“What does the humanitarian field need?” This was an oft-heard question at the Jesuit Universities Humanitarian Action Network (JUHAN) 2017 conference held this week at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. The theme of this year’s conference was “Principles in Crisis: Refugees and Responsibility,” a heartbreakingly relevant topic of discussion as humanitarian crises drag on in Syria, Yemen, Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia, and the Northern Triangle countries of Central America.
Over 65 million people in the world—a number larger than Italy’s population—are displaced as refugees or internally displaced people. Though the alarmist rhetoric of populist movements in the United States and European countries paints a picture of Western borders under siege by large waves of refugees, the top 10 refugee-hosting countries—a group which includes Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Chad—are all in Asia and Africa.
JUHAN 2017 brought students, staff, faculty members, and community partners of Jesuit colleges and universities to Worcester, itself host to the greatest number of refugees in Massachusetts, to grapple with this seemingly insurmountable reality. The sheer scale of human suffering has forced a reevaluation of the kinds of strategies that should be implemented and the kinds of skills humanitarian workers should have.
Many speakers, including Dr. Michael Barnett of George Washington University, spoke of the sin of paternalism and urged the development of localization (the theory that local problems can be best solved by the local populations). This theory of localization is paralleled by the principle of subsidiarity, one of the key tenets of Catholic social teaching. Subsidiarity holds that those closest to the problem should have the most agency and resources to resolve that problem.
Other speakers shared their experiences working in the humanitarian field. Dr. Haytham Kaafarani of Massachusetts General Hospital and Doctors Without Borders described his experience performing 300 surgeries over a six-week period in the Central African Republic. Dr. Daniela Giardina, the disaster risk reduction and resilience adviser at Oxfam, lent her considerable engineering expertise to humanitarian relief efforts in Somalia, Haiti, and West Africa following the Ebola outbreak. Danielle Corea of Catholic Relief Services spoke of her decision to attend business school after reflecting upon the humanitarian field’s needs regarding advocacy and fundraising.
These tangible skills—medical, engineering, and business—are invaluable to organizational efforts to lessen the scale of human suffering. However, as Georgetown University’s Professor David Hollenbach, S.J., observed in his keynote address, the most fundamental skill one can have in responding to the humanitarian crisis is compassion. Compassion—literally “with suffering”—allows us to recognize ourselves in others, to reject the idea that arbitrary borders drawn on a map should determine who we care about.
This skill is more necessary than ever today as the federal government slashes our international aid budget, halts our refugee resettlement programs, and blocks our international climate change efforts. Despite the “America first” rhetoric, the current U.S. administration has displayed an alarming lack of compassion towards the sick, the elderly, the poor, religious and ethnic minorities, and the LGBT population. Dr. Barnett drily responded to this phenomenon, remarking that “you’re not going to find generosity at the international level if you’re cold-hearted at the national level.” Pope John Paul II’s words are especially relevant here: “a society will be judged on the basis of how it treats its weakest members.”
Fr. Hollenbach urged conference attendees to arm themselves against indifference. He stated that just as we have responsibilities to our families and local communities, we also have a duty to our human family: the men, women, and children who make up the global community. He quoted St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuit order, who wrote that the more universal the good is, the more it is divine. Fr. Hollenbach referenced the Kew Gardens Principle, which posits that we have a duty to help even if we did not cause the harm.
Ultimately, the development of solutions will require more than a moral and ethical framework. We will need more political will on the part of governments around the world, more money from donors, a restructuring of the international agencies that guard their monopoly on humanitarian work, and the cessation of prolonged conflicts that force people from their homes. While this is overwhelming, we can all begin our journeys with compassion. This, at least, is a start.
Anashua Dutta graduated from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service in May 2017 after studying international politics with a concentration in international law. During the fall 2015 semester, she studied abroad in Rabat, Morocco, where she researched the human rights abuses of migrants at the Morocco-Spain border and blogged for the Junior Year Abroad Network.
