Abstract
Humanitarianism nowadays seems to be having an identity crisis. We live in a world where wars and conflicts are on the rise and the United Nations (UN) as an institution seems unable to stop the violence. The UN was born in 1945 following the two world wars to address global humanitarian multilateral issues. Years later, in 2006, a Global Humanitarian Platform was created1 and a decade after that, the World Humanitarian Summit was held in Istanbul in May 2016, which became a pivotal UN moment.2 Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon then put forward a new Agenda for Humanity, calling on global leaders to stand up for common humanity and reduce humanitarian suffering. In 2019, global humanitarian aid amounted to a $29.6 billion industry, and in the same year a total of 483 humanitarian workers were killed, kidnapped, or wounded, with pandemic and health workers making up 40 per cent of the fatalities.3 The paper will delve into historical aspects of humanitarian work and also how the work is often skewed in terms of being used to downplay the damages done by empires and their violent politics. In the past decades, the global humanitarian industry has been facing numerous challenges both on a normative level and in practice. This paper will discuss three challenges that the global humanitarian industry faces and the future ahead for the industry.
