Argument Against Humanitarianism

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When addressing the idea of development as a component of humanitarianism, there are two schools of thought. One that we need to purely address the immediate needs of a population in crises; and the other that we need to address the immediate needs of the population while also building a sort of infrastructure so we do not have crises to that extent in the future. On a basic level, the idea of offering aid and promoting development seems the most logistical. Of course, it makes sense to provide for the future with development as demonstrated by the program idea of resilience. Resilience argues for the combination of humanitarian aid and development programs and has become popular in politics and basically argues that ending need is a priority of humanitarian organizations. However, based on evidence from articles on resilience, ("Supporting Resilience in Difficult Places" and "Building Resilience by Deconstructing Humanitarian Aid") combining humanitarian aid and development organizations is not the answer. Humanitarian aid organizations and development should remain separate entities in …show more content…
They argue that instead of taking the time to create development programs, organizations should treat immediate humanitarian aid needs. By not immediately addressing needs, MSF argues that lives are being compromised. The article claims that it is counterproductive to “... [offer] support to local health structures that could do the job instead, even if it means delays in epidemic control and overall less children protected” (Whittall and Hofman 2). Lastly, MSF argues that there is no evidence that the concept of resilience is more effective in preventing crises in the future and claims it is mostly an appealing political concept. Overall, the article argues to just leave humanitarian aid and development in separate

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