labyrinth that is the aid sector, and the principles you once found irrelevant if not submissive to people’s needs, become a daily chant you repeat out of true belief.
But when you’re deep down in that rabbit hole, you take a step back to rethink what you’ve learned, then all the unanswered questions come running back to your mind.
Can we really call a few coordination meetings and a long checklist to deliver gender-separated bathrooms to a refugee camp “protection mainstreaming”?
Does creating the most stringent “selection criteria” to deliver a few necessary items fall under transparency and accountability?
Can we really label it “community engagement” when suggestions from who we intend to support aren’t considered?
Can we really call a 3-month cash and voucher program delivered to people after a decade of war “resilience-building”?
Can a one-time provision of hygiene kits to the most vulnerable families make an exemplary impact on public health?
The list of questions grows, and a while later you realize that the answers you’ve been looking for are found when you’re closest to those affected by the crisis. Every stroll you take in a shattered neighborhood tells you a story. Every marred wall barely covered with plastic sheets not only shelters a family behind it but holds on to memories of failed attempts to receive humanitarian aid. All those tired faces carry a decade of disappointment from countless requests to receive support with little in return and almost no impact.
It saddens me to say, that after 10 years of a prolonged and compound crisis, aid has turned from a responsive body to a theoretical bubble. Actors who were once devoted to serving affected populations are focused on complicating the humanitarian arena with additional coordination structures. Others are now dedicated to promoting organizations with trendy yet out-of-context topics.
This isn’t to deny the great role of humanitarian assistance but is more of a call to simplify it. The only way to do so is by making it people-centered through actions not words, and this is not the work of one. So, whoever we are, locals or expats, experts in humanitarian issues, or just at the start of our career, we all have a shared responsibility. We need to understand from the moment we’re part of that community, everything we do is purely and only for affected Syrians. By doing so, we solidify our efforts to steer the boat towards tangible impact.
