Humanitarian Governance

A world in turmoil: governing risk, establishing order in humanitarian crises

This special issue of Disasters on humanitarian governance focuses on risk and order. Its contributions show the tensions between humanitarian normative ideals and practical consequences, as many of ...

Toward a New Global Security Paradigm. Task Force 06: Strengthening Multilateralism and Global Governance

Amidst increasing global connectivity and accelerating global change, the global security framework has become insufficient, contributing to a crippling dysfunctionality in international cooperation. The current security framework, focused almost exclusively on a narrow notion of military security, is insufficient to address escalating ‘threats without enemy,’ such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution, which increasingly endanger the lives and dignity of all populations. This policy brief recommends a global social-ecological security framework, rooted in the science informed understanding of social and biophysical realities, to address the evolving needs and challenges of the 21st century. Our recommendations to operationalise this paradigm include: a reinvigorated commitment to multilateralism and peace as a pre-requisite; public participation in shaping the new inclusive international governance framework; development aid and green finance as key levers; a focus on building resilience (especially food security); and, strengthening anticipation of and response to interconnected global shocks. We propose a G20-initiated formation of a high-level working group to catalyse the creation of this new framework. Such a process must involve relevant stakeholders, leveraging new possibilities afforded by technological tools (such as AI). Implementing this ambitious agenda will be challenging, but continuing on a business as- usual trajectory is a ‘lose-lose’ spiral likely to trigger social and ecological crises. Bold leadership from the G20 is needed more than ever to reinvent multilateralism and thus ensure sustainable well-being for all.

After aid: Thoughts on a localised humanitarian system (part 1)

You have probably read 100+ articles on this topic — USAID shutdown, funding cuts from several EU governments and the UK. An…

A Field Guide to More-Than-Human Governance

Ideas for a Changing World.

Effective Altruism: doing transhumanism better

Effective Altruism (EA) is a Trojan horse for transhumanism, through which EA movement leaders and funders aim to naturalize transhumanism as the logical extension of the existing global aid and development sector. This paper traces transhumanism's mainstreaming, first via its rebranding as a humanitarian effort to save lives, protect vulnerable populations, and ensure global flourishing (what I term transhumanitarianism), and later by embedding transhumanitarianism in EA (now under the rubric of longtermism). A key component of this strategy was inverting transhumanism's techno-optimism to instead focus on safety and preventing existential risks ( x-risk ) from emerging technologies like AI and biotechnology, while simultaneously advocating for the creation of these same technologies. The paper focuses on some components of this strategy: the use of inoculation, speculative ethics, anticipatory governance, and the mobilization of apocalyptic discourse as means for producing material outcomes in the form of policy and research agendas.

Metrics for biodiversity and health policy integration

Despite over a decade of progressive commitments from parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), integrated biodiversity and health indicators and monitoring mechanisms remain limited, hampering achievement of the sustainable development goals and improvements in health and well-being. Adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022) and the Global Action Plan on Biodiversity and Health (2024) provide a renewed entry point to shape the way governments approach health and wellbeing and address the environmental burden of disease. This is a critical opportunity that scholars at the health-environment nexus should not miss. This Perspective outlines building blocks to mobilize the field, starting with essential terminology and a scope of metrics needed by governments. We then evaluate elements to be considered in the construction of integrated metrics, including concepts, overarching challenges, a review of scientific hypotheses from an ecological perspective, as well as a set of principles and characteristics for indicators. To raise awareness across parallel communities of practice working at the health-environment nexus, we then briefly examine four approaches to integrated metrics developed by: conservationists, Indigenous scholars, One Health experts, and planetary health experts. We conclude with actionable steps to enhance governance, mobilize funding, and apply integrated indicators in national and global strategies. A broad science community is needed to support national governments to meet global commitments to address biodiversity loss and the environmental burden of disease concurrently. The overall aim of this paper is to contribute to addressing biodiversity loss by effectively linking policy and transdisciplinary practice at the health-environment nexus.

The Political Declaration — UNODA

Political Declaration on Strengthening the Protection of Civilians from the Humanitarian Consequences Arising from the Use of Explosive Weapons in Populated Areas

Earthy Governance: How to Learn About Democracy From Indigenous Peoples

In light of the planetary polycrisis, it is time to challenge the dominant strand of Western thought that asserts only humans possess rights and that

How to choose a governance system for your organization

Is your nonprofit, small business, or volunteer group looking for a new way to make decisions? Many groups are questioning our mainstream systems — and that includes the systems by which we make decisions. Governance used to be one of the things we’d all take for granted, and now it’s one of the cho

Their Side Is Organized; We Need to Be Organized, Too

Trump and his far-right acolytes wield their power to disinvest from public services, terrorize our neighborhoods with ICE agents, and ensure that opposition to genocide becomes a fireable, and deportable, offense. In the face of these grim and terrifying developments, it could scarcely be more urgent that we learn lessons from movements and organizing traditions that confronted repression, surveillance, and powerful opposition in the (recent and distant) past. We’ve put together a reading list of key books to help inform ongoing efforts to build and sustain durable organizations, and forge effective strategies, for both short term survival and long term social transformation. What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe. “Anyone trying to rebuild an effective U.S. labor movement needs to read Class Struggle Unionism by Joe Burns. He lays out the fundamental principles that UE has tried to uphold for the last 85 years. For a union to be worthwhile to the working class, it needs to know which side it is on and it has to recognize that the fight itself is what allows workers to gain the knowledge and power they need.”—Carl Rosen From two co-founders of the largest tenants union in the country, this deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement centers poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process. A collection of essays from the Stop Cop City movement on the fight for police abolition and for a liveable planet for all, with gripping reporting from activists on the ground and rousing articles from renowned radical academics. In this remarkable collaborative work, leading scholar-activists Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie surface the often unrecognized genealogies of queer, anti-capitalist, internationalist, grassroots, and women-of-color-led feminist movements, struggles, and organizations that have helped to define abolition and feminism in the twenty-first century. This guide, based on the collective experience of organizers and workers in non-unionized workplaces, is a critical tool to help you and your coworkers organize for justice at work.  Drawing from over twenty years of activism on local and national levels, this striking book offers an organizer’s perspective on the intersections of immigrant rights, racial justice, and prison abolition. At a political moment when Liberatory Harm Reduction and mutual aid are more important than ever, this book serves as an inspiration and a catalyst for radical transformation of our world. Even the River Starts Small is a collection from the movement to stop construction of the Line 3 pipeline through northern Minnesota, featuring anonymous writing, art, and photos spanning nearly a decade, and including reflections on many of the diverse experiences that made up this grassroots resistance. “Tracing revolutionary uprisings from 1989 to 2019, this book is a map of resistance and resilience in the face of tremendous odds. The case studies, as well as the introductory essay, lead us through situations where the victory of capitalism over humanity was anything but assured. And yet the book is not a wistful history about what could have been. Rather, it is a strategic assessment of near-victories to prepare us for the fire next time.” —Tithi Bhattacharya As isolated individuals, debtors have little influence. But as a bloc, we can leverage our debts and devise new tactics to challenge the corporate creditor class and help win reparative, universal public goods. Individually, our debts overwhelm us. But together, our debts can make us powerful. What does the politics of solidarity look like in practice, and how can left-wing organizations grow—in numbers and power—while remaining accountable to the broader movements of which they are a part? An oral history and critical genealogy of “accountability,” the complex abolitionist concept that pushes us to ask: just what do we mean by “community?” Environmentalism from Below takes readers inside the popular struggles for environmental liberation in the Global South. These communities—among the most vulnerable to but also least responsible for the climate crisis—have long been at the forefront of the fight to protect imperiled worlds. This volume—the Socialist Register’s first-ever reader—grapples with the question of whether political organization is a necessary part of the struggle by the working-class to overthrow capitalism. In pieces published over the course of publication’s entire history contributors, from Ralph Miliband to Jean-Paul Satre, examine various aspects of this theme. The Socialist Challenge Today presents an essential historical, theoretical, and critical perspective for understanding the potential as well as the limits of three important recent phenomena: the Sanders electoral insurgency in the United States; the Syriza experience in Greece; and Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. This book surveys revolutionary socialist ideas and engages a gallery of contentious political thinkers, offering an indispensable assessment of the place of revolutionary collectives in this radical tradition. A trenchant history of community organizing and a must-read for the next generation of organizers seeking to learn from the successes, failures, and contradictions of the past. In an era of stark racial injustice, Aaron Dixon dedicated his life to revolution, founding the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968 at age nineteen. In My People Are Rising, he traces the course of his own radicalization, and that of a generation. SNCC: The New Abolitionists influenced a generation of activists struggling for civil rights and seeking to learn from the successes and failures of those who built the fantastically influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.  Detroit: I Do Mind Dying tracks the extraordinary development of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as they became two of the landmark political organizations of the 1960s and 1970s. It is widely heralded as one the most important books on the Black liberation movement. A landmark account of a key radical feminist organization, offering lessons for today’s women’s liberation movement. Boston Female Liberation member Nancy Rosenstock expertly weaves together the reflections of her fellow-activists, describing how they became feminists, recounting the breadth of their organizing work, and linking their achievements and experience to contemporary struggles against sexism. In this rousing and insightful participant's account, Hal Draper recounts the now iconic events of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. From the impromptu speak out atop a police car after the administration decided to clamp down on students “distributing communist literature,” to the inspiring Student Strike that shut down the entire campus, Draper's narrative captures the energy and dynamism of each twist and turn in the struggle, and offers invaluable analysis along the way. From the dawning of the industrial epoch, wage earners have organized themselves into unions, fought bitter strikes, and gone so far as to challenge the very premises of the system by creating institutions of democratic self-management aimed at controlling production without bosses. During the first two decades of the twentieth century the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism developed into a major influence within the trade union movement. Committed to destroying capitalism through direct industrial action and revolutionary trade union struggle, the movement raised fundamental questions for activists across the world. In this thorough, concise, and accessible introduction to Lenin’s theory and practice of revolutionary politics, Paul Le Blanc gives a vibrant sense of the historical context of the socialist movement (in Russia and abroad) from which Lenin’s ideas about revolutionary organization spring. What emerges from Le Blanc’s partisan yet measured account is an image of a collaborative, ever adaptive, and dynamically engaged network of revolutionary activists who formed the core of the Bolshevik party.

We Do This 'Til We Free Us

New York Times Bestseller “Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.” What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle. With a foreword by Naomi Murakawa and chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba’s work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”

Humanitarian aid turns to AI as crises outpace capacity

Purpose-designed AI agents with a focus on safety can provide critical assistance to vulnerable populations.

On Liberation

Across the world, regular citizens of all ages are bravely and spontaneously standing up to forces of oppression and exploitation. Now, a leader of...

Governance Archaeology: Research as Ancestry

Abstract. This essay presents the idea of governance archaeology, an approach to learning from the past to inform the politics of the future. By reporting on a prototype historical database, we outline a strategy for co-producing a global commons of collective governance practices that can inspire institutional learning and experimentation, particularly in the face of rapid technological change and vexing global crises. Embedded in our approach is an orientation of ancestry whereby practitioners cultivate relationships of accountability and responsibility to the legacies they learn from, recognizing the harm from past patterns of exploitation. By taking seriously a wide range of historical governance practices, particularly those outside the Western canon, governance archaeology seeks to expand the options available for the design of more moral political economies.