The End Of Noble Humanitarianism

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The Vulnerable Humanitarian

Author : Gemma Houldey
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000432556
Total Pages : 154 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis The Vulnerable Humanitarian by : Gemma Houldey

Download or read book The Vulnerable Humanitarian written by Gemma Houldey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vulnerable Humanitarian challenges the prevalence of stress and burnout culture within the aid sector, laying bare the issues of power, agency, security and wellbeing that continue to trouble organisations and staff. Engaging and insightful, this book illustrates the problematic and unrealistic expectations of aid workers through the archetype of the perfect humanitarian, and considers why burnout is so endemic, yet so rarely acknowledged, within aid organisations. The book provides practical means through which staff and managers can reflect upon and discuss damaging organisational cultures and behaviours, and develop a more inclusive and caring work environment. Drawing on original academic research and interviews with national and international aid workers and development experts, the book proposes a feminist, anti-racist and decolonial agenda in challenging oppressive systems and structures within the sector. With extensive professional experience as an aid worker herself, Gemma Houldey also shares her own struggles with mental health and what she has learned from feminist practices for self- and collective care. Proposing new ways of addressing wellbeing that are sensitive to the multi-faceted personalities and lived experiences of people working on aid and development programmes, The Vulnerable Humanitarian is essential reading both for current aid sector employees and for prospective employees and students.

New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity

Author : Michael Mascarenhas
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 025302658X
Total Pages : 179 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity by : Michael Mascarenhas

Download or read book New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity written by Michael Mascarenhas and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-22 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “An excellent addition to courses on development, inequality, public policy, and globalization, and it could . . . be read by an audience beyond sociologists.”—American Journal of Sociology Soaring poverty levels and 24-hour media coverage of global disasters have caused a surge in the number of international non-governmental organizations that address suffering on a massive scale. But how are these new global networks transforming the politics and power dynamics of humanitarian policy and practice? In New Humanitarianism and the Crisis of Charity, Michael Mascarenhas considers that issue using water management projects in India and Rwanda as case studies. Mascarenhas analyzes the complex web of agreements ?both formal and informal?that are made between businesses, governments, and aid organizations, as well as the contradictions that arise when capitalism meets humanitarianism. “Insightful . . . provides a scathing critique of the new humanitarianism.” —University of Chicago Press Journals

Doing Bad by Doing Good

Author : Christopher J Coyne
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0804786119
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (47 download)

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Book Synopsis Doing Bad by Doing Good by : Christopher J Coyne

Download or read book Doing Bad by Doing Good written by Christopher J Coyne and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An economics-focused analysis of why humanitarian relief efforts fail and how they can be remedied. In 2010, Haiti was ravaged by a brutal earthquake that affected the lives of millions. The call to assist those in need was heard around the globe. Yet two years later humanitarian efforts led by governments and NGOs have largely failed. Resources are not reaching the needy due to bureaucratic red tape, and many assets have been squandered. How can efforts intended to help the suffering fail so badly? In this timely and provocative book, Christopher J. Coyne uses the economic way of thinking to explain why this and other humanitarian efforts that intend to do good end up doing nothing or causing harm. In addition to Haiti, Coyne considers a wide range of interventions. He explains why the US government was ineffective following Hurricane Katrina, why the international humanitarian push to remove Muammar Gaddafi in Libya may very well end up causing more problems than prosperity, and why decades of efforts to respond to crises and foster development around the world have resulted in repeated failures. In place of the dominant approach to state-led humanitarian action, this book offers a bold alternative, focused on establishing an environment of economic freedom. If we are willing to experiment with aid—asking questions about how to foster development as a process of societal discovery, or how else we might engage the private sector, for instance—we increase the range of alternatives to help people and empower them to improve their communities. Anyone concerned with and dedicated to alleviating human suffering in the short term or for the long haul, from policymakers and activists to scholars, will find this book to be an insightful and provocative reframing of humanitarian action. Praise for Doing Bad by Doing Good “Coyne is to be congratulated for a book that strongly calls into question the conventional wisdom that we must look first to government to accomplish humanitarian ends.” —George Leef, Regulation Magazine “Coyne attempts to explain why conventional approaches to humanitarian aid and longer-term economic development have failed miserably . . . . Recommended.” —M. Q. Dao, Choice “Coyne offers a classic neo-liberal economic analysis to explain why the humanitarian project in its current state is doomed.” —Zoe Cormack, Times Literary Supplement

Armed Humanitarians

Author : Nathan Hodge
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1608194450
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (81 download)

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Book Synopsis Armed Humanitarians by : Nathan Hodge

Download or read book Armed Humanitarians written by Nathan Hodge and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 2003, President George W. Bush declared victory in Iraq. But while we won the war, we catastrophically lost the peace. Our failure prompted a fundamental change in our foreign policy. Confronted with the shortcomings of "shock and awe," the U.S. military shifted its focus to "stability operations": counterinsurgency and the rebuilding of failed states. In less than a decade, foreign assistance has become militarized; humanitarianism has been armed. Combining recent history and firsthand reporting, Armed Humanitarians traces how the concepts of nation-building came into vogue, and how, evangelized through think tanks, government seminars, and the press, this new doctrine took root inside the Pentagon and the State Department. Following this extraordinary experiment in armed social work as it plays out from Afghanistan and Iraq to Africa and Haiti, Nathan Hodge exposes the difficulties of translating these ambitious new theories into action. Ultimately seeing this new era in foreign relations as a noble but flawed experiment, he shows how armed humanitarianism strains our resources, deepens our reliance on outsourcing and private contractors, and leads to perceptions of a new imperialism, arguably a major factor in any number of new conflicts around the world. As we attempt to build nations, we may in fact be weakening our own. Nathan Hodge is a Washington, D.C.-based writer who specializes in defense and national security. He has reported from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, and a number of other countries in the Middle East and former Soviet Union. He is the author, with Sharon Weinberger, of A Nuclear Family Vacation, and his work has appeared in Slate, the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, and many other newspapers and magazines.

Empire of Humanity

Author : Michael Barnett
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 080146109X
Total Pages : 311 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Empire of Humanity by : Michael Barnett

Download or read book Empire of Humanity written by Michael Barnett and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Empire of Humanity explores humanitarianism’s remarkable growth from its humble origins in the early nineteenth century to its current prominence in global life. In contrast to most contemporary accounts of humanitarianism that concentrate on the last two decades, Michael Barnett ties the past to the present, connecting the antislavery and missionary movements of the nineteenth century to today’s peacebuilding missions, the Cold War interventions in places like Biafra and Cambodia to post–Cold War humanitarian operations in regions such as the Great Lakes of Africa and the Balkans; and the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863 to the emergence of the major international humanitarian organizations of the twentieth century. Based on extensive archival work, close encounters with many of today’s leading international agencies, and interviews with dozens of aid workers in the field and at headquarters, Empire of Humanity provides a history that is both global and intimate. Avoiding both romanticism and cynicism, Empire of Humanity explores humanitarianism’s enduring themes, trends, and, most strikingly, ethical ambiguities. Humanitarianism hopes to change the world, but the world has left its mark on humanitarianism. Humanitarianism has undergone three distinct global ages—imperial, postcolonial, and liberal—each of which has shaped what humanitarianism can do and what it is. The world has produced not one humanitarianism, but instead varieties of humanitarianism. Furthermore, Barnett observes that the world of humanitarianism is divided between an emergency camp that wants to save lives and nothing else and an alchemist camp that wants to remove the causes of suffering. These camps offer different visions of what are the purpose and principles of humanitarianism, and, accordingly respond differently to the same global challenges and humanitarianism emergencies. Humanitarianism has developed a metropolis of global institutions of care, amounting to a global governance of humanity. This humanitarian governance, Barnett observes, is an empire of humanity: it exercises power over the very individuals it hopes to emancipate. Although many use humanitarianism as a symbol of moral progress, Barnett provocatively argues that humanitarianism has undergone its most impressive gains after moments of radical inhumanity, when the "international community" believes that it must atone for its sins and reduce the breach between what we do and who we think we are. Humanitarianism is not only about the needs of its beneficiaries; it also is about the needs of the compassionate.

Humanitarianism and Modern Culture

Author : Keith Tester
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271050454
Total Pages : 144 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Humanitarianism and Modern Culture by : Keith Tester

Download or read book Humanitarianism and Modern Culture written by Keith Tester and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-04-28 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It seems paradoxical that in the West the predominant mode of expressing concern about suffering in the Third World comes through participation in various forms of popular culture—such as buying tickets to a rock concert like Live Aid in 1985—rather than through political action based on expert knowledge. Keith Tester’s aim in this book is to explore the phenomenon of what he calls “commonsense humanitarianism,” the reasons for its hegemony as the principal way for people in the West to relate to distant suffering, and its ramifications for our moral and social lives. As a remnant of the West’s past imperial legacy, this phenomenon is most clearly manifested in humanitarian activities directed at Africa, and that continent is the geographical focus of this critical sociology of humanitarianism, which places the role of the media at the center of its analysis.

A Bed for the Night

Author : David Rieff
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1439127271
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (391 download)

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Book Synopsis A Bed for the Night by : David Rieff

Download or read book A Bed for the Night written by David Rieff and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-06-04 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timely and controversial, A Bed for the Night reveals how humanitarian organizations trying to bring relief in an ever more violent and dangerous world are often betrayed and misused, and have increasingly lost sight of their purpose. Humanitarian relief workers, writes David Rieff, are the last of the just. And in the Bosnias, the Rwandas, and the Afghanistans of this world, humanitarianism remains the vocation of helping people when they most desperately need help, when they have lost or stand at risk of losing everything they have, including their lives. Although humanitarianism's accomplishments have been tremendous, including saving countless lives, the lesson of the past ten years of civil wars and ethnic cleansing is that it can do only so much to alleviate suffering. Aid workers have discovered that while trying to do good, their efforts may also cause harm. Drawing on firsthand reporting from hot war zones around the world -- Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo, Kosovo, Sudan, and most recently Afghanistan -- Rieff describes how the International Committee of the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee, CARE, Oxfam, and other humanitarian organizations have moved from their founding principle of political neutrality, which gave them access to victims of wars, to encouraging the international community to take action to stop civil wars and ethnic cleansing. This advocacy has come at a high price. By calling for intervention -- whether by the United Nations or by "coalitions of the willing" -- humanitarian organizations risk being seen as taking sides in a conflict and thus jeopardizing their access to victims. And by overreaching, the humanitarian movement has allowed itself to be hijacked by the major powers, at times becoming a fig leaf for actions those powers wish to take for their own interests, or for the major powers' inaction. Rieff concludes that if humanitarian organizations are to do what they do best -- alleviate suffering -- they must reclaim their independence. Except for relief workers themselves, no one has looked at humanitarian action as seriously or as unflinchingly, or has had such unparalleled access to its inner workings, as Rieff, who has traveled and lived with aid workers over many years and four continents. A cogent, hard-hitting report from the front lines, A Bed for the Night shows what international aid organizations must do if they are to continue to care for the victims of humanitarian disasters.

Humanitarian Reason

Author : Didier Fassin
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520271165
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Humanitarian Reason by : Didier Fassin

Download or read book Humanitarian Reason written by Didier Fassin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies primarily France with shorter sections on South Africa, Venezuela, and Palestine.

Humanitarianism and Mass Migration

Author : Marcelo Suarez-Orozco
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520969626
Total Pages : 410 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Humanitarianism and Mass Migration by : Marcelo Suarez-Orozco

Download or read book Humanitarianism and Mass Migration written by Marcelo Suarez-Orozco and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The world is witnessing a rapid rise in the number of victims of human trafficking and of migrants—voluntary and involuntary, internal and international, authorized and unauthorized. In the first two decades of this century alone, more than 65 million people have been forced to escape home into the unknown. The slow-motion disintegration of failing states with feeble institutions, war and terror, demographic imbalances, unchecked climate change, and cataclysmic environmental disruptions have contributed to the catastrophic migrations that are placing millions of human beings at grave risk. Humanitarianism and Mass Migration fills a scholarly gap by examining the uncharted contours of mass migration. Exceptionally curated, it contains contributions from Jacqueline Bhabha, Richard Mollica, Irina Bokova, Pedro Noguera, Hirokazu Yoshikawa, James A. Banks, Mary Waters, and many others. The volume’s interdisciplinary and comparative approach showcases new research that reveals how current structures of health, mental health, and education are anachronistic and out of touch with the new cartographies of mass migrations. Envisioning a hopeful and realistic future, this book provides clear and concrete recommendations for what must be done to mine the inherent agency, cultural resources, resilience, and capacity for self-healing that will help forcefully displaced populations.

Humanitarianism in the Modern World

Author : Norbert Götz
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108493521
Total Pages : 371 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Humanitarianism in the Modern World by : Norbert Götz

Download or read book Humanitarianism in the Modern World written by Norbert Götz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-23 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh look at two centuries of humanitarian history through a moral economy approach focusing on appeals, allocation, and accounting.

An Imperfect Offering

Author : James Orbinski
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 0802717624
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (27 download)

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Book Synopsis An Imperfect Offering by : James Orbinski

Download or read book An Imperfect Offering written by James Orbinski and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the author's experiences as a doctor for Doctors Without Borders in countries such as Somalia, Afghanistan, and Rwanda; the conditions he witnessed; and the political roadblocks that prevented aid from reaching patients.

Ireland's Helping Hand to Europe

Author : Jérôme aan de Wiel
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633864100
Total Pages : 572 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (338 download)

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Book Synopsis Ireland's Helping Hand to Europe by : Jérôme aan de Wiel

Download or read book Ireland's Helping Hand to Europe written by Jérôme aan de Wiel and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-war Marshall Plan aid to Europe and indeed Ireland is well documented, but practically nothing is known about simultaneous Irish aid to Europe. This book provides a full record of the aid – mainly food but also clothes, blankets, medicines, etc. – that Ireland donated to continental Europe, including France, the Netherlands, Hungary, the Balkans, Italy, and zones of occupied Germany. Starting with Ireland’s neutral wartime record, often wrongly presented as pro-German when Ireland in fact unofficially favoured the western Allies, Jerome aan de Wiel explains why Éamon de Valera’s government sent humanitarian aid to the devastated continent. His book analyses the logistics of collection and distribution of supplies sent abroad as far as the Greek islands. Despite some alleged Cold-War hijacking of Irish relief – and this humanitarianism was not above the politics of that East-West confrontation – it became mostly a story of hope, generosity and European Christian solidarity. Rich archival records from Ireland and the European beneficiary countries, as well as contemporary local and national newspapers across Europe, allow the author to measure and describe not only the official but also the popular response to Irish relief schemes. This work is illustrated with contemporary photographs and some key graphs and tables that show the extent of the aid programme.

The Dark Sides of Virtue

Author : David Kennedy
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780691123943
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (239 download)

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Book Synopsis The Dark Sides of Virtue by : David Kennedy

Download or read book The Dark Sides of Virtue written by David Kennedy and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative and timely book, David Kennedy explores what can go awry when we put our humanitarian impulses into action on a global scale. He develops a checklist of difficulties that plague efforts by the most well-intentioned professional activists and policy-makers.

Humanitarian Military Intervention

Author : Taylor B. Seybolt
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199252432
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (992 download)

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Book Synopsis Humanitarian Military Intervention by : Taylor B. Seybolt

Download or read book Humanitarian Military Intervention written by Taylor B. Seybolt and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2007 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military intervention in a conflict without a reasonable prospect of success is unjustifiable, especially when it is done in the name of humanity. Couched in the debate on the responsibility to protect civilians from violence and drawing on traditional 'just war' principles, the centralpremise of this book is that humanitarian military intervention can be justified as a policy option only if decision makers can be reasonably sure that intervention will do more good than harm. This book asks, 'Have past humanitarian military interventions been successful?' It defines success as saving lives and sets out a methodology for estimating the number of lives saved by a particular military intervention. Analysis of 17 military operations in six conflict areas that were thedefining cases of the 1990s-northern Iraq after the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo and East Timor-shows that the majority were successful by this measure. In every conflict studied, however, some military interventions succeeded while others failed, raising the question, 'Why have some past interventions been more successful than others?' This book argues that the central factors determining whether a humanitarian intervention succeeds are theobjectives of the intervention and the military strategy employed by the intervening states. Four types of humanitarian military intervention are offered: helping to deliver emergency aid, protecting aid operations, saving the victims of violence and defeating the perpetrators of violence. Thefocus on strategy within these four types allows an exploration of the political and military dimensions of humanitarian intervention and highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four types.Humanitarian military intervention is controversial. Scepticism is always in order about the need to use military force because the consequences can be so dire. Yet it has become equally controversial not to intervene when a government subjects its citizens to massive violation of their basic humanrights. This book recognizes the limits of humanitarian intervention but does not shy away from suggesting how military force can save lives in extreme circumstances.

The World's Emergency Room

Author : Michael VanRooyen
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
ISBN 13 : 1466883537
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

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Book Synopsis The World's Emergency Room by : Michael VanRooyen

Download or read book The World's Emergency Room written by Michael VanRooyen and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty years ago, the most common cause of death for medical humanitarians and other aid workers was traffic accidents; today, it is violent attacks. And the death of each doctor, nurse, paramedic, midwife, and vaccinator is multiplied untold times in the vulnerable populations deprived of their care. In a 2005 report, the ICRC found that for every soldier killed in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than 60 civilians died due to loss of immunizations and other basic health services. The World's Emergency Room: The Growing Threat to Doctors, Nurses, and Humanitarian Workers documents this dangerous trend, demonstrates the urgent need to reverse it, and explores how that can be accomplished. Drawing on VanRooyen's personal experiences and those of his colleagues in international humanitarian medicine, he takes readers into clinics, wards, and field hospitals around the world where medical personnel work with inadequate resources under dangerous conditions to care for civilians imperiled by conflict. VanRooyen undergirds these compelling stories with data and historical context, emphasizing how they imperil the key doctrine of medical neutrality, and what to do about it.

Budapest's Children

Author : Friederike Kind-Kovács
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253062187
Total Pages : 403 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

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Book Synopsis Budapest's Children by : Friederike Kind-Kovács

Download or read book Budapest's Children written by Friederike Kind-Kovács and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-05 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of World War I, international organizations descended upon the destitute children living in the rubble of Budapest and the city became a testing ground for how the West would handle the most vulnerable residents of a former enemy state. Budapest's Children reconstructs how Budapest turned into a laboratory of transnational humanitarian intervention. Friederike Kind-Kovács explores the ways in which migration, hunger, and destitution affected children's lives, casting light on children's particular vulnerability in times of distress. Drawing on extensive archival research, Kind-Kovács reveals how Budapest's children, as iconic victims of the war's aftermath, were used to mobilize humanitarian sentiments and practices throughout Europe and the United States. With this research, Budapest's Children investigates the dynamic interplay between local Hungarian organizations, international humanitarian donors, and the child relief recipients. In tracing transnational relief encounters, Budapest's Children reveals how intertwined postwar internationalism and nationalism were and how child relief reinforced revisionist claims and global inequalities that still reverberate today.

Chasing Chaos

Author : Jessica Alexander
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0770436919
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis Chasing Chaos by : Jessica Alexander

Download or read book Chasing Chaos written by Jessica Alexander and published by Crown. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jessica Alexander arrived in Rwanda in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide as an idealistic intern, eager to contribute to the work of the international humanitarian aid community. But the world that she encountered in the field was dramatically different than anything she could have imagined. It was messy, chaotic, and difficult—but she was hooked. In this honest and irreverent memoir, she introduces readers to the realities of life as an aid worker. We watch as she manages a 24,000-person camp in Darfur, collects evidence for the Charles Taylor trial in Sierra Leone, and contributes to the massive aid effort to clean up a shattered Haiti. But we also see the alcohol-fueled parties and fleeting romances, the burnouts and self-doubt, and the struggle to do good in places that have long endured suffering. Tracing her personal journey from wide-eyed and naïve newcomer to hardened cynic and, ultimately, to hopeful but critical realist, Alexander transports readers to some of the most troubled locations around the world and shows us not only the seemingly impossible challenges, but also the moments of resilience and recovery.