The Vulnerable Humanitarian

Ending Burnout Culture in the Aid Sector

Gemma Houldey

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000432558
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

Part I

Deconstructing stress and wellbeing in the aid sector

1 The perfect humanitarian

What’s expected of aid workers and why it’s problematic

DOI: 10.4324/9781003032427-3

In June 2020, following protests around the globe against the killing in the US of George Floyd by a police officer who leaned against his neck with his knee for nearly nine minutes, suffocating Floyd, aid practitioners and organisations were forced into some critical self-reflection about racism within the sector. Whilst some INGOs offered statements committing to systemic change,¹ perhaps the most hard-hitting response came from the newly formed Women of Colour Forum, part of the Gender and Development Network (GADN) comprised of UK NGOs and practitioners, and partners and organisations in the South, working on gender justice and equality. Part of the statement reads:

The international aid sector continues to be driven by a White-Saviour complex which prioritises and privileges the knowledge and experience of White people which in turn shapes job titles (such as experts and advisors held mostly by White people based in the Global North), pay structures, hiring practices and decision-making across organisations.

(GADN Women of Colour Forum, 2020)

The term white saviourism is not a new one within the aid sector; yet when it comes down to it people like myself can feel an urge to get defensive when we are accused of contributing to an organisational culture that reinforces, rather than challenges, inequality. I’m a humanitarian after all – surely I’m not part of the problem? I may be white, but am I personally racist?

These are questions I’ve asked myself many times. And the reason why they are important for this chapter is that I will be demonstrating that the White-Saviour complex that the Women of Colour Forum describes not only forms the foundation of how aid work is done – how decisions are made and what systems and structures are put in place – but is also why we are so reluctant to question our flaws. I am not just talking about white people such as myself. The organisational culture I will be discussing in this chapter and throughout this book highlights the sector’s enduring quest for perfectionism: a perfectionism built on white ideas and assumptions about what constitutes ‘good’ aid work.

I will be exploring what these are in more detail, through the archetype of ‘the perfect humanitarian,’ whose attributes will be familiar to many within the sector. S/he is someone whose commitment and value is measured in terms of how easily they can travel, their availability for the next mission or assignment and their ability to remain unflappable when confronted by risk or insecurity. Whilst the level of fortitude expected of the ‘perfect humanitarian’ is problematic and unrealistic for everyone, there is no doubt that some people will struggle more than others. This is what this chapter will be exploring: what this brand of perfectionism looks like, where it’s from and how it affects aid workers in different ways.

First, I want to come back to the perfect humanitarian’s forebear who still survives today and is at the heart of how aid is structured and delivered – the white saviour.

The endurance of the white saviour

The prototypical savior is a person who has been raised in privilege and taught implicitly or explicitly (or both) that they possess the answers and skills needed to rescue others, no matter the situation. The message that they are the experts in all things has been reinforced since birth. They are taught that saving others is the burden they must bear.

(Flaherty, 2017: 17)

Jordan Flaherty’s portrayal of the white saviour in his book, No More Heroes: Grassroots Challenges to the Savior Mentality, may appear cynical, yet it is certainly not unfamiliar in the aid and development sector. Borrowing Barbara Heron’s phrase in her study of Canadian women aid workers in Sub-Saharan Africa (Heron, 2007), it is also fairly well established, if not always fully reflected upon within the sector, that “colonial continuities” shape the knowledge, language, systems and relationships of aid work. The image of white people travelling to distant lands to civilise the natives stretches far back to the colonial era; and yet it endures to this day, when we consider the prominence that has often been given, in the western world at least, to images of white figures saving nameless ‘victims.’

In recent years there has been increased awareness of the need for aid organisations to fully acknowledge their colonial roots, the power imbalance this reinforces between the minority world and the majority world, and to take appropriate action that supports the sector’s own principles of human dignity and welfare. There has been greater sensitivity regarding how INGOs communicate their work in a way that avoids dehumanising and ‘othering’ the communities they support, particularly on the back of some uncompromising calling out of this behaviour by activists and interest groups.²

And following the World Humanitarian Summit of 2016, international aid organisations and donor agencies committed to the ‘Grand Bargain’: an initiative to localise aid interventions so that resources and power would be transferred from Global North-based institutions to organisations and movements in the Global South, where interventions were taking place. Whilst the emphasis was on enabling local NGOs and civil society groups to take on more responsibilities and decision-making capabilities, there was also a recognition that the dominance of white leadership, particularly senior leadership, in most INGOs needed to be reversed. Since then, there have been further initiatives springing up globally, calling for the power held by INGO head offices in the Global North to be shifted to the Global South.³

The presence of local practitioners in aid delivery has undoubtedly increased in recent years; I have seen this in my research, and in my own experience working for different INGOs who have undergone massive restructuring processes to move offices and decision-making processes to the countries where interventions are taking place. Yet, as the GADN’s Women of Colour Forum notes, there remains a culture where particular knowledge, expertise and capabilities are favoured in such a way that allows the endurance of white and colonial structures that keep everyone in their place.

Furthermore, the centring of whiteness in aid interventions – including the ubiquity of white celebrities apparently getting their hands dirty in challenging places – has informed particular assumptions about aid work. Most notably, aid workers – at least in the western world – have been portrayed as selfless heroes, giving up much of their privileges and living in conditions of poverty and hardship that their friends back home could never imagine. This discourse of selflessness and heroism is present as much among those working within the aid sector as those observing it from the outside. It can be viewed in the awareness-raising materials of aid organisations,⁴and as some studies of humanitarian and human rights organisations have found (Rességuier, 2018; Rodgers, 2010; Wigley, 2005), this discourse also places expectations on staff behaviour.

I would like to expand on this idea of heroism further now, by suggesting that the sector’s history of white saviourism has created an organisational culture with particular expectations of who the aid worker is and how they should behave. These expectations come together to form what I call ‘the perfect humanitarian’: an archetype who possesses particular qualities that not only entrench the aid system’s colonial and white underpinnings, but also leave out space to consider the flaws, limitations and vulnerabilities of the system’s diversity of protagonists.

Who is the perfect humanitarian?

One evening in September 2016 I had dinner with Lars and Inger, a Norwegian couple in their 60s, at their home in Nairobi. They had both been working in the aid sector – Lars for the United Nations (UN) and Inger mostly for INGOs – since the 1980s. Between them, their humanitarian missions – at times working separately in different countries – had included Somalia, Sudan, Colombia, El Salvador and Pakistan. They had also managed to raise two daughters whilst pursuing their careers.

Lars talked with pride about his efforts to implement polio eradication programmes, at times in situations of political instability and antagonism from state authorities. He had met, and negotiated humanitarian access with, among others, President Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and warring parties during the height of Sudan’s civil war. Discussing the impact of these experiences on their private life, Lars brushed off any notion of negative implications, telling me that humanitarian workers learn to adjust to the different circumstances they find themselves in; whether at home with their family or on field mission in disaster areas. He was also surprised to hear that my research topic – stress and burnout in the aid sector – was really a concern, because as far as he knew there were few such problems in the UN agency he worked for.

Lars and Inger hold some of the qualities that are common for what I call ‘the perfect humanitarian.’ In the aid sector, we have probably all met such figures: they fly from one emergency area to another, seemingly unfazed by the suffering they are exposed to or the toll this may be taking on their private lives. Their commitment to their work is striking, admirable perhaps and unwavering.

What constitutes perfectionism in this instance is highly gendered and racialised, highlighting the endurance of white saviourism, and with worrying implications for all aid workers, regardless of race or gender. Here are some of the attributes of the ‘perfect humanitarian’ which many of you may be familiar with; indeed, I myself claimed many of these attributes.

The career path of the perfect humanitarian

Using the example of my own journey into aid work, I would argue there is a fairly typical career trajectory for many aid workers from the Global North and it looks something like this:

1. Study a relevant subject from a well-respected European university.
2. Take a gap year to discover yourself.
3. Commit to a hitherto unclear form of charity work in a country where people are less fortunate than you are.
4. Travel there as a volunteer (with financial support from parents), and gain skills that support you in pursuing a professional career in the aid sector.
5. Continue to pursue work in different countries and contexts, based on the expertise generated from spending a few months to a year or two in each place.

There are variations of course, but most aid workers I know from Europe or the US have had a similar career path – and it seems to look good on your CV when applying for a job in the sector. I know that it was largely my experience doing voluntary work for a local human rights organisation in Uganda that got me my first fully paid INGO job, as Uganda programme officer; and that it was largely my Master’s degree in Human Rights Law at London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) – as well as having worked on human rights and humanitarian programmes in different countries – that got me a job as East Africa researcher for another INGO. There are some implicit assumptions made about what counts as good preparation for aid work – and these include an impressive university degree, experience in different countries and the availability for travel.

A conversation I had in April 2020 with Angela Bruce-Raeburn – a Black woman of Caribbean origin, who has worked for many years in the aid and development sector, including in Haiti for Oxfam – starkly highlights how this seemingly common career trajectory is not shared by everyone. Angela studied at a college in the US where many of her Black counterparts were the first in their families to undertake graduate studies. Many were looking after extended family who did not have access to the same opportunities. Most of them, including Angela, would have to take up a number of different jobs outside their career preferences – leading to a chequered CV – in order to ensure they and their families could keep putting food on the table. In other words, not everyone’s career path is going to be a straight line from one NGO, or one...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: responding to a life in crisis
• Part I Deconstructing stress and wellbeing in the aid sector
• Part II Creating healthy, inclusive work environments
• Concluding reflections
• Index