Most emergency humanitarian aid projects are a response to a
natural catastrophe - flood or famine, drought or eruption. What
Middleton and O'Keefe show in this chilling book is that such
catastrophes are usually far more complex than that. Global
politics may have little to do with whether a volcano erupts or
not, but politics can play a large part in determining whether the
poorest people are living in the areas of greatest danger. The
analysis, which is very convincing, is far too complex to summarize
here, but what they do show, using harrowing examples of recent
disaster relief in Sudan, Rwanda, Afghanistan and elsewhere, is
that humanitarian aid tends to ignore, to its great cost, global
political and economic factors. This is not an easy book to read,
but as an examination of the role market forces have to play in the
relief and even the cause of catastrophes, it is masterful. (Kirkus
UK)
As "natural" disasters increase in frequency and scale, the cost of
humanitarian assistance elbows development budgets aside.
Catastrophes force aid agencies to look for immediate relief for
the victims of apparently no-fault natural disasters. But how far
is it possible to view such disasters as natural? This text argues
that we allow ourselves to ignore the political dimensions of
humanitarian aid and disaster relief, which operate as part of a
far wider global battle for resources and markets. It highlights
the links between disaster, aid, development and relief, placing
case studies in the context of the globalization of the economy,
the "free" market ideology of the industrialized nations, the
rapacity of financial short-termism and the rise of new forms of
colonialism.;The book examines seven recent and, in some cases,
continuing major disasters, and analyzes the political agendas that
can be said to be common to all these disasters. It then puts
forward a political framework for humanitarian aid, reviewing the
possible consequences, the political issues to be addressed and
possible ways forward.
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