Unpacking Humanitarianism - 'The Role of Mandates'

For the past three years, HERE Geneva has been researching the role that mandates – defined broadly as organisations’ goals or missions (the ‘why’) – play in how humanitarian organisations set priorities in situations of armed conflict: arguably the most complex and contested spaces in which humanitarians operate. Unpacking humanitarianism, the study’s concluding report, looks at the work of eight humanitarian organisations, operating across four conflict-affected countries.

Based on interviews with more than 260 key informants and an in-depth textual analysis, the findings have significant implications for discussions around the humanitarian-development nexus, humanitarian coordination, and the role of humanitarian principles, and raise urgent questions for humanitarian organisations working in the face of global crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.