David Rieff Humanitarianism Summary

David Rieff criticizes humanitarianism as an imperial hegemony that was imposed on the developing world by colonial rulers from Western countries. The writing is more of a detailed analysis of imperialism as a new form of liberation to humanitarian crises with key players not being the armed military men and women but unsuspecting volunteers who use medicine and syringes as has been seen in Syria, Libya and other countries like Iraq whose disasters bear similar characteristics to a horrific movie. In this book, Rieff shows how organizations, which serve in humanitarian conflict, try to alleviate the suffering of the civilians in these countries. The book paints a clear yet pensive picture of the horrors and risks that humanitarian aid workers have to go through in the duty to serve humanity. At the beginning of the book, we learned that David Rieff writing was done at the height of world Trade Center destruction in New York City and having done more coverage on major disasters as …show more content…
On the contrary, Medecins Sans Frontieres is seen as the only organization worth its Aid currently due to its clear outline on the humanitarianism as not the only solutions to these problems of the world thus holding their original principal. Rony Brauman concluded what Rieff tries to explain, that it is not an accident that aid workers and tyrants what they have in common is that they love posing next to a child with Rieff expounding it further in his topic of ‘The Responsibility to Protect.' French Humanitarians figures have arguably noted that humanitarian is vocation that requires to be separated from protection responsibility irrespective of importance of human right goals, ethnic crisis resolutions and peace by aid workers where NGOs efforts feels it can play better role by developing the peace building and human rights especially those issuing from American and British Aids (Rieff, 2002, p.