The contemporary landscape of humanitarian actors has changed since previous eras. Weiss explains that there are three transformative trends: militarization, politicization, and marketization. These trends are driven by a higher demand for humanitarian relief by a booming population. The new era of humanitarianism is struggling to keep pace with the increasingly complex crisis’s that occur. These disasters are affecting more people and requiring aid for a longer period of time. Modern humanitarianism however, is not always about helping the victims. In many cases, it is about agenda pushing, making a profit, and bias towards …show more content…
• The International Committee of the Red Cross
• Oldest international humanitarian organization
• Works only in war zones
• Challenges: run by Swedish elites, so they can be biased to their own agendas.
• The UN system
• Key to worlds response to disasters
• Has a bunch of organizations in their system
• Challenges: plays a pivotal role in civil wars and suffers from bias.
• Bilateral aid agencies:
• Challenges: donors are not shy to push their own agenda and exercise their control over these orgs
• Outside Military Forces:
• soldiers remain part of their country so their loyalties are always with their nation and not with the affected group.
• Challenges: obvious bias and difficult to remain neutral
• Provide services others cannot in war zones
• For profit firms:
• “guns for hire”, mercenaries
• challenges: care for profit and not victims, can be illegal
• The media:
• Type of for-profit business
• Challenges: seeks drama to make a good lead story and does not showcase the good humanitarians do
• Local actors:
• Smaller and less financially