In this blog, Drs. Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits and Bilge Sahin reflect on Home Game, a documentary that unfolds not simply as a story of survival but as a profound meditation on the human condition—on displacement, memory, and the perpetual search for identity and belonging. Based on their contributions as panelists alongside the filmmaker—moderated by Gabriela Anderson of The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre—this piece revisits key themes discussed during the special screening at the 2025 Movies that Matter Festival at the Filmhuis in The Hague.
Photo Credit: Barbara Raatgever
Set against the backdrop of the breakup of Yugoslavia and its aftermath, Home Game resists conventional narratives of linear healing or neat resolution. Instead, it invites viewers into the fractured, nonlinear experiences of its protagonists, weaving together personal memory and political critique in ways that linger long after the screen fades to black.
The film follows the life path of Lidija Zelovic, opening in Sarajevo during the turbulent 1990s. Lidija’s grandmother offers a haunting reflection: “There is peace until the shot is fired. But once the shot is fired, one realizes that the war started much earlier. Only then it is too late.” This single line unsettles common understandings of war and peace, refusing to treat them as discrete events. Rather, it exposes how the seeds of violence are often sown long before bullets fly—embedded in social, political, and economic structures.
This insight resonates strongly with Johan Galtung’s theory of structural violence. Structural violence refers to the harm caused by systems of inequality—patriarchy, racism, capitalism—that may not be overtly violent but are nonetheless profoundly injurious. These latent forms of harm, often normalized or rendered invisible, create the very conditions that make war possible. Thus, as Home Game suggests, the temporal boundary between war and peace is not a clean break but a blurry continuum.
This continuum is further explored when Lidija and her family relocate to the Netherlands as refugees. On the surface, they escape war. But the film astutely reveals how violence endures in less visible forms: through xenophobic political rhetoric, subtle exclusions, and the cultural dissonance of living between worlds. In the so-called “peaceful” West, the trauma of war does not dissipate—it mutates. Later in the documentary, as Lidija’s mother watches Dutch television from Bosnia, where the family are holidaying, she remarks, “They know how to live.” It is a moment filled with longing and alienation, proximity and distance. A good life appears within reach, yet remains stubbornly inaccessible.
In this way, Home Game challenges simplistic portrayals of migration as a journey from danger to safety, from trauma to recovery. The film instead treats home-making as a fractured and continuous process. Displacement produces a liminal existence—where the self is suspended between multiple geographies, languages, and temporalities. Home is no longer a stable place; it becomes both here and there, both past and present, and never fully one or the other.
Lidija’s now-teenage son, born and raised in the Netherlands, is a powerful example of this, feeling torn between his Bosnian heritage and his Dutch citizenship. His manner of untangling his various identities is contrasted with that of Lidija’s father, who dismisses the idea of being buried in the Netherlands after his death. His eventual interring in a grave in Zaandam marks a ‘full circle’ moment in the film, with Lidija noting that her son now feels Dutch as the screen darkens on an image of the family paying their respects.
One of the most powerful moments in the film occurs when Lidija returns to her childhood home in Sarajevo. Looking out at the familiar cityscape, she says, “I like it because it is mine.” But when her son asks, “Is the view of your country different?” she replies, “I am different; I don’t know about the view.” Her words capture the estrangement that displacement brings—not just from place, but from oneself. The trauma of war ruptures more than just space; it breaks the continuity of self, severing the past from the present in painful and irreversible ways.
Yet, Home Game is not a film of despair. It is honest about the wounds of war—many of which may never fully heal—but it is equally attentive to the quiet resilience of those who carry on. There is joy in the mundane: in a shared meal, a laugh, a football match. These moments are not trivial; they are the fragile threads from which new forms of life are woven.
Here, trauma studies provide an important lens. Scholars increasingly recognize that trauma is not solely destructive. It can also generate what is known as post-traumatic growth: a redefinition of identity, deeper empathy, new affiliations. Home Game captures this duality beautifully. Its protagonists, though fractured, are not broken. They carry layered identities—shaped by loss, survival, and hope—that continue to evolve through everyday acts of connection.
This interplay of trauma and transformation also has a political dimension. Drawing from Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “space of appearance,” the film becomes more than a personal story—it is a political act. Arendt reminds us of that action and speech among others in shared space is what constitutes the political. Home Game creates such a space, where pain, joy, and memory coexist. Through its portrayal of fractured identities and evolving relationships, it reclaims the political from the margins—from the survivors, the refugees, the displaced. Ernesto Laclau’s idea of the “internal antagonistic frontier” further enriches this reading. For Laclau, all social formations contain unresolved tensions—conflicts that can’t be eliminated, only negotiated. Home Game refuses to resolve these tensions. Instead, it makes them visible. Whether it’s the feeling of not fully belonging in the Netherlands or the ambivalence of returning to Sarajevo, the film insists on the legitimacy of contradiction. The documentary becomes a site of dissensus—a space where complex truths can coexist without being forced into a single narrative.
In refusing closure, Home Game speaks a deeper truth. Will there ever be full healing? A return to what was lost? The film suggests perhaps not. And perhaps that’s okay. Home Game is a reminder that home is not merely a place. It is a practice, process, and feeling that may flicker but never fully disappear. Home as well as life is not a tidy arc from trauma to triumph. It is recursive, messy, filled with beginnings that masquerade as endings and endings that open new questions. What matters, the film suggests, is not arriving at a final destination, but learning how to carry our stories—with complexity, dignity, and grace.
This special screening of ‘Home Game’ was put together by the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Governance of Migration and Diversity (LDE GMD) together with Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Global. The other two organizers are the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS-EUR) and the Humanitarian Studies Centre. Photo credits from the event go to Barbara Raatgever. ‘Home Game’ is screening across the Netherlands throughout 2025.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the authors
Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits
Dr. Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits is an Associate Professor in Conflict and Peace Studies at ISS/Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a transdisciplinary researcher specializing in Political Science, with expertise in International Relations and Critical Peace and Conflict Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on the intersections of governance, development, armed conflict, post-war transitions, and peacebuilding.
Bilge Sahin
Dr. Bilge Sahin is an Assistant Professor of Conflict and Peace Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her teaching and research explore the complex intersections of gender, sexuality, war, and security.
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What happened to the scholar that didn’t embrace new media? They ran out of cassette tapes! Awful jokes aside, it’s more and more important for scientists, and particularly social scientists, to be plugged in to society to better interact with it. A recent Economist article highlighted that academic research papers in the humanities and social sciences are getting harder to read, more convoluted and stuffed full of jargon and incomprehensible sentences. There is a perception in the ‘outside world’ (perhaps pushed by populist political currents!) that academics are starting to talk more just to other academics rather than to society at large, which is at the very least not conducive to a high level of public discourse. In some cases, it has led to the removal of experts from the policymaking process. At the same time, and partially thanks to the growing legions of science communications officers and the phenomenon of ‘cool geeks’, there are more opportunities than ever for (social) scientists to spread their ideas and research in accessible, bite-sized and socially engaged ways. Even the Lowlands Festival has a science pavilion to show off the latest research on everything from the psychology of perceptions of equality, quantum physics, the creative possibilities of generative AI and much more besides.
Tom Ansell, Sarah Njoroge (MSc) and Gabriela Anderson intend this blog as a call to academics to think along, repackage their work into fun and digestible gobbets and make use of the science communications talent available to help boost our collective ‘impact’… whatever ‘impact’ means!
This image was taken at Research InSightS LIVE #4 Conflict Compounded: Implications of the war in Ukraine on global development challenges
Social science is best when it’s in conversation with society
Aside from the self-fulfilment element, and the satisfaction of personal curiosity, social scientific research has a function of providing evidence-based approaches to societal questions that can inform various stakeholders in how they act. That could be the government, organizations, businesses or people themselves. Like many forms of scientific enquiry, it serves to further human knowledge, and so (indirectly and ideally) improve people’s lives or the society that they live in. The link between the academic and the society in which they function should be one of constant conversation, where ideas are presented to people, and then validated or reconsidered through their experiences and their interaction with the everyday (this is also expressed by Anthony Giddens as the ‘double hermeneutic’). Of course, this sentence may spark flashing lights in the minds of many academics reading this, but in short – social science is rooted in society and so should seek to be in conversation with ‘real’ people all the time. A social scientist that hides away in a university is an isolated one! This means that researchers must have a way of being in conversation with people. At least part of that conversation must be a clear transmission of social science theories in a compelling and clear way, and knowledge sharing in a form that is digestible, interesting and (hopefully) means that people in the ‘real world’ can see their own lives and questions in cutting-edge research.
This is especially true in the last few years , where a significant portion of the world’s institutions face ‘alternative facts’ and the rise of public discourse strongly influenced by a ‘post-truth’ world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the need to provide accurate and evidence-based advice to the general public was literally a matter of life and death. Knowledge of the mechanisms of how an mRNA vaccine worked (the Moderna one) helped ensure that enough people went and received the jab to reach the critical mass of vaccinated people. Now imagine if the various biologists had remained hidden behind a wall of jargon and specific terminology, and all the while remained in their labs and refused to speak to the public in understandable language. Naturally, the immediate risks aren’t quite the same in social science research uptake, but the need for public trust and mandate is the same. Where the influence of rigorous social scientific research would help, however, is in government policymaking. Imagine how the new Dutch international aid policy would look had various members of ISS’ work been consulted in its drafting. We can’t make policymakers listen to good research, but we can make it as easy as possible for them to find, digest and be interested by it.
Avoiding extractivism and ‘closing the loop’
Considering the other side of the conversation between research and the public, we need to move beyond the effort of making sure our writing reflects our values as researchers to be ethical and non-extractive only during the research process. Research even in these most critical and conscious of times still teeters on the lines of opinion-mining, often masquerading through notions such as ‘collaboration’ and ‘co-creation’. Jamie Gorman expresses this quite well in the quote (almost jokingly): ‘What does a social researcher have in common with an oil rig operator? The answer is that both can be miners engaged in the extraction of a precious resource’. For social science researchers, that precious resource is knowledge. A key part of making sure that research is non-extractive is ‘closing the loop’ and making sure that the people that have contributed to the research are both involved and can get something out of it (something called participatory research).
The potential impact of research does not stop before and during the research process, it needs to extend into the dissemination and communication of said research. By looking beyond the production of a research to how it can be shared to an audience outside of the academic community, we allow for a greater reach through inclusivity, accessibility and even opening up for future potentials in participation and, most importantly, allowing research to be useable (from theory to practice and vice versa). How is this done? By sharing research in different mediums and through different mediums and media. Examples include translated versions, both in terms of language and even the softening of academic and ‘waffle’ jargon, different (relevant) and contextual forms of outputs, such as radio broadcasts (in the case of the Democratic Republic of Congo), video abstracts, infographics, posters, dialogue cafes, podcasts, etc. In doing so, we reach people at their different levels in all their differences of backgrounds, making room for a greater impact from our research.
Moving from inaccessible papers to socially engaged media
So, how do we actually move from rigorous, well-researched ideas to public discourse and policy that reflect them? The best science communication doesn’t just ‘simplify’ research, it translates, distils, demystifies and engages. It meets people where they are, using formats that are accessible without compromising complexity, and applies sky high thinking to everyday life.
Take podcasts, for instance. The Good Humanitarianbridges the gap between academic research and humanitarianism and the real-world challenges practitioners face. MOOCS, or open access-learning, allows people – whether they have an educational background in social sciences or not – to engage with contemporary debates. Written and visual storytelling, from in-depth interviews, infographics and posters to interactive web experiences, has made complex and socio-political topics more digestible for a general audience. Live shows, such as Research InSightS LIVE or dialogue cafes invite people to listen and engage on topics in enjoyable, yet succinct formats. In addition, social media is increasingly becoming more important for visibility, and as a way to link research that proposes an alternate world to the people that can achieve it. Even platforms like TikTok have been effectively used to debunk misinformation and explain key social science concepts in under a minute, but all face potential challenges of course.
At the same time, researchers must be empowered to engage in these spaces. Not everyone who can run a hefty statistical model or analyse complex patterns can seamlessly translate these insights for public consumption. This is precisely where science communicators come in – not to dilute these ideas but to ensure that big ideas are clarified and shared widely. Closing the loop isn’t just an ethical responsibility in participatory research – it’s a vital step toward ensuring that knowledge serves people by feeding back into their livelihoods.
Science communicators do more than just support researchers. They can be catalysts for expanding the reach and impact of academic work at its inception. Research can often benefit from creativity and audience awareness that can make it resonate beyond academia. In other words, researchers and science communicators can make an excellent team – if they truly collaborate. That means not just seeing communicators as an ‘add-on’, but valuing their input, trusting their instincts and recognizing their ability to turn rigorous research into compelling narratives that engage policymakers, practitioners and the public alike, also extending their inclusion to before and during the research process, not only after.
If universities and research institutes truly want to make an impact, they need to rethink the way they communicate knowledge. The challenge isn’t just about writing readable research papers. It’s about shaping public discourse, informing policy and making social science a living, breathing conversation. After all, what good is knowledge if it’s locked away in academic journals?
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the authors:
Tom Ansell
Tom Ansell is the coordinator and programme manager of The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre, and the Coordinator of the International Humanitarian Studies Association. He has a study background in religion and conflict transformation, as well as an interest in disaster risk reduction, and science communication and societal impact of (applied) research.
Sarah Njoroge
Sarah Njoroge (MSc) is a multi-skilled communications professional who tells stories on societal issues through videos, articles, podcasts and more. She has extensive experience writing, designing and co-producing content on international development. Sarah is currently a Digital Content Manager at RNW Media and formerly worked as a Communications Officer at ISS.
Gabriela Anderson
Gabriela Anderson is the community manager of The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre and coordinates the Humanitarian Observatories Network. Graduating with a Master’s from the International Institue of Social Studies in 2022 with a focus on the Governance of Migration and Diversity, her research focuses on notions of (self-)representation, placemaking and the importance of inclusive communication in its various forms and through its different mediums, especially in areas of Conflict & Peace with both academic and practitioner related organizations.
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On the first day in office of his second presidential term, Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing the USAID for 90 days, reportedly to assess the programme’s ‘effectiveness and alignment with US foreign policy’. On 10 March 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio ended the world’s most vulnerable communities’ slight hope by announcing the permanent suspension of the USAID’s 83% programme. This aggressive measure is the harshest blow to the organization’s operation since its establishment in 1961. The UK and Netherlands are also making similar moves, significantly diminishing their overseas development and humanitarian funding. The measure has a significant adverse impact in Ethiopia, where humanitarian aid is the only thread of hope, at least currently, for many affected communities, including millions of internally displaced persons (IDPs). In this blog, Alemayehu B. Hordofa and Marga F. Angerasa contend that humanitarian actors and donors have not achieved the necessary strengthening of local capacities to respond to the ongoing crisis in Ethiopia, and that they should redouble their efforts to take targeted normative and practical measures to enhance local resilience to counterbalance, in the long-term, the adverse impacts of policy changes in donor countries.This photo was taken in April 2024 by the first author in Seba Care Internally Displaced Persons camp. Volunteers are giving medical support to IDPs as a part of the BilalAid health outreach programme in Seba Care IDP shelter in Mekele, Ethiopia. BilalAid was established in 2024 by local youths who were previously volunteering informally in their communities to respond to humanitarian causes.Humanitarian funding in Ethiopia
Ethiopia is one of the biggest recipients of humanitarian aid in Africa. According to the 2024 Ethiopian Humanitarian Response Plan, over 21.4 million people in Ethiopia needed humanitarian assistance due to complex humanitarian crises such as climate change-induced disasters, armed conflicts, political violence, epidemic outbreaks and landslides. The conflict in Northern Ethiopia (2020-2022), the ongoing armed conflict in the Oromia and Amhara regions and climate change-induced food insecurity in south and south-west parts of the country displaced millions of individuals from their homes and have made them dependent on humanitarian aid. In some parts of the country, conflict(s) have coincided with drought, exacerbating the crisis and worsening the vulnerability of the affected communities. In 2024, the humanitarian community in Ethiopia appealed for 3.24 billion USD to reach 15.5 million people. This appeal raised only 1.79 billion USD, with the US government contributing 405.3 million USD. Beyond responding to the crisis as the primary duty-bearer, the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) also contributed 264.5 million USD to the 2024 Ethiopian Humanitarian Fund (EHF). This year, the EHF has anticipated a requirement of 2 billion USD to respond to multiple crises in various parts of the country. Given the need for humanitarian support, the humanitarian fund in the country is visibly inadequate, and various humanitarian interventions in Ethiopia are being challenged by, among other things, inadequate funding and unfulfilled promises of localization. The USAID suspension is another recent significant blow to the country’s dwindling and inadequate humanitarian funding.
The USAID aid suspension has placed the lives of vulnerable communities at risk
The USAID funding cut has placed the lives of millions of people in need of humanitarian assistance in peril. The aid was stopped without any back-up, thus exposing vulnerable communities to exceptionally dangerous risks. Beyond the impact on people receiving aid, the decision has resulted in many aid workers being made unemployed. The Ethiopian Ministry of Health terminated 5000 employment contracts due to the USAID aid suspension. These health workers were supporting clinics on HIV-related programmes in various parts of the country. Likewise, even though a significant portion of Ethiopia’s development aid funding now comes from international development banks (World Bank, AfDB, IMF), which come with both punitive interest rates and market reforms, the suspension of USAID affects the country’s foreign currency reserve and flow – further minimizing the agency of Ethiopian policymakers and local organizations.
In addition, the suspension of aid affects accountability relations in the humanitarian sector and beyond. Following the announcement of the funding suspension, over 85 percent of Civil Society Organizations suspended their programmes in Ethiopia. These CSOs were implementing programmes ranging from ensuring the right to access justice for displaced communities, advocating for accountability in the humanitarian sector and durable solutions and socio-economic recovery for conflict-affected peoples. The suspension decapitated CSOs operating in complex operational spaces and exacerbated the murky Ethiopian civil society environment. According to one humanitarian worker that we interviewed in Addis Ababa, ‘the suspension suppresses independent voices and shrinks the civic space as it inhibits vibrant CSOs from implementing programmes’. The CSOs that advance diverse perspectives are affected by the USAID suspension and only those that are supported by government will continue to operate in the country. This perspective was also shared by other participants during the interviews conducted by the first author for his PhD research on humanitarian governance in Ethiopia.
The devastating impact that the USAID aid cut caused in the first few weeks of the announcement unveiled the fragmentation and fragility of Ethiopian formal humanitarian governance, its excessive reliance on foreign aid and its under-investment in supporting local humanitarian initiatives. Conversely, it allowed the government and the humanitarian actors to revisit and critically reflect on their practices around accountability and localization, as well as build the resilience of local actors to make humanitarian actors more predictable, effective and accountable.
The role of local actors in responding to crises
Ethiopia’s humanitarian action is noted for its plurality of actors. There are diverse humanitarian actors with their own practices and policies. However, the actors’ interventions vary in mandate, capacity and ability to respond to and cope with emergencies. They possess completely unequal power, leverage and authority, which are dependent on several factors including location, association and who they represent.
Beyond targeted and institutionalized humanitarian interventions, humanitarianism by the ordinary citizenry, or vernacular humanitarianism, is a defining feature of Ethiopia’s humanitarian action. Millions of internally displaced persons are living with and supported by the host communities with no meaningful support from international or national formal humanitarian organizations. Ordinary citizens often organize themselves around social media such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram and were able to mobilize millions in support of victims of disasters. For example, ordinary Ethiopians informally organized on social media and did commendable work in averting the devastating consequences of drought in Borena in 2023, supported IDPs displaced from their homes due to political violence around Oromia-Somali borders in 2018 and supported millions of IDPs in Horro Guduru and East Wallagga zones while the institutionalized humanitarians were unable to intervene (during the first phase of the crisis) due to access difficulties. Ethiopian diasporas and business communities also participate in humanitarian action in the country. Apart from these few examples, ordinary Ethiopians are the backbone of the country’s humanitarian efforts and first responders to crises.
However, the contributions of local actors remain invisible, are not nurtured and there has been inadequate effort to genuinely strengthen their capacity. The dominant discourse has wrongly portrayed humanitarianism in Ethiopia as a monopoly field of international humanitarian actors belittling the local community’s effort to address their problems. The visibility of localized humanitarianism in Ethiopia has been overshadowed by the increased visibility of the ‘international humanitarian community’s’ response to crises. Likewise, despite the global movement and advocacy for accountability to affected communities, humanitarian practitioners we spoke to in Addis Ababa largely believed that the promises of localization have largely remained unfulfilled. The interviews that we conducted with humanitarian workers and independent observers revealed that humanitarian organizations were primarily preoccupied with service delivery rather than strengthening local capacity to transition to recovery and reconstruction. Thus, to make humanitarian efforts more predictable and effective, humanitarian actors should prioritize local initiatives to make the sector sustainable and least affected by external decisions. The recent policy changes in donor countries, spearheaded by the USAID suspension of foreign assistance, are a wake-up call for the country to strengthen its local humanitarian initiatives and advance and implement the humanitarian reform agenda in national and local contexts.
Mobilizing local actors and domestic resources
Mobilizing domestic resources can reduce the dependency on foreign countries overseas development and humanitarian aid policies. Local actors play a crucial role in filling the gaps created due to changes in the priorities and policies of donor countries. However, as local initiatives still lack targeted support, external donors finance a significant portion of formal humanitarian action, USAID being the major partner. Yet Ethiopia has recently started some venerable initiatives that could contribute to the country’s self-reliance in the long run. The country started a food sovereignty endeavour, dubbed by the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) as a ‘decisive path toward food self-sufficiency’. The initiative prioritizes investing in local innovations in agriculture and technology. The government planned to address food insecurity through funding by state-owned enterprises and large-scale farming coordinated by its national disaster risk management office, the Ministry of Agriculture and relevant regional offices. The country has also been implementing the Green Legacy Initiative to avert the negative impact of climate change. Similarly, the government has commenced other national initiatives, such as the Bounty of the Basket, which have a significant potential to strengthen local resilience and preparedness. The transitional justice and national dialogue mechanisms have also the potential to end or significantly reduce the humanitarian needs emanating from the devastating impacts of conflict or political violence. However, even though these initiatives have the potential, if appropriately implemented and subjected to rigorous accountability mechanisms, to minimize the impacts of climate change and end the need caused by conflict, they may not counterbalance the adverse impacts of the policy change in donor countries in the short term.
Conclusion and the way forward
Given the high level of need, it is tremendously challenging to respond to the current humanitarian crisis without support from the international community in general and USAID in particular. The theoretical rhetoric that regarded local actors as genuine partners with a meaningful role in leading and funding humanitarian responses has not yet been translated into practice. Affected communities are still considered passive recipients of aid by the majority of international humanitarian actors working in Ethiopia. The current initiatives by the GoE to satisfy humanitarian needs with local capacity are commendable and can change this narrative in the long run. Such initiatives need to show tangible progress on the ground. Ending conflicts with agreements and finding durable solutions for millions of IDPs currently stranded in various IDP shelters are some of the immediate measures that the government can take to relieve the pressure on humanitarian action in the country. Ensuring government efficiency and addressing rampant corruption that divert critical resources from the public are other measures that the government may immediately take to avert further crisis. Furthermore, local CSOs need to reassess their excessive reliance on international funding and devise innovative means to mobilize domestic resources, strengthen local giving and prioritize local innovations. The promises of localization remained unfulfilled. Donors and the INGOs currently operating in the country need to revisit their commitments to localization and hold themselves accountable for failing to honour the grand bargain’s promises.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the Authors:
Alemayehu B. HordofaAlemayehu B. Hordofa is a Ph.D. researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). He obtained his LLM in International Human Rights Law from the Irish Center for Human Rights (ICHR), University of Galway, Ireland. He is currently working on humanitarian governance in Ethiopia focusing on the role of Civil Society Organizations and Crisis-affected People to shape humanitarian governance ‘from below’. His research interests lie in forced displacement, accountability in humanitarian context, localization of humanitarian aid, transitional justice, and the development of CSOs in Ethiopia.
Marga Fekadu AngerasaMarga Fekadu Angerasa is a law lecturer at Wolkite University (Wolkite, Ethiopia) with research interest and specialty on human rights, forced displacement and transitional justice. He has an LLM in human rights law from Addis Ababa University (2021). Marga is a member of Ethiopia Humanitarian Observatory and advocates for the advancement of human rights and works with CSOs on human rights issues.
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This blog is part of the Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives’ project. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 884139
Digital spaces can amplify marginalized voices, but for many women, especially Dalit women in India, they often become sites of abuse. Navigating the intersection of gender, caste, and religion, Dalit women face systemic exclusion and violence, reinforced by both offline and online structures. While technology does not oppress all women equally, movements like #MeToo have helped Dalit women spotlight caste-based and patriarchal violence. In this blog, recent ISS MA graduates, Sri Lakshmi, and Emaediong Akpan explore how digital platforms both challenge and reinforce structural inequalities, revealing that technology is never neutral.
Image Credit: DALL-E
Dalit women in India
The Indian Hindu religious caste system (more than 3000 years old) has stratified Indian society into castes based on bloodline, occupation, and economic resources. The Brahmancaste and other ‘upper’ castes have capitalized on their social position to exercise superiority and control over the ‘lower castes’ and therefore sustains an exploitative system. At the other end of the scale, the Dalit caste is deemed to have been rejected by God and is therefore ‘outside’ the caste system. While India has made progress in several social aspects, the sturdy caste system continues to prevail based on religious authorization. The Brahman caste has subjugated women from their own caste as well as ‘lower’ castes to maintain ‘caste purity’. This modus operandi is manifested in intense oppression and gender-based violence towards the Dalit women. ‘In every sphere of life, they (Dalit women) are in a pitiable position, worse off than the upper caste women’due to the triple oppression exerted by men from their own caste and ‘upper castes’. The triple oppression here refers to casteism, patriarchy,and economic injustices that are manifested as gender-based violence, caste-based discrimination, and being limited to low-grade jobs that are poorly paid.
The Janus-faced nature of digital spaces in India: Reflections on the non-neutral nature of digital spaces
These spaces also act as a window into the broader Indian society, where norms and power interact to control individual actions. In navigating societal norms, digital spaces have been useful in helping Dalit women find community and access resources for mobilization. For example, Pallical, a Dalit rights activist, noted that ‘online space is refreshing and a space we never had earlier. There used to be limited regional media spaces, but we are now visible, and much of our anti-caste conversations are now happening on social media platforms’. For example, stories of how Dalit women were flogged and assaulted in public in the small city of Una led to government intervention only after it went viral on Twitter.
In this example, Twitter (and other digital spaces) served as a powerful public space for minorities and marginalized voices to circumvent traditional media; online, these actors could express opinions and opposition in a succinct format, as well as unite and organize swiftly in their capacity as ‘new social movements’. However, this is not the full picture. In these spaces, these marginalized groups are still unable to escape society and have been re-victimized in the spaces that also hold a ‘liberating’ potential’. This inability to ‘escape’ reality is why Wacjman states that technologies are not neutral; they do not exist outside of society but are a part of society. Within digital spaces, interactions are understood as performing gender roles that are deeply ingrained in society.
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Activists holding a Poster: Source Nalina
This sparked controversy and threats of boycotts on Twitter, ultimately emboldening casteism by forcing an apology for the poster and image. Despite knowing the impact of the caste system, Twitter conformed to the social norms in Indian society by stating that the poster ‘did not represent Twitter’s official position’. Twitter also apologized for speaking out against marginalization and social injustice in order to avert the risk of losing the Indian market which boasts about 8 million Twitter users. This singular act amongst many others reflects how technology is both a source and consequence of marginalization; first because of how it relates with society and second as a consequence of marginalization by reinforcing it through ‘mindless apologies’.
Twitter’s Denial of Siding with Dalits; Source: Bapuji and Chrispa
Gendered access and use of technology in India: The #MeToo case study in India
The #MeToo movement was a viral online movement of raising voices against the sexual harassment of women. Many women came forward to share their experiences using the hashtag #MeToo on Twitter and other digital spaces.
The Indian #MeToo movement leaves the original ‘Me’ behind
The Indian #MeToo movement was started in 2017 by Raya Sarkar, a woman from the Dalit caste. She used the digital space of Facebook to expose sexual harassment as a form of gender-based violence by male professors in Indian universities by curating a List of Sexual Harassers in Academia (LoSHA). Sarkar was berated for posting such a ‘name and shame list’ in an attempt to re-enact the historical silencing and disregard for the testimonies of sexual violence against Dalit women in India. After this, the movement was taken over by mainstream activists, especially on Twitter and this diffused any remnant attention on the marginalization of women from the Dalit caste. While there were several personal testimonies on Twitter in which Indian women shared their experiences of sexual harassment, the testimonies of Dalit women were absent and scarcely featured in the debates that ensued. Hence, Twitter became a tool used to exclude the voices of the most oppressed who suffer on account of their class, race, and gender. In this way, Twitter reinforced the marginalization of Dalit women.
Technology as a source and consequence of gendered relations: Exclusion and discrediting of marginalized voices
As stated earlier, digital spaces have been instrumental in helping marginalized groups draw attention to social injustices. However, platforms like Twitter are generally unsupportive and even hostile toward women from the Dalit caste. Their marginalization on Twitter reflects these women’s reality by mirroring the existing caste network. It is unsettling to witness the casual and rarely-questioned oppression on Twitter faced by Dalit women. The oppression includes casteist slurs, disparaging comments on darker skin tones, and implicit insults on how women who are academically, professionally, and financially successful, or who have a fairer skin tone, are told that they don’t ‘look’ Dalit. Twitter has also provided the space for misogynists to target Dalit women without any consequences. This shows how technology (digital spaces) embolden and exacerbate existing gender inequalities and caste-based marginalization’ . Gender- and caste-based social dynamics and technology therefore connive to leave women from the Dalit caste behind on Twitter.
Conclusion
While there are numerous accounts of the benefits of social movements that have been organized in digital spaces, the realities are not the same for all, especially for marginalized groups. This lends credence to Whelan’s position that technology does not oppress all in the same way, nor does it necessarily oppress all women. In India, Dalit women, despite having gained access to digital spaces to draw attention to the injustice they face, are often faced with violence based on their gender and caste. Thus, although Twitter helped to break the culture of silence around sexual violence and draw attention to the injustices faced by Dalit women, it did not influence social relations to address the root causes. Rather, it emboldened these root causes and became a space where Dalit women continue to experience violence. People who wield more power (upper caste and those with more access) decide and shape technology by deciding what information is important or true.
Digital spaces are double-edged – they expose women and marginalized groups to harm, yet remain vital for organizing social movements. Recognizing the lack of neutrality of these spaces remains crucial, as offline systems of oppression are often mirrored and reinforced online. While legal frameworks can play a role in addressing digital harms, they alone cannot dismantle deeply entrenched caste and gender hierarchies. Instead, the focus must shift to challenging the power structures that shape technology itself. The experiences of Dalit women show that technology can be both a tool of oppression and resistance. Ensuring that digital platforms do not further marginalize vulnerable communities requires holding innovators and policymakers to higher ethical standards while amplifying the voices of those fighting for justice.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the authors:
Sri Lakshmi
Sri Lakshmi is a recent graduate of the Master’s in Development Studies program at the International Institute of Social Studies. With nine years of experience working with students, caregivers, educators, disability inclusion organizations, and government officials. Sri is passionate about fostering inclusive spaces, bridging the gap between education and social impact.
Emaediong Akpan
Emaediong Akpan is a recent graduate of the Master’s in Development Studies program at the International Institute of Social Studies. With extensive experience in the development sector, Emaediong Akpan’s work spans gender equity, social inclusion, and policy advocacy. She is also interested in exploring the intersections of law, technology, and feminist policy interventions to promote safer online environments. Read her blogs 1,2, 3
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The UN Refugee Convention contributes to asylum and migration-related challenges in the EU, as well as the often inadequate reception of refugees globally. In this Opinion piece, Tom De Veer explains how some adjustments to the Convention could remove a key flaw that currently exacerbates these issues. If adopted in other refugee laws, treaties, and conventions, this change could have enormous positive effects on refugees worldwide.
Image Credit: Wikicommons
The core of the UN Refugee Convention is the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits sending refugees against their will to places where they face risk. As a result, countries cannot simply deport asylum seekers to another nation. This principle explains the difficulties the United Kingdom encountered in attempting to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda and the opposition from the EU to Italy’s attempts to house asylum seekers in Albania. These objections arise because institutions such as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) do not consider the reception conditions in many countries to be sufficiently safe.
However, when refugees flee to a country, the non-refoulement principle is satisfied because they were not forced to go there. This applies to 85% of the world’s refugees — those who lack the financial means to travel to wealthy nations. Instead, they live in often deplorable and sometimes unsafe conditions in nearby, usually poor, countries in their region. Although the UN Refugee Convention recommends that countries unable to accommodate refugees adequately receive assistance from other nations, it does not mandate such aid. In practice, this often results in insufficient support. Meanwhile, asylum seekers who can afford the journey to a Western country receive all social security benefits and eventually often become citizens of the country. Without changes to the current system, this disparity will likely worsen, as reports from the UN and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predict that refugee flows will increase significantly in the coming decades due to climate change and related conflicts.
It is therefore critical to develop better refugee conventions and build a robust infrastructure for the reception, accommodation and resettlement of (climate) refugees worldwide. This can be achieved by removing the non-binding nature of the UN Refugee Convention. If a poor country cannot adequately fulfill its obligations to refugee rights, wealthier nations should be required to assist. With this system in place, regional reception centres can be established or existing ones improved, allowing asylum seekers to be relocated to nearby countries where they can receive proper care. Wealthy countries will have a strong incentive to fund these initiatives to prevent asylum seekers from arriving in their territories. Refugees will then be more likely to choose nearby reception locations in their region, knowing they will ultimately be resettled there anyway. This system will also eliminate the need for expensive, dangerous and often deadly journeys to the EU.
Furthermore, individuals who do not genuinely need to flee their homes but seek welfare in wealthy nations will no longer be able to do so. They will remain in their home countries, as they will know they will be sent to reception centres in their region, where their hopes for greater prosperity will not be realised. This system will ensure that those who truly need protection can seek refuge in nearby, safe locations and will enhance that those who don’t stay home.
The safety of asylum seekers can be ensured in various ways. One option is to deploy UN peacekeepers to protect such locations, as is done in some existing refugee camps. However, these peacekeeping missions will only succeed if peacekeepers are given a strong mandate, including the authority to use force to protect refugees if necessary. This will require cooperation from involved countries and the international community’s commitment to providing such mandates. Another approach could involve establishing reception centres in safe countries, with guarantees from host governments to ensure the safety of asylum seekers. Foundation Connect International has conducted an initial assessment of countries that may be suitable for hosting asylum seekers in different regions, using safety as a key criterion, based on the Global Peace Index. For example, countries like Zambia emerged as potential safe havens.
For this adaptation of the UN Refugee Convention to be effective, it must be embraced by other national and international refugee treaties, laws and conventions. The populations of the EU generally support such changes. In the Netherlands, for instance, a 2022 survey by Ipsos on behalf of Foundation Connect International showed strong public backing for the idea of properly accommodating asylum seekers in their regions. This was the preferred solution among nearly 70% of 3,000 Dutch citizens, largely regardless of their political views, with only 12% rejecting it.
In addition to regional reception, there is also a need to facilitate the return of refugees to their home countries once it is safe, and to address the root causes of migration, particularly poverty. Wealthy nations can assist by funding return programmes and making the proper reception of returnees a condition for aid and trade with the EU. As the cost of receiving asylum seekers in Western countries is, on average, 50 times higher than in poorer nations, a portion of the savings could fund these initiatives, as demonstrated by Foundation Connect International’s calculations.
By implementing these changes, wealthy countries would fulfil their responsibilities, supporting poorer nations in accommodating asylum seekers and accepting refugees from their own regions. As a result, refugees worldwide would be safely and properly accommodated in nearby countries. This would eliminate the current inequity where those with financial means can access safety in wealthy nations, while others are forced to survive in squalor in their regions.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the author
Mr. Tom de Veer is the director of the international NGO and consultancy bureau Foundation Connect International that specialises in water, sanitation and hygiene in developing countries. He also leads a lobby programme of Connect International that aims to mainstream cash transfers for life for people in developing countries in combination with reception of migrants in their regions to enhance support to all refugees worldwide and surrounding host populations.
t.deveer@connectinternational.nl
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Nepali brides in South Korea are often portrayed as victims of violence, abuse, exploitation, slavery, and trafficking. But are these the only realities of Nepali brides? Nilima Rai in this article, challenges the dominant monolithic narrative of victimhood and sheds light on the other realities of these women – many of whom navigate such matrimonies with resilience, academic and professional achievements, and significant socioeconomic and cultural contributions in Korea and Nepal. Through patchwork ethnography, this article reveals Nepali brides’ overlooked agency, aspirations, achievements, and contributions beyond their image as victims.
‘They call us Bhote ko budi,1 someone with Pothi Visa,2 who didn’t find a suitable man to marry, the victims of domestic violence and abuse, and someone who is miserably sitting in a corner and crying over their ill fate,’ one of the Nepali brides said. This illustrates the racist, sexist, and negative remarks the Nepali brides encounter in their day-to-day lives. This article discusses how the dominant narrative of victimhood further reinforces stigmas and prejudices of Nepali brides.
Transnational marriage in South Korea: Nepali brides
Transnational marriage between Nepali brides and Korean men began in the early 1990s when Nepali migrant workers entered Korea through the Industrial Trainee System.3These brides, mainly belonging to socio-economically marginalised Tibeto-Burmese ethnic groups, are preferred4 due to their physical similarity to Korean people.
Nepali women participate in transnational marriage as an opportunity created by globalisation but with an expectation to fill the bride shortage vis-à-vis the ongoing crisis of social reproduction in South Korea. Like other foreign brides,5 Nepali brides make compromised choice of marrying foreign men and settling outside their country to escape poverty, attain upward mobility, or find access to labour markets that are otherwise denied to them.6 Conversely, Korean men7 rejected in the local marriage market due to their low socio-economic status and societal expectations of women seeking brides outside their racial/ethnic pool in countries such as China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mongolia, and Nepal to name a few.
In Nepal, such marriages occur through commercial marriage brokers, mutual friends and relatives living and working in Korea. Since the early 2000s, Nepali women have entered transnational marriage through the marriage agencies/bureaus in Korea and Nepal.
The media’s victim narrative and its impact on Nepali brides
With the active involvement of the marriage brokers as matchmakers and the negative implications of such commercialised marriages, Nepali brides are often disparagingly depicted as ‘victims’ – the victims of trafficking, slavery, domestic violence, abuse, and deception. For more than a decade and even today, domestic and international news media have been replete with the sufferings of Nepali brides in Korea, portraying them as pitiful, bleak, wretched, sold, trafficked, and enslaved in Korean households. A rapid increase of unregulated marriage agencies in Nepal and Korea has resulted in increased numbers of fraudulent marriages engendering domestic violence and abuse of some of the Nepali brides. News media have widely reported cases of violence against Nepali brides along with their testimonies. Such efforts have highlighted the grave concerns of violence against those Nepali brides who experienced domestic violence and abuse. However, the paucity of research on the overall experiences of these brides, and the overwhelming representation of these women in media not only created their image as ‘women in peril’ and labelled them as ‘victims’ but also reinforced the already existing stigmas and prejudices against these women within the Nepali diaspora community in Korea.
These brides are subjected to gender-oppressive slurs by the Nepali diaspora community which sees them as ‘promiscuous’, ‘leftovers’, or someone who has a problem or is behaving strangely, thus ineligible to marry a man from their vicinity. The media’s tendency to depict Nepali brides merely as victims, the lack of research as well as the condescending attitudes of the Nepali diaspora community and the potential threat of oppressive slurs has often resulted in the silencing of Nepali brides.
‘Other Nepali brides in our community scolded me for allowing them to take my video and giving an interview to one of the media people,’ said one of the Nepali brides. This illustrates the negative implications of such narratives of Nepali brides fostering distrust and discontentment not only towards the media but also within the Nepali diaspora community. Some expressed their resentment through words, while others demonstrated it through their act of refusal, hesitation and constant need for reassurance that those approaching them were not affiliated with the media.
The realities of other Nepali brides
Narrating these women’s stories only through victimhood perspectives obscures the other realities of brides who claim to be empowered through economic gain, freedom of mobility and the acquisition of new knowledge and skills. These are the Nepali brides whose lived realities differ from those who suffer from violence and abuse.
‘Do we look like the victims of domestic violence or unhappy in our marital life, like how these journalists often portray us? Rather, I think I made the right decision getting married and coming here as I have more freedom to work, earn and live my life on my own terms,’ one of the Nepali brides said.
Similarly, another Nepali bride expressed her frustration, saying, ‘I am sick and tired of how these Nepali media represent us. A few years back, one of the journalists asked for our (her husband and her) photo, saying they wanted to cover the stories of Nepali brides. Still, in the end, they published our photo under the awful title and story that talked about how pitiful Nepali brides are. I am more than happy with my husband, who speaks fluent Nepali and actively contributes to Korean and Nepali literature and society. We both are hotel entrepreneurs. So, do you think my story fits into one of those stories published in the newspaper?’
Nepali bride with her husband tending their kitchen garden at Jeju-do, South Korea
The Nepali brides who were not victims of violence – and whose stories did not fit in with the articles published in news media – claimed to have made adjustments early on in their marriage, particularly in terms of language, food, and culture. They are now content with their familial relationships, have successfully established their professional careers, and are able to support their left-behind/natal families in Nepal.
These brides wish to be recognised as successful entrepreneurs, educators, nurses, police officers, poets, counsellors, interpreters, and promoters of Nepali culture, food, and language across the Nepali border. Instead of questioning their intentions in choosing a foreign spouse and vilifying them as ‘gold diggers’ – those who marry old Korean men for ‘card’/citizenship – and helpless victims of violence – who are beaten, battered, and abused by their husbands and in-laws – they want their achievements and contributions in both Korea and Nepal to be valued and acknowledged.
Furthermore, these women are often fluent in the Korean language and are pursuing/pursued further academic and professional endeavours in Korea; things they believe they could not have achieved in Nepal. Based on my research, Nepali migrant workers and students rely heavily on these brides to book public venues and bargain in local shops. They also rely on them for critical services such as translating/interpreting sensitive court cases and counselling in medical and mental health cases. Furthermore, these brides provide constant support and services as teachers and educators in schools, institutes, and migrant worker centres; provide health and safety orientations in factories and industries; act as counsellors to facilitate immigration procedures; work as nurses in hospitals, as police officers, established women’s shelters for migrant workers and provide all the necessary support in the rescue and repatriation of undocumented migrant workers.
Highlighting these women’s stories as achievers and contributors is not to trivialize the gravity of the issues related to violence against Nepali women/brides at all levels in and outside the country. The main aim of this article was to discuss the consequences of one-way narratives of victimhood that have negative implications on the lives of other Nepali brides who are happy with the positive outcome of their struggles in a foreign land. There is a need for in-depth research into the broader experiences of these women and for a multi-stakeholder dialogue and deliberation with state and non-state actors such as news media.
Endnotes
1. ‘Bhote’ is “a derogatory term for ethnically Tibetan people from northern Nepal (Gurung 2022, 1746). This kind of racial slur has been used against Nepali brides in Korea due to the resemblance or the similar physical features of Korean men with these ethnically Tibetan people.
Gurung, Phurwa.2023. ‘Governing caterpillar fungus: Participatory conservation as state-making, territorialization and dispossession in Dolpo, Nepal’ EPE: Nature and Space 6, No.3: 1745-1766.
2. In Nepal, the word ‘poth’” or ‘hen’ is a derogatory colloquial term often used as an oppressional slur that evinces male dominance or superiority over women (Lama and Buchy 2002).
Lama, Anupama and Marlene Buchy. 2002. ‘Gender, Class, Caste and Participation: The Case of Community Forestry in Nepal’ Indian Journal of Gender Studies 9, No.1: 27-41.
3. Before the Employment Permit System (2004), Korea systematised the inflow of migrant workers by introducing the Industrial Trainee System in 1991. Nepali migrant workers entered Korea through this trainee system. In 1990, 43,017 Nepali migrant workers were recorded in Korea.
Rai, Nilima, Arjun Kharel, and Sudeshna Thapa.2019. Labour Migration from Nepal-Factsheet: South Korea, Centre for the Study of Labour and Mobility and Foreign Employment Board, Nepal. https://archive.ceslam.org/fact-sheets/factsheet-south-korea
Based on my research findings, some Nepali brides were found to enter Korea through the trainee system in the early 1990s and later married Korean men.
4. Kim, Kyunghak, and Miranda De Dios. 2017. ‘Transnational Care for Left-Behind Family in Nepal with Particular Reference to Nepalese Married Migrant Women in Korea’ Global Diaspora and the Transnational Community: Migration and Culture.
5. Kim, Minjeong.2018. Elusive Belonging: Marriage Immigrants and ‘Multiculturalism’ in Rural South Korea. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
6. Based on the findings of the study.
7. Kim, Hansung, Sun Young Lee, and In Hee Choi. 2014. ‘Employment and Poverty Status of Female Marriage Immigrants in South Korea’ Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 23, No.2: 129-154.
This blog post is based on the empirical evidence collected from field research in South Korea and Nepal (2023-24) for my doctoral study.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the author
Nilima Rai is a Ph.D. candidate in Gender Studies at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. Her research explores the lived realities of Nepali brides in South Korea. She holds master’s degrees in Development Studies from Erasmus University, the Netherlands, and in Conflict, Peace, and Development Studies from Tribhuvan University, Nepal, and the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka. Her interests include migration, marriage and labor mobility, social justice, women’s rights, and the intersections of conflict, disaster, and gender.
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Gender Studies worldwide confront the double whammy of the academic field’s persistent urgency amidst heightened risk for its scholars and students. As a result, there is a pressing need for collaboration and solidarity among scholars working in Gender Studies to safeguard academic freedom for high-quality research and education and strengthen advocacy efforts in the face of growing challenges. Four Gender Studies hubs in Pakistan, Turkey, and the Netherlands have started creating and using digital spaces for knowledge creation, exchange, and mutual support.
Persistent urgency of Gender Studies to further a gender equality agenda
Rooted in feminist activism of the late 1960s, Gender Studies uniquely integrates theory, vision, and action to examine the role of gender in society and resulting inequalities and power differences. The discipline remains highly relevant. Despite global policy commitments to gender equality – from the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – gender-based violence and human rights violations as well as gender gaps in the economy and in decision-making positions persist.
In Pakistan, consistently ranked among the lowest in gender equality, the situation is dire. Gender-based violence, including abductions, (gang)rape, and domestic violence experienced by women, increased in 2023 compared to 2022. Transphobia has intensified, exemplified by the Federal Shariat Court’s declaring sections of the historic Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act 2018 in violation of Islamic law, even as transgender persons face ongoing violence and discrimination. State repression, including obstruction of annual Aurat [women’s] marches on International Women’s Day, further undermines efforts for gender justice.
To tap the potential of Gender Studies to counter such gender-based discriminations and gaps, the discipline’s Northern bias poses a formidable obstacle. Gender Studies curricula are still dominated by theories grounded in the global North, despite the discipline’s emphasis on intersections with local contexts and histories that produce specific forms of gendered structures and inequalities in society. For students in global South contexts like Pakistan, this creates the impression of an academic discipline that is antagonistic to students’ culture, dismissive of their lived realities and struggles, making engagement difficult. Therefore, to implement gender equality agendas effectively, indigenous gender perspectives are crucial.
The Netherlands, known for its strong gender equality commitments, is not immune to the rise of anti-gender rights politics. As part of a major overhaul of the Dutch policy for development cooperation that significantly reduces support for international partners and orients it more towards Dutch interests, the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Aid recently announced to end international funding for women’s rights and gender equality, threatening to halt progress in its commitment to pursuing a feminist foreign policy.
Countering anti-gender rights backlash through transnational digital collaboration in Gender Studies
Against the backdrop of persistent gender inequalities, Northern-centric theorising of gender and backlash against Gender Studies, we have started experimenting with transnational digital collaboration between the institutions in which we are based in Pakistan, Turkey, and the Netherlands. This approach offers an effective way to address these intertwined challenges to gender equality through context-sensitive engagement.
We believe that this initiative has the potential to transfer context-sensitive Gender Studies knowledge to a broader audience while modernising higher education institutes and enhancing curricular relevance. It also fosters transnational solidarity among scholars, providing a safe space to share work, address concerns, and collaboratively navigate challenges to gender equality in academia and beyond.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the authors:
Karin Astrid Siegmann works as an Associate Professor of Gender and Labour Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS).
Saad Ali Khan is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Excellence in Gender Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University Islamabad (CEGS) and a Visiting Fellow at the ISS.
Rabbia Aslam is an Assistant Professor at the CEGS. Her doctoral research investigated Gender Studies as an academic field in Pakistan.
Bilge Sahin works as an Assistant Professor in Conflict and Peace Studies at ISS where she incorporates gender perspectives into her teaching and research.
Alia Amirali is an Assistant Professor at the CEGS as well as a feminist organizer.
Selin Akyüz is an Associate Professor at TED University Ankara, specializing in gender studies, political masculinities, and feminist methodologies.
Aurangzaib Alizai holds the position of an Assistant Professor in the Gender and Development Studies Department at the University of Balochistan Quetta.
Tuğçe Çetinkaya is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Middle East Technical University Ankara where her doctoral research explores the gender and class dynamics of local environmental struggles.
Zuhal Yeşilyurt Gündüz is Professor and heads the Center for Gender Studies as well as the Political Science and International Relations Department at TED University in Ankara.
Muhib Kakar is an academic and researcher specialised in Gender Studies.
Amna Hafeez Mobeen is a lecturer and researcher at CEGS. She recently completed her doctoral dissertation at Pakistan’s National Institute of Pakistan Studies (NIPS).
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The recent USAID funding freeze has left critical international development programmes in limbo, with devastating consequences for women and girls. The freeze is undoing decades of progress in gender-sensitive development work, putting at risk thousands of aid programmes that support women and thereby limiting the ability of frontline workers to serve their communities. The global development sector is now scrambling to find alternative funding and policy solutions to keep gender-focused initiatives alive.
In this interview, Plan International’s Director of Business Development Allison Shannon, and Vannette Tolbert, Senior Communications Manager, discussed the immediate and far-reaching impacts of this policy decision with Emaediong Akpan and Eno-Obong Etetim, recent MA graduates in Women and Gender Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies, both of whom were also impacted by the USAID stop work order. From disrupted education to increased vulnerability to child marriage, the freeze threatens essential services that protect and empower girls. Drawing on reflections from the interview, the authors explore the ongoing impact of the freeze and highlight the necessity for urgent action.
The recent USAID funding freeze has left critical international development programmes in limbo, with devastating consequences for women and girls. In this article, we explore the ongoing impact of the freeze while reflecting on our conversation with Plan International’s Director of Business Development, Allison Shannon, and Senior Communications Manager, Vannette Tolbert. As recent MA graduates in Women and Gender Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies. we examine how this freeze is undoing decades of progress in gender-sensitive development work, putting at risk thousands of aid programmes that support women and limiting the ability of frontline workers to serve their communities. We discuss how the freeze is disrupting education, increasing vulnerability to child marriage and threatening essential services that protect and empower girls while highlighting the urgent need for immediate action.
Pause, when do we ‘press play’?
‘Until we are all equal’ is the guiding ethos behind Plan International’s work across the globe. Yet, like many other organizations, this mission is currently threatened due to the recent USAID funding freeze. The suspension of funds has halted 13 programmes across 12 countries, disrupting essential services that support girls’ education, child protection and economic empowerment. These countries include Nepal, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Philippines, Malawi, Egypt, Jordan, Mexico and Honduras. Notably, immediate consequences of this decision include the discontinuation of maternal healthcare services, leaving women without access to essential prenatal and reproductive health services; the interruption of educational opportunities for girls, increasing their vulnerability to early marriage and long-term economic hardship; and the disruption of gender-based violence prevention programmes, putting millions of women and girls at greater risk of violence. The impact is particularly severe for marginalized communities which have relied on USAID-funded initiatives as a crucial lifeline. Senior Communications Manager Vannette Tolbert says, ‘The freeze is not just pausing development efforts; it is actively dismantling critical support systems for women and girls worldwide.’
Plan International relies significantly on funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which accounts for one-third of its overall budget. USAID has provided over US$54 million to support Plan’s programmes, funding essential initiatives that promote gender equality, prevent child marriage and ensure access to education for girls around the globe. The rationale behind the freeze centres on a reassessment of US foreign aid spending, yet its immediate impact is felt by the world’s most vulnerable populations. To put this in perspective, Tolbert states that US$38 million in grant funding across 13 contracts in 12 countries has been affected, while US$19.5 million in unspent funds remains frozen.
The ripple effects: How the freeze endangers girls and women
1. Education interrupted: The risk of reversing gains: In Nepal, for instance, Plan International’s remedial classeshave become critical in providing vital academic support to young girls like Ganga, an ambitious eighth-grader with dreams of becoming a teacher. These classes not only help reinforce her academic skills but also boost her confidence in a society where education for girls often takes a backseat. Without this essential assistance, hundreds of girls like Ganga face the grim possibility of failing their exams, which could lead to early marriage – a common reality for many girls from economically strained households in Nepal where educational opportunities are limited.
Beyond Nepal, in Nigeria’s conflict-affected regions, Plan International-supported non-formal learning centres serve as a haven for children displaced by violence. These centres create nurturing environments where children can access not only literacy and numeracy training but also crucial psychosocial support to help them cope with conflict-induced trauma. With the funding freeze now in effect, these vital safe spaces have shut down, leaving thousands of children, especially girls, without viable options for continued education and emotional well-being.
In Kenya, Plan International’s community-driven approach has been essential in improving education for girls. Through their GirlEngage project, Plan listens to the specific needs of girls and their communities, ensuring that solutions are both relevant and sustainable. When high absenteeism rates were reported in schools, Plan engaged with communities and identified the need for menstrual products and safe hygiene spaces. In response, they constructed washrooms and latrines to address this gap. As a result, absenteeism rates dropped significantly and graduation rates skyrocketed. However, with the recent funding freeze, these vital initiatives are now at risk and threaten to reverse years of progress in education and gender equality, leaving long-lasting consequences for the affected communities
Increase in child marriage
In numerous communities, girls are seen as ‘economic assets’, and financial hardship often leads to early marriages. As Tolbert notes, ‘…families can’t afford to support many children, so the girls are sent off at very young ages, often as a financial transaction’. Community-driven initiatives, supported by organizations like Plan International, have been crucial in delaying child marriages by educating families and fostering behavioural change. ‘These programmes not only fund services – they reshape mindsets, empower allies and drive lasting social change’. However, the funding freeze risks reversing this progress, as many families may turn back to traditional survival strategies, including marrying off their daughters to ease financial strain. Without timely intervention, the significant gains made in preventing child marriage could be undone.
This is evident in the case of community leaders, key opinion leaders and allies who were beginning to challenge harmful traditions but will now face reduced support, slowing progress toward gender equality. For instance, the role of fathers in challenging gender norms and advocating for their daughters’ well-being could experience significant setbacks. Many fathers, often referred to as Girl Dads, have been actively engaged in initiatives promoting girls’ education and ending child marriage. The case of Yusuf in Indonesia, who re-evaluated his decision to marry off his daughter after participating in a Plan International anti-child marriage and girls’ education awareness session, exemplifies the tangible influence of such efforts. With one in nine Indonesian girls still married before the age of 18, the withdrawal of funding may lead to a reduction in interventions and an increase in child marriages.
Similarly, in Uganda, where Plan International collaborates with activists like Peter, who combats child marriage in a context where 34% of girls marry before reaching adulthood, the potential loss of USAID funding could impede progress in altering detrimental cultural norms. The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that USAID represents Uganda’s largest single donor for health aid. The funding freeze jeopardizes essential health services, including maternal care and HIV/AIDS treatment, which are vital to the well-being of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans.
Economic disempowerment and vulnerability
Economic empowerment programmes, particularly for women and girls, are another casualty of the funding freeze. Plan International has supported childcare centres at industrial parks in Ethiopia. The centres allow women to access to childcare at the site of their work, enabling them to gain income and skills through working while supporting Ethiopia’s industrial development. These initiatives have been instrumental in equipping women to make informed decisions about their futures. Now, with funding paused, the sustainability of these programmes is uncertain, leaving women without critical support systems and increasing their economic vulnerability.
4. Humanitarian assistance: From bad to worse
Perishable food and medical supplies for over 100,000 displaced families are stranded in warehouses, putting lives at risk. Plan International’s US$7.8 million Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance project in Ethiopia supports 58,000 displaced people with healthcare and 56,000 with food aid. The freeze has stranded supplies, endangering lives and preventing critical aid delivery.
Hana, a single mother working in an Ethiopian industrial park relied on USAID-funded childcare and mental health support to maintain employment. The freeze now leaves her struggling to find affordable childcare and manage work, threatening her family’s financial stability.
Mulu, a 28-year-old single mother working at Hawassa Industrial Park, relied on the USAID-funded Early Childhood Care and Development Centre for childcare while she worked. The sudden closure of the centre due to funding cuts left her struggling to keep her job while caring for her daughter. Missing work days to find alternative childcare has put her employment at risk, threatening her family’s financial stability and future.
This withdrawal has left communities, local partners and even governments questioning the reliability of international aid commitments, while organizations like Plan International, which have spent years cultivating relationships and fostering development through a bottom-up approach, now face the daunting task of re-establishing credibility.
Beyond the freeze: The big picture
As USAID funding stalls, other global players are stepping in to fill the gap, leading to significant geopolitical shifts. This shift is not just about financial assistance, it signifies a broader change in global influence and the loss of USAID’s presence in these communities. As authors, we are inclined to question the impact of US soft power in these communities. While it has been seen as a tool for fostering influence and cooperation, it also prompts us to reconsider whether this form of aid truly benefits the communities it targets or whether it perpetuates dependency. The resulting shift in the international development landscape could have lasting effects, altering the dynamics of both aid distribution and global power structures.
In response to the crisis, organizations are seeking diversified funding sources. Corporate partnerships, such as Plan International’s collaboration with private partnerships to support menstrual hygiene education, upskill young people and amplify the voices of women, present potential alternatives. However, corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives are not a monolith, and many smaller NGOs lack the resources to pivot swiftly. Without immediate policy intervention, these organizations face closure, leaving gaps that private donors alone cannot fill.
Reflections on the aid freeze: Colonial legacies, Global South reactivity
As women from the Global South with extensive expertise in implementing USAID-funded initiatives in Nigeria, we have been actively engaged in research, policy advocacy and programme implementation focused on addressing gender inequality and systemic exclusion. Our work has encompassed gender-responsive legislative advocacy, stakeholder engagement and the design of intersectional health interventions alongside violence-prevention strategies. Through these initiatives, we have gained insights into how international development funding influences opportunities for women and girls in fragile contexts.
Our perspective is shaped by a critical lens that highlights the structural dependencies inherent in international aid systems. While USAID funding has historically facilitated advancements in health, education access, economic empowerment, and protective services, the recent abrupt suspension of these funds exposes the vulnerability of relying on external financing for sustainable gender justice initiatives. This new reality necessitates not only an analysis of the immediate ramifications but also a comprehensive reflection on the inherent drawbacks of donor-dependent funding models.
Our collaborations with local organizations and policymakers in Nigeria have illuminated the disproportionate impact of funding disruptions on grassroots movements, many of which lack alternative resources to sustain their advocacy efforts. The freeze not only impedes service delivery, it also undermines the authority of local actors, who navigate intricate socio-political landscapes to foster gender-transformative change. This erosion of trust in partnerships raises critical ethical considerations regarding the long-term viability of externally funded programmes and the need for decolonial approaches to global development.
As researchers and practitioners, we perceive the USAID funding freeze as a crisis that highlights the dissonance between global aid policies and localized strategies for achieving gender justice. Addressing this situation requires a shift from immediate funding appeals to a thorough interrogation of power dynamics within development frameworks, prioritizing the voices of marginalized communities in shaping funding agendas, and ensuring that gender-focused interventions are genuinely community-led and resilient to geopolitical shifts. However, we acknowledge that moving away from aid dependency and reframing funding mechanisms for aid-dependent countries is a complex process that must consider the enduring effects of colonization in these regions.
As policymakers deliberate, the stakes for women and girls in vulnerable communities hang in the balance. Consequently, urgent advocacy is needed to push for resolutions that prioritize continuity in development efforts while rethinking our approaches to these initiatives. For those with decision-making influence, the message is unequivocal: restore funding, rebuild trust and reaffirm commitments to gender equality and global development. The costs of inaction are simply too significant to ignore.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the authors:
Emaediong Akpan
Emaediong Akpan is a legal practitioner. She recently graduated from the Master’s in Development Studies program at the International Institute of Social Studies. With extensive experience in the development sector, Emaediong Akpan’s work spans gender equity, social inclusion, and policy advocacy. She is also interested in exploring the intersections of law, technology, and feminist policy interventions to promote safer online environments. Read her blogs here.
Eno-obong Etetim
Eno-Obong Etetim is a researcher and recent graduate of the Master’s in Development Studies program at the International Institute of Social Studies. She has several years of experience working on projects focused on gender, health equity, sexual and reproductive rights, and social norms. Her research interests also extend to sustainability and policy interventions that promote social justice.
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Over fifty years later, the Nigerian Civil War, a pivotal conflict in the nation’s history, continues to influence contemporary discourse. The recent publication of A Journey in Service by former military Head of State General Ibrahim Babangida has reignited discussions on the war’s legacy and its enduring impact. In this Blog, ISS recent MA graduate, Emaediong Akpan explores the Civil War’s complexities, peacebuilding efforts, and the relevance of time in these processes. She highlights how historical narratives shape current realities and the lessons they offer for the future.
Nigerian Civil War: Causes, Participants, and Casualties
The Nigerian Civil War was a violent conflict between Nigeria, led by General Yakubu Gowon, and the secessionist Republic of Biafra, led by Lt. Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu (Late). The war ensued after the breakdown of the Aburi accord, which was designed to promote inclusive governance, leading the Igbos to lose faith in the possibility of existing together as a nation.
The war lasted about 30 months and resulted in the death of approximately two million civilians. There are several accounts of the Nigerian civil war. These accounts often have ethnic, political, and colonial undertones in their presentation of the root causes, the judgment of its outcomes, and the peacebuilding efforts. However, it is important to note that the root causes of the war are numerous. It begins with a colonial history that forced diverse nations with distinct cultures, languages, and identities into a single entity known as Nigeria.
Relevant political causes of the war include the coup on July 15, 1966, which resulted in the deaths of several northern leaders. This event fostered the perception of ethnic motives behind the coup, leading to widespread violence, looting, and a mass exodus of Igbos back to the south.
In the aftermath, Aguiyi Ironsi, the new military leader and an Igbo man, was overthrown and assassinated in another coup led by northern military officers. This coup further exacerbated the ongoing ethnic tensions in Nigeria, as the northern and southeastern regions clashed over power and representation. Ironsi’s removal marked a significant shift in leadership, replacing him with Lieut. Col. (later Gen) Yakubu Gowon, a northerner.
The Relationship Between Time and Peacebuilding
a. The Role of Time in Lasting Peace
In building peace, there is often an expectation for warring parties to negotiate and leave the past behind. Even the Bible says, “do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old” (Isaiah 43:18). However, peace scholar John Paul Lederach argues that sustainable peace requires acknowledging historical grievances
For those who experienced conflict firsthand, history remains influential in shaping perspectives and interactions. If peace initiatives fail to account for these lived experiences and address root causes, peace remains fragile and susceptible to renewed tensions. The post-war experience of the Igbos illustrates this dynamic; economic hardship, loss of property, and exclusion from federal positions created lasting grievances that were not adequately addressed.
b. There is No Prescription for Peace
Usually, people impose their own ideas of peace on others. In navigating the transition from crisis to a peaceful future, it is crucial to avoid essentialist views, allowing for creativity and acceptance that post-conflict, ‘peace’ may not be easily achieved. Recognizing and acknowledging the experiences of others opens opportunities to imagine a future together. The future is deeply intertwined with the past, forming a continuum where individuals remain connected to their experiences. Agonistic peace becomes relevant here because it fosters non-essentialist perspectives that unlock the creativity needed to imagine the future. It provides space for differences and resistance, holding transformative power.
However, a fixation on uniformity can hinder the healing process, driving a hasty disregard for differences in favor of assimilation. This ultimately ignores basic human needs and sets the stage for disaster. In Nigeria’s case, post-civil war peacebuilding prioritized national unity over addressing structural inequalities. This approach framed the preservation of “One Nigeria” as the primary goal, sidelining discussions of marginalization. The persistence of groups advocating for Biafra today reflects these lingering divisions.
Analysis of Time and Peacebuilding in the Nigerian Civil War
i. Gowon’s Reconciliation vs. Igbo Realities
Following the war, Lieut. Col. (later Gen) Yakubu Gowon introduced a policy of Reconciliation, Reconstruction, and Rehabilitation, ‘forgiving’ the secessionist state, assuming this approach would foster national cohesion. For Gowon, it was natural for peace to follow war, and forgiveness was key to achieving that. However, for the Igbos, peace was not a straightforward transition after war, and ‘forgiveness’ was not as significant to them. They believed that forgiveness was not Nigeria’s to grant; it belonged to them. Genuine forgiveness would require confronting historical events such as the forced amalgamation of Nigeria, coups, mass murders, and the disregard for the Aburi accord. Gowon’s actions thus led to a clash between immediate demands and historical narratives.
Post-war, Gowon focused on restoring the country’s unity, implying that the war’s aim was to preserve territorial integrity. The slogan during the war was, “to keep Nigeria one, is a task that must be done,” reinforcing the idea that Nigeria exemplifies a successful colonial legacy. Instead of fostering genuine peace, the policies adopted were more about maintaining a singular national narrative.
Governments often misunderstand the critical role of time in peacebuilding, focusing solely on the present without considering historical narratives. Gowon’s limited understanding of time caused him to concentrate on the most recent manifestation of conflict which was the civil war while ignoring the longstanding tensions that led to it.
ii. Nigeria Must Be One: Dictating Peace for Others
Violence does not occur in isolation; it is deeply embedded in broader power dynamics. This reality makes agonistic peace appealing, as it fosters the necessary objectivity for conflict transformation. Such transformation enables us to reimagine ‘enemies’ as opponents and ‘antagonism’ as difference, embracing resistance.
The enduring song, “Ojukwu wanted to separate Nigeria, But Gowon said Nigeria must be one…” which I learnt as a child echoes this sentiment and reinforces the belief that the Nigerian civil war was a “just war”. However, it also highlights the failure of Nigerian leaders to recognize that there was a time when the Igbos existed separately. It appears as if the leaders had forgotten this reality, leading to a forced unity.
The historical context I have provided illustrates how political actions transcend time and shape the future. Gowon’s prioritization of political stability over addressing historical grievances has fueled ongoing “structural dimensions of violence,” including the marginalization of Igbos and others aligned with Biafra long after the war ended. This prioritization creates a peace narrative that Mbembe describes as the ‘mutation of war’ that perpetuates violence even after conflict resolution.
In Nigeria, peacebuilding was coerced, and anyone or group who opposed the re-assimilation of all ethnic groups faced criminalization.
Conclusion: Reflections on Transformation
Peacebuilding is a commitment to the future, one that requires a reflective understanding of the past as its foundation. For the Igbos, the civil war is not just history; it is an enduring narrative that continues to shape their identity and lived experiences. Lt. Colonel Ojukwu and Biafra live on through the stories passed down to their children. The dominant narratives of the Nigerian civil war often overlooks the rich history of the Igbos, threatening their existence as a distinct community. To ensure their experiences are recognized, the stories of resilience, survival, and suffering must be told from their own perspective.
I acknowledge that these narratives may not guarantee peace, but it is a crucial step toward understanding the roots of conflict and transforming perceptions of enemies into opportunities for dialogue. A truly inclusive approach is essential for fostering reconciliation. This approach must embrace diverse narratives to address the historical complexities that continue to challenge national unity in Nigeria.
As long as Nigeria’s peacebuilding efforts remain primarily state-driven, these challenges will persist. A more inclusive framework, one that directly engages affected communities and meaningfully acknowledges historical grievances, may offer a more sustainable path forward.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the author:
Emaediong Akpan
Emaediong Akpan is a legal practitioner, called to the Nigerian Bar in 2015. She recently graduated from the MA programme Development Studies with a specialization in Women and Gender Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Read her blogs here
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Recent graduates aspiring to enter the global governance and development field often face pressure to meet the sector’s demands, yet universities typically fall short in preparing them for these real-world challenges. A research project conducted by The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS) and The Hague Humanity Hub (THHH) bridges that gap by exploring and training critical soft skills overlooked in academic settings. In this blog, Sylvia I. Bergh, Carina Herlo, Emma Wedner, and Sue Friend share their insights from this project.
As we approach the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (in September 2025), the clock is ticking: we have just five years left to achieve these ambitious targets by 2030. It’s more relevant than ever to reflect on whether the current and next generation of professionals are being taught the skills needed to navigate the next years and contribute to solving the challenges faced by the global governance and development sector.
The increasingly competitive global governance job market, shaped by budget cuts to the aid, development and CSO sectors, has made it clear that young professionals need more than technical or academic expertise to succeed. The ‘Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: Providing the Skills Needed for Future Global Governance Professionals in The Hague’ research-action project aimed to address this challenge. Referring to the Inner Development Goals (IDG) framework, the project identified the essential soft skills that academic programmes often overlook, such as curiosity, systems thinking and intercultural communication, bridging the gap between academic knowledge and the demands of a rapidly evolving sector.
Bridging the gap between academic learning and real-world application
The research phase of the project involved conducting interviews with 21 professionals from global governance and development organizations across The Hague, including HR officers, monitoring and evaluation experts and professionals actively engaged in SDG-related projects. The interviews revealed that the key soft skills required for success in this field include curiosity, strategic and contextual as well as systems thinking, flexibility/adaptability to political and cultural contexts, effective communication in diverse environments and proactiveness. Despite their importance, many interviewees reported that these soft skills were not always adequately present in the entry level professionals they hire or work with, implying that they are not sufficiently developed in academic programmes.
Building on these findings, the project developed a series of workshops intended to test whether the previously mentioned soft skills can be effectively trained. The ‘EmpowerSDGs Skills Training’ hosted at THHH between May and June 2024, consisted of five workshops that targeted skills like curiosity-driven working, systems thinking, contextual understanding and intercultural communication. The 20 participants (selected out of 90 applicants) developed these skills through practical tasks such as creating causal loop diagrams and theory of change maps, with feedback provided by trainers. Participants were encouraged to create a professional portfolio in which to include these practical assignments, alongside reviewed and updated CVs and motivation letters. These portfolios were intended to enhance participants’ job search prospects by showcasing their soft skills and ability to think critically about global challenges and practical implications in the portfolio.
One unique aspect of the programme was the inclusion of ‘Handshake’ career conversations with professionals from the THHH community. These conversations provided participants with valuable networking opportunities, real-world perspectives and advice on working in the global governance and development sector. As one participant shared: ‘The Hub’s involvement effectively bridged the gap between our academic learning and real-world application, enhancing the practical aspects of the programme and providing a tangible connection to the professional world we aspire to enter. Many of the handshakes were with people who are members of the Hub. It was inspiring to see how career-diverse and high-achieving many of the Hub’s members are.’
The evaluation and feedback from participants was largely positive. Many reported greater confidence in applying and demonstrating their soft skills, while others, especially those with more experience, noted minimal change. The programme seemed to be most beneficial to early-career professionals who were still developing their skills and professional portfolios. One participant remarked: ‘I liked the fact that we did multiple tests of personality and communication style and then, through practical application, we saw how each type becomes evident through group work. It really made me realize that each person brings their own strengths to the table and how important it is to recognize and cherish the differences between people, instead of looking for teammates who are similar to me.’ This was underlined by another participant: ‘Understanding different personality types and how they influence team dynamics is crucial for personal and professional development. It helped me recognize the importance of knowing my own values and how these can affect my functionality within a team.’
While it’s easier to claim proficiency in soft skills during an interview, the real challenge lies in conveying these competencies effectively in a CV or motivation letter. Listing traits like curiosity or adaptability may not suffice, as employers are increasingly looking for concrete examples of these skills in action.
The Empower SDG skills training programme directly addressed this issue by guiding participants on how to translate soft skills into tangible, real-world examples through CVs and motivation letters. One participant noted, ‘The discussions on how to articulate my impact have given me a new perspective on presenting my achievements. This knowledge will be invaluable not just for job applications, but also for networking, interviews and future career advancement.’ Feedback from participants revealed that the workshops helped them develop confidence in presenting their skills in ways that resonate with employers, enhancing their job search prospects. However, as we reflect on these insights, a pressing question remains: How can universities better adapt to the needs of the sector by adequately preparing graduates in terms of professional soft skills development and by supporting them in their job search?
Conclusion
In order to meet the global governance and development sector’s future challenges, the need for young professionals who possess both academic expertise and essential soft skills will only grow. The next step lies in expanding the availability of, and integrating, such training opportunities into higher education, ensuring that graduates are not only aware of the skills required but are also equipped to effectively communicate and apply them in their careers. Potential employers also have a responsibility here by increasing the availability of (paid!) internships. Without such concrete steps, the disconnect between what universities teach and what employers seek will only deepen, leaving many talented individuals struggling to showcase and develop their full potential.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the Authors:
Carina Herlo
Carina has experience working with youth-led organizations in peacebuilding, using communications, storytelling and advocacy to create meaningful change. She is passionate about gender, peace, security and migration and holds a master’s degree in International Security from the University of Groningen. Carina participated in the EmpowerSDG training programme.
Sylvia I. Bergh
Sylvia I. Bergh is Associate Professor in Development Management and Governance at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), and Senior researcher at the Centre of Expertise on Global and Inclusive Learning and the Research Group on Multilevel Regulation at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS). She would like to build on the EmpowerSDG project by researching the relevance of the Inner Development Goals and helping students and recent graduates find jobs in the international development and peace and justice sector.
Emma Wedner
Emma is a Junior Programme Manager at the Hague Humanity Hub, where she focuses on talent development projects for young professionals with aspirations to work in sustainable development, peace & justice. She is also active in the Council of Europe, working towards better conditions for youth in Europe.
Sue Friend
Sue is currently a master’s student in Intelligence and National Security at Leiden University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and has a keen interest in intelligence analysis, focusing on how data-driven insights can enhance national security strategies and inform policy decisions. Sue also participated in the EmpowerSDGs training programme.
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In this blog, ISS Professor of Humanitarian Studies Thea Hilhorst highlights the banning of UNRWA by the Israeli government. UNRWA is not only an aid provider, within Gaza it provides many functions that the state might take care of in other countries, from medical provision to education. The Israeli government’s reasoning for banning UNRWA are based on false pretenses, and providing the vitally needed humanitarian aid now that a ceasefire has been reached will only become more complex if UNRWA stops its vital work.
No longer than a week after a ceasefire was reached in Gaza, UNRWA was forced to stop its work in the territory. This is creating yet another complexity in the already difficult task of providing vital humanitarian assistance to Gazans. If Israel is serious about its promise to provide more humanitarian help to Gaza, its first and most important task should be to put off or cancel its plan to withhold cooperation, communication, and facilitation from UNRWA, including forcing its offices to close and staff to leave the country.
UNRWA, it should be remembered, it part of the UN, and has had the responsibility of providing assistance for Palestinians since 1949. Moreover, in Gaza the operation functions similarly to the state in other countries. Until the beginning of the most recent war, Israel controlled Gaza but did not govern it (aside from militarily). Hamas’ political wing took over the various institutions of state in Gaza (in 2006), but Israel and several large international donors and countries refused to work with it as they consider it a terrorist organization. UNRWA took responsibility for a large number of state services, including healthcare coordination, education, and infrastructure repair. Since the start of the recent war, UNRWA has been an essential keystone part in the coordination of humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza.
A majority of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, voted to ban UNRWA at the end of October 2024, deciding to remove UNRWA’s operating rights in Israel and Israeli-held territory – effectively meaning it can no longer operate at all. One of the arguments for the vote to ban UNRWA was its ties with Hamas, which do exist to the extent that Hamas is the most major political force in Gaza and so must be collaborated with to work in the territory. A well-publicised report stemming from research into UNRWA by the former French Minister for International Affairs, Tanya Colonna, added to several other reports confirming UNRWA’s overall neutrality.
When it was made known that some UNRWA staff were involved in the Hamas-led attacks on Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, the workers were immediately dismissed and UNRWA’s various regulations to ensure neutrality were further sharpened. Indeed, UNRWA couldn’t have predicted that its staff might take part in such attacks, not least because UNRWA staff are screened by the Israeli security services before they are allowed to begin their work.
From the proceedings of the debate in the Knesset, it would seem that lots of Israeli lawmakers take issue with UNRWA because it often speaks out over the right of return for Palestinians displaced in 1948-9, and therefore feeds the idea of Palestinian victimhood. The Israeli politicians also held that UNRWA registers the children of refugees as refugees, therefore systematically increasing the numbers of displaced people. In reality, this isn’t the decision of UNRWA: children of refugees that do not receive any nationality in their birth land are always registered as refugees, otherwise they would have no official identity. These rights (to identity) are codified in international law. Every organization that might replace UNRWA would have to do the same.
Following the ceasefire, humanitarian assistance should finally be delivered to Gaza. Medical services also need life support, and fast: the vast majority of hospitals across Gaza are now bombed out: part
of the over 70% of all buildings in Gaza that have been damaged by the war. Without UNRWA, this task becomes near-impossible, and whilst other organisations will fill the gap as best they can, they estimate that it will take up to 3 years to fulfil the now-empty space that UNRWA had.
In the previous decades, and during various wars in Gaza, UNRWA has organized and maintained education, medical services, and provisions for families in need. To pull the plug now flies in the face of the stated aim to ‘flood Gaza with aid’. It would, for Gazans, be incredibly helpful for Israel to put off or cancel the banning of UNRWA.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the Author:
Thea Hilhorst
Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.
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In this blog, Munzoul Assal, Professor at the universities of Khartoum and Bergen, and Scholar at risk the Chr Michelsen Institute provides an in-depth discussion of the long-term crisis and instability facing Sudan. He argues that in order to reach a better outcome for Sudanese people, we must look beyond the numbers and immediate outcomes of various atrocities and concentrate too on their origins. This contribution was given as a reflection upon the first Annual IHSA Lecture that took place in Bergen, Norway, in May 2024, and is part of a series around the theme ‘War and Humanity’.
Credit: Unsplash
A deeply divided country across multiple lines
Sudan has gone through decades of civil wars and political instability. Wars of competing visions have developed into wars of attrition. Wars are first fought in people’s minds before being taken to the physical battlegrounds. For decades, Sudan has suffered from an identity crisis, which to me is the root cause of wars in the country. There are of course triggering factors, and uneven development is one of them.
Divisions such as Arabs versus Africans, Christians versus Muslims, ‘Patriotists’ versus ’Traitors’, etc. have dominated political discourse in post-independence Sudan. The different ruling elites, military and civilian alike, pursued policies of “unity in conformity” instead of “unity in diversity”. It has been held that the Sudanese should conform to an Arab and Muslim identity when in fact the country is quite diverse in terms of religion, ethnicity, climate, and livelihoods systems! Persons deemed not conforming to Arab and Muslim identity are alienated or discriminated against in different ways in public institutions or at best considered outliers. Media institutions, too, do not reflect the rich diversity characteristic of Sudan.
As early as the mid-1950s, people in the South, Eastern Sudan, and Darfur raised objections to the state’s policies that marginalize peripheral areas. The first war started in 1955, one year before independence, and continued for 17 years. It was ended by the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1972 and there was relative peace for 10 years. War started again in 1983 and before it was put to an end by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005 between the government and Southern Sudanese rebels, war then started in Darfur. And the rest is history. But not quite so!
Competing narratives to frame the current conflict
It does not make a lot of sense to talk about death and destruction in Sudan as results of the current war that has been raging for over a year and a half. That is what wars are about anyway. Since the start of the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in April 2023, about 11.7 million people have been forcibly displaced within Sudan and to neighboring countries. In Khartoum alone, 61,000 persons were killed. The total number across the country is 150,000. Death, displacement, and destruction of infrastructure should alert us to look beyond these numbers. Wars have their own histories that need to be narrated.
When this current devastating war started in April 2023, the Sudanese society had already been divided along ethnic, regional, and religious-ideological; in addition to political divisions that cut across other divisions. Competing narratives are used to describe the current war, such as:
This is a war between two armies: the RSF reneged on its commitments and wanted to seize power unconstitutionally,
This is a war between a regular army and a militia,
This is a war between those who want to see Sudan transition to democracy and those who want dictatorship,
This is a war between Western Sudan and Riverine Sudan,
This is an external invasion supported by the UAE,
This is a war orchestrated by the Islamists who used Sudan Armed Forces to get back to power,
Social and conventional media are the platforms in which these competing narratives are debated. Heated exchanges between political antagonists take place in these platforms leading to the prevalence of hate speech. The widespread looting and killings carried out by the RSF, and the indiscriminate bombing carried out by SAF, plus ethnic targeting and profiling undertaken by SAF’s military intelligence and security services compound the dire humanitarian situation and deepen interethnic hostilities.
Linking competing narratives to historical conflict
The discourse that portrays the war as conflict between Western Sudan and the rest of the country is entwined with middle class predilection of linking the current war to the Mahadist period (1881-1898) that witnessed widespread atrocities in central Sudan. This narrative ethnicizes the war and emphasizes divisions fed by post-independence political failures including uneven development, discrimination, and marginalization of peripheral areas in Sudan, like Darfur, South Kordofan, and the Blue Nile. These areas are currently active war zones and witness deteriorating humanitarian conditions.
It is ironic that the most vocal segments of the Sudanese society (the privileged, educated middle class who have access to media outlets and the international community) about atrocities and the worsening humanitarian situation are the same people who contribute to the reproduction of violence through hate speech, calling for the elimination of foes, and resisting calls for stopping the war. Yet, there are those who are working hard to confront this dire situation. In fact, the humanitarian discourse although prevalent in the Global North’s media is developed in places like Sudan. For instance, much of what comes in the media is provided by first responders and emergency rooms that cater for the immediate need of victims in the war zone. It is important to look at the situation beyond numbers. Addressing the factors behind atrocities is no less important that tackling their consequences.
The deepening humanitarian situation makes everybody suspicious about everybody else. Neighbors do not trust each other, and people accuse each other of being snitches. When SAF recaptures an area from the RSF, it arrests, tortures, and kills those accused of being collaborators with the RSF. The targeting is on ethnic basis. When the RSF occupies an area, it targets those allegedly collaborating with SAF or Islamists loyal to the former regime of President Omer El-Bashir. These types of atrocities do not find their way to the media because revealing them would defeat the narratives of those behind them. Again, these acts widen ethnic cracks and contribute to worsening humanitarian conditions.
From humanity’s perspective, the top priority is to save lives and serve survivors of atrocities. This is work that must continue, but saving lives can be realized better by contributing to addressing the causes of atrocities, and not only by counting the dead. For Sudan, the tragic situation is not dealt with candidly at the present time. There is reporting about the deteriorating humanitarian situation, but the talk about numbers, relief, and justice sweeps the issue of societal rifts under the rug. Perhaps something needs to be done here and now to uncover these rifts and their impacts.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the Author
Munzoul Assal
Munzoul Assal is professor of social anthropology at the universities of Khartoum and Bergen, and a scholar at risk at the Chr Michelsen Institute. His research areas include migration and refugee studies, conflict and peace building and citizenship. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
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Development aid minister Reinette Klever is slashing the budget for NGOs. For the period 2026-2030, she is reducing the budget from 1.4 billion euros to around 0.4 billion euros, a 70 per cent cut. Thea Hilhorst, professor of Humanitarian Studies at ISS, fears major consequences, including for the Netherlands itself. “Do we want to live behind high walls with snipers to protect our own prosperity?” In this blog Manon Dillen shares excerpts of this interview with Hilhorst.
What was your first reaction when you heard about this cut?
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised; it was to be expected, since it had already been announced in the General Agreement. What I found particularly painful at the time was how little response it generated. At the presentation of the General Agreement, all the attention was focused on migration, asylum and Minister Faber. Things were relatively quiet on development cooperation, even though a PVV minister was appointed there too, one who had previously indicated that she wanted to abolish development aid. Development cooperation as a political domain has apparently disappeared from people’s field of view.”
Photo Credit: Bas van Der Schot
What impact will this decision have globally?
“The impact will be huge, both in the Netherlands and internationally. Global effects are hard to measure directly. It’s not as simple as ‘The Netherlands stops and deaths happen immediately’, but it will create holes in NGO programmes, such as Oxfam, Pax, you name it. They will have a better picture and be able to demonstrate concretely what the damage will be, and what it will mean for people in the countries where they operate.
“As well as the NGOs’ programmes, these cuts will also have an impact on relationships. When you destroy those, the consequences are not always immediately visible, but they are there. For example, in the form of deteriorating economic relations or reduced goodwill to do things for each other.”
Can you give an example?
“Well, the cabinet thinks migration is super important, right? When dealing with migration, it’s important to negotiate with the countries the migrants come from. If you only focus on conversations about migration without maintaining broader relationships, it becomes much more difficult. Say the Netherlands is in the running to win a big order. It’s more likely to get it if the relationship is embedded in a broader narrative. An ambassador could give a nice speech about what the Netherlands is all about. But if you strip back those international relationships too much, then other countries would no longer have an incentive to award that order to the Netherlands. So it could hurt economic relations. But it might also be about something smaller: suppose a Dutch citizen is imprisoned somewhere. Without good relationships, it’s harder to get them released.”
So this government is harming itself on the migration issue?
“Yes, there’s a link between migration and development cooperation, but it’s not clear-cut. For example, countries will be less inclined to meet the Netherlands halfway in a migration deal if we no longer do anything for them.
“It was thought that development cooperation would slow down migration to Europe. But research shows a mixed picture: a slightly higher standard of living can also mean that people actually want to migrate. If people become more educated or have more money, they see more opportunities abroad. This kind of research is difficult because people rarely migrate for purely economic reasons; conflict, weak governance and other factors often play a role.
“At the same time, it’s clear that a lack of aid increases migration flows. When refugees find themselves in a precarious situation in their region, they’re forced to travel further to seek safety. While we’re not sure what the effects of aid on migration are, we do know that people will migrate if they don’t get any aid at all.”
What direct impact will the cuts have in the Netherlands?
“International commitments, such as contributions to the UN, cannot simply be cancelled. So what’s left? NGOs. Support to NGOs is being cut disproportionately. But it’s being wrapped up in a narrative that NGOs are inefficient, which is simply not true. If the government doesn’t want to spend money on NGOs, they should just say so, instead of telling a misleading story about these organisations not being effective. That’s very damaging.”
Why exactly is it so damaging?
“By suggesting that NGOs operate inefficiently, the minister is undermining civil society. Meanwhile, support for development organisations is actually huge, and that shouldn’t be underestimated. If civil society is undermined, it could come at the cost of supporting development, and the Netherlands would become an inward-looking country. That’s a dangerous development for a small country in a big world.”
Is that support really that high? I didn’t see it reflected in voting behaviour in the recent elections.
“If people voted on this issue alone, the political landscape would look very different. NGOs have huge numbers of supporters. Someone at Oxfam Novib told me that they alone have more donors than the membership of all political parties combined! We’re really engaged with the world. We see this in primary schools, and in the willingness to take action for Giro 555, for example. The Netherlands can be proud of that, and it’s very important to hold on to.”
Isn’t development aid a neo-colonial way of imposing our Western ideals? And in that light, perhaps it’s not such a bad thing to spend less money on it?
“It’s not like the Netherlands goes to a country and says ‘knock off the LGBTQ discrimination’. It’s often linked to international agreements to which the countries we work with have independently committed. These are topics that organisations in those countries are already working on, otherwise there would be no fertile ground for discussions.
“It’s also important to embed the theme in a wider web of relationships. If you only harped on about LGBTQ rights or gender equality, you might offend people. You have to address those themes with care. Assisting with cultural change is very nuanced and complex and you can indeed go wrong quickly. But doing nothing anymore is also not a solution. We owe it to these countries to at least do something.”
What do you mean by that?
“Poverty in some countries is linked to our wealth, both historically through colonial ties and through current economic structures. We bear responsibility for that. This becomes even more evident with climate change: countries like Bangladesh are hit hard, with millions of people losing their homes or land to floods, even though they contributed little to the causes. These are people who have never been on an airplane, who do not have a washing machine and eat little meat because they can’t afford it. But they’re the direct victims of climate change. And that climate change is caused by rich countries – by us. Structural, equitable solutions to social inequality and climate change are needed. That takes time. Until those solutions are in place, development cooperation remains crucial.”
The minister argues that NGOs should be better able to fend for themselves. What’s your view?
“Surely we don’t fund NGOs for the sake of the organisations’ survival, or because it makes Dutch people feel good? We fund them because these organisations do good things for target groups that we as a country consider important. That may interest this government less. If so, they should say so explicitly. Right now, I get the feeling that some sort of lightning rods have been put up, diverting attention to the idea that NGOs are inefficient or lack support. Whereas it should be about what we want to achieve with development cooperation, and what kind of budget we need for that.”
What do you think about this government choosing to cut development cooperation in the first place?
“The Netherlands should comply with international agreements. The norm is to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national product on development cooperation. With these cuts, we’re sinking far below that. At the same time, we’re committing to the NATO standard of 2 per cent on defence. That’s a choice.”
In the Letter to Parliament, the minister stated that she wants to focus on three themes: health, women’s rights and fair trade. What do you think of these themes?
“They’re not bad, but there are things missing. Why is there no focus on water management, when the Netherlands has so much to offer in that area? And where is climate adaptation, a theme that is crucial right now?
“I’m also worried about humanitarian aid, even though the minister says she’s setting aside money for that. Globally, there’s too little aid available. This is partly because international humanitarian law, which obliges countries to protect civilians and allow aid through in times of conflict, is being structurally violated. A glaring example is Israel blocking aid to Gaza, with few international consequences. Or Sudan, where entire refugee camps are being massacred.
“The erosion of development cooperation has direct consequences for humanitarian aid. Without investment in agriculture and irrigation, drought leads to hunger, which in turn means more humanitarian aid is needed. But humanitarian aid is meant for emergencies, not as a permanent solution. Recovery requires stable facilities such as local hospitals. And stable health care depends on regular aid.”
Photo Credit: Bas van Der Schot
What do you think this cut means for the future of Dutch development cooperation?
“If you break down institutions, you can’t easily rebuild them. We need to keep institutions on their feet as much as we can. That’s obviously what NGOs are trying to do. Not one of them is throwing in the towel. Instead of just hoping for better times, we must work for better times.
“Human rights and international humanitarian law were established after World War II to prevent a repetition of the atrocities of that war. Values such as human rights, conflict prevention and peace efforts are crucial here. If the Netherlands abandons them, which is what is happening with these cuts, we are contributing to a global trend of allowing more conflict and inequality. Do we want to live behind high walls with snipers to protect our own prosperity, or do we want to build a future based on mutual respect? We need to recognise that we depend on each other. They depend on us, but we also depend on them.”
Dorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Manon Dillen
Manon Dillen has a background in economics and philosophy at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. After graduating she started working as a freelance journalist.
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In this blog, Sr. Medhin Tesfay, Director of Social and Development programmes at the Daughters of Charity Tigray (DoC-T), shares her experiences alongside that of her organization in providing solidarity-based locally embedded humanitarian assistance throughout the course of the most intense period of the conflict in Tigray from 2020-2022. During this period DoC-T had to adopt many of its approaches and services, providing programmes including emergency relief aid, psycho-social support for victims of gender-based violence in the conflict, and more besides. Sr. Tesfay is a member of the Humanitarian Observatory Ethiopia, which is hosted by the University of Addis Ababa in collaboration with ISS as part of the Humanitarian Governance: Accountability, Advocacy, Alternatives (HUM-GOV) project.
Sr. Medhin Tesfay, helping elderly and disabled individuals reach the emergency cash distribution desk during the conflict.
Amidst the prolonged humanitarian crisis and huge internal displacement in Tigray, the DoC-T adopted a community-centered approach to humanitarian aid. With the solid believe that affected population needs both hardware (in terms of food and non-food provision of assistance) and software (in terms of empowerment) supports, DOC-T has been providing impactful and innovative mental health support to empower vulnerable communities to heal, rebuild, and claim their rights. This journey demonstrates the strength of resilience, dignity, and local leadership in overcoming adversity.
Since 1973, the DoC-T have been committed to supporting vulnerable communities, particularly during the catastrophic famine of 1984-1985 and the intense conflict between 2020 and 2022. Our focus has always been on delivering targeted assistance to women, children, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. Throughout these critical periods, the DoC-T have consistently provided essential services, especially during the two years of the conflict in Tigray. DoC-T has worked relentlessly to deliver emergency cash assistance, life-saving food, vital non-food items, and necessary psychosocial support to the traumatized individuals in our communities. We have done this with a strong sense of purpose, humility, love, and empathy. This blog underscores our significant contributions during these trying times and reaffirms our steadfast dedication to creating a lasting positive impact.
From 2020 to 2022, Tigray region faced significant consequences from a prolonged conflict, compounded by one of the longest humanitarian crisis in recorded history. During this tumultuous period, DoC-T played a crucial role in delivering life-saving assistance, especially in the early days of the crisis when Mekelle (the capital of Tigray) became a refuge for many internally displaced persons (IDPs). This demonstrate the resilience of locally rooted and embedded organizations to provide vital supports to the vulnerable segments of the society when the humanitarian space is filled with insecurities and uncertainties.
While other humanitarian organizations were still arriving, DoC-T provided daily emergency support across 27 IDP camps, feeding over 34,000 IDPs for nearly eight months, often risking the safety of its employees. The organization also helped in remote and hard-to-reach areas of Tigray inaccessible to major international humanitarian agencies. The organization confronted dire conditions caused by disruptions in essential services and identified public schools that had been converted into makeshift shelters, mobilizing resources to address critical shortages of food, water, and clothing effectively. All the while DOC-T was also stuck providing all what it could, which was not even close to how much was needed. At times when there was no food, sisters and staff even went on foot on journeys that took 4 hours daily (visiting two times a day) to just to be with the community and console them.
Despite the closure of borders amid a devastating two-year conflict, the DoC-T, led by Sister Medhin Tesfay, made the decision to remain in the region with the community. This religious order was believed to be the only one operating in the area during the early days of the war.
Moving from emergency relief to offering psychosocial support
In response to the difficulties faced by women during the conflict, the Daughters of Charity offered not only emergency food assistance but also psychosocial support for those traumatized by the conflict’s horrific consequences. This psychosocial support was delivered through Women-to-Women Listening Circles, which included a nurse, a social worker, a medical student, an aid worker, and a leader from the Daughters of Charity. We drew inspiration from the Helpful Active Listening (HAL) circles, a grassroots initiative that effectively supported survivors of the Rwandan genocide. This straightforward and cost-efficient approach trains resilient women within the community to provide basic psychosocial support to their peers, enabling quick outreach to those in need. The method has successfully empowered and healed hundreds while also addressing the stigma surrounding sexual violence and fostering solidarity among victims. This impact is captured in the phrase: “breaking down the stigma and taboo surrounding sexual violence and promoting the creation of new links of solidarity between victims.”
The service has enabled survivors of gender-based violence (GBV), who once experienced deep shame and found it difficult to communicate with their children, parents, or spouses, to overcome shame and become advocates for marginalized individuals facing stigma. In the Bora district, these survivors have formed their own group and gained recognition and vital support from the local authorities. Haftu Gebru, head of the Bora District Education and Health Office, emphasized their transformation from passive victims to proactive advocates tackling the root causes of GBV showcasing the agency of the victims to advocate for solutions.
In these difficult times, the DoC-T achieved remarkable progress, but we were not in this endeavor alone. We were fortunate to receive essential assistance from numerous donors, particularly CARITAS Germany, which has dedicated considerable resources to enhance the lives of individuals in Tigray, especially in the Abergele district, which has been severely impacted by conflict and disasters.
As a valued long-term partner, CARITAS Germany has played a crucial role in the rehabilitation of specific schools and health centers, as well as repair of water points severely damaged by conflict. These initiatives have significantly reduced student dropouts, improved access to education, and ensured the availability of clean water, thereby safeguarding the community against waterborne diseases.
Lessons Learned and the Necessity to Support Local and Contextualized Intervention
The biggest lesson we learned was that with a bit more effort, it is possible to create formidable advocates in every intervention effort that can help to ensure the sustainability of the intervention by creating lasting community ties that can pass down experiences and create a structure for others to follow.
The DoC-T have been aimed to be a symbol of hope in Tigray during challenging times. We hope that our initiatives in healthcare, food security, education, and community support have positively impacted lives and fostered resilience. However, the ongoing violence and the situation faced by internally displaced persons (IDPs) have created a dire need for urgent, coordinated emergency and development responses. We urge a collaborative effort to tackle the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, leveraging our extensive experience in assisting marginalized communities in challenging circumstances.
The HUM-GOV Project is supported by a European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant, under project number: 884139
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question
About the Author
Sr. Medhin Tesfay
Sr. Medhin Tesfay is a Director of Social and Development programmes of DoC Tigray, Ethiopia. She is committed to empowering marginalized communitiess by improving access to essential services and fostering sustainable development which earned her the 2023 Romero International Award offered by Trocaire during their 50th anniversary for her courageous advocacy for justice.
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Travelling with children is more complex than travelling alone. It is also more expensive. Yet the impact of children on migration decision-making – and the dilemmas faced by parents and caregivers on the world’s major migration routes – are poorly understood.
In this blog, Chloe Sydney draws upon recent survey data to share initial insights into how parents and caregivers make decisions about migration when children are accompanying them on their journey.
Photo Credit: PACES
Surveying migrant decision-making
Between March and October 2024, the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC) surveyed 1,557 people on the move in Italy, Niger, and Tunisia for PACES, a 40-month Horizon Europe project that aims to understand migration decision-making and thereby also inform migration policymaking (1). Among people surveyed, 11.5% were travelling with children(2).
A gendered and geographical distribution
Women surveyed were nearly four times more likely than men to travel with children, with 24% of women travelling with children compared to just 6.5% of men – and their migration decision-making accordingly constrained.
Geographically, the percentage of respondents travelling with children drops progressively along the route: 16% in Niger, 10% in Tunisia, and just 8% in Italy(3). As can be observed on MMC’s 4Mi Interactive, a similar trend emerges when broadening the scope beyond PACES to all data collected in the three countries. This may be because parents and caregivers are wary of exposing children to the significant risks found in the Sahara, Libya, and the Mediterranean Sea.
How the risks inform the route
Recommendations and past experiences of family or friends were the most common factor informing choice of route for all respondents. For those travelling with children, safety and familiarity also played an important role in informing decision-making: as illustrated below, those travelling with children were somewhat more likely than others to prioritize safety (30% compared to 26%) and to choose routes they knew best (36% compared to 27%).
However, cost matters too, especially since travelling with children makes things more expensive. ‘My journey here with my children has not been easy at all, I had to spend a lot of money between Benin and Niger’, shared a Togolese father. In the face of limited resources, 35% of those travelling with children chose their route at least partly because it was the cheapest option, compared to 26% of other respondents. Conversely, parents and caregivers travelling with children were less likely to prioritize the fastest route, possibly because faster routes tend to be more expensive.
If the cheapest route involves greater risks, parents and caregivers face a difficult dilemma. Should you expose your children to danger in the hope of finding safety? In the words of British poet Warsan Shire,
you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land […]
Keeping safe en route
In the absence of safe alternatives, parents and caregivers take steps to mitigate the risks. As shown below, to protect themselves from crime and abuse, people travelling with children were more likely to travel in a group (58%), stop in places with trusted contacts (42%), and use safer methods of transport (36%). These precautions aim to reduce risks related to crime and abuse, but may also increase the cost of travel.
Despite efforts to protect children from harm, over two-thirds (68%) of respondents travelling with children felt children had been highly or very highly exposed to serious risks such as physical violence, sexual violence, kidnapping or death during the journey.
‘I cannot encourage anyone to take this route, because I lost my daughter during the journey, and I miscarried as a result of the pressure’, shared a Nigerian woman in Tunisia. ‘If you want to go, you should leave your children at home’, warned a father who saw his daughter being raped on their journey from Chad to Tunisia.
Where to go and whether to stay
Just as travelling with children can influence the route taken and the means of travel, it also influences decision-making with regards to choice of destination.
Reflecting parents’ and caregivers’ safety concerns, among those who specified a destination, over half (54%) of respondents travelling with children said they chose it at least partly because it was the safest option(4). This was the case for just 44% of those not travelling with children.
Perhaps to provide for their families, people travelling with children were more likely to mention their choice of destination was influenced by economic opportunities, at 80%. They were also more likely to mention the social welfare system, at 41%. Access to better education mattered somewhat more to them as well, as shown in the figure below.
Finally, travelling with children impacts whether and why people might one day return to their countries of origin. Those travelling with children were more likely to say they would return only if they believed it was safe (26% compared to 18% for other respondents). ‘The security situation is much better here than in our country of origin’, explained a man from northeast Nigeria, surveyed in Niger.
What we’ve learned
Among the people we interviewed, the presence of children impacts migration decision-making. Those travelling with children more often prioritise safety when selecting a destination, deciding whether to return, or to a certain extent when choosing a route. However, as travel becomes more expensive, costs also play a more important role in decision-making, potentially forcing some families to forsake safer, costlier routes in favour of more affordable, perilous journeys.
Our data also highlights the risks faced by children on the move, and their resulting need for specialised protection services. ‘My daughter has suffered many injustices on this route, she will be forever traumatised’, said a mother from Tigray in Ethiopia. ‘She has seen things beyond her years.’ Those who embark on dangerous journeys with their children, however, often have few alternatives: opportunities for safe, regular migration from Tigray, for example, are limited, even though the region is beset by high levels of food insecurity, limited access to essential services including education, and continued political instability.
Endnotes:
1. Since we rely on non-probability sampling, our findings cannot be generalized to all people on the move. Our baseline data collection will be complemented by two rounds of longitudinal data collection, enabling us to examine decisions to stay and migrate over the course of a year and a half.
2. One respondent refused to say whether they were travelling with children.
3. The proportion of women surveyed remains relatively stable across the three countries, so this does not explain the drop in respondents travelling with children.
4. 177 respondents travelling with children and 1,344 of other respondents had specified a destination.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the author
Chloe Sydney
Chloe Sydney is the Mixed Migration Centre’s Global 4Mi and Data Coordinator. She has nearly a decade of research experience, with a particular focus on forced migration. Chloe has a PhD on refugee decision-making with regards to return, and a master’s degree in International Migration and Public Policy.
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Although challenging, scholar-activism is a crucial analytical and political endeavor today.
In some particular settings, perhaps the best way to advance social science research is to engage in collaboration with social groups whose vision you are broadly sympathetic to. Yet the challenge is that you may find yourself politically supporting and advocating the very social practices you are studying. Does this make your research biased? Like many other development practitioners, I do not feign to practice disinterested research. Ultimately, ethical and political commitments permanently inform our practice: why we study certain phenomena and not others, why we consider some as problems but not others. Thus, no social science research is politically neutral; it all has a bias. But a certain level of political bias and scientific rigor are two different things.
Acknowledging that social research is biased does not imply a lack of rigor. As scholar-activists, our duty is to ensure that the visions we identify with are also subjected to theoretical scrutiny and peer review, and to practice honest reporting. The challenges are enormous. For instance, can you disagree with your local collaborator? Does scholar-activism mean ‘anything goes’ in terms of accepting uncritically whatever is being claimed by your local researcher partners? In this blog, Lorenza Arango reflects on collaborating with the Norman Pérez Bello Claretian organization (The Claretians, for short) in the eastern plains of Colombia.
The savanna landscape in Puerto Gaitán, Meta. Photo by author, June 2022.
It was in the middle of the 2022 rainy season in the Altillanura, Colombia.
Anita, a member of the Claretian organization and the leader of the field visit, was facing a tough decision: to cancel the visit halfway through – with several of the tasks we had agreed on still incomplete – or to move to another area within the region to finalize our mission. Heavy rains had made several of the roads impassable and navigating the Meta River to reach our next destination seemed the only way out. But travelling by river poses other security concerns, especially to social organizations such as the Claretians, whose members have become targets of threats and persecution.
‘How do you want to proceed? Shall we cancel the visit?’, I asked.
‘Let me think through… People are already waiting for us’, Anita replied.
After hours on the phone with members of the communities we were to visit, and with the head of the Claretian organization, to validate the security conditions in the area, the decision was made: to get on the first boat departing at 4:00 am, and to stick together during the approximately 8-hour journey, as well as to remain alert and cautious.
In recent years, the eastern Altillanura (high plains) in Colombia – encompassing the department of Vichada and portions of Meta – have turned into a major frontier destination for lucrative investments in land. Over a short period of time, the region changed from being a far, scattered and poorly developed landscape of tropical savannas bordering Venezuela to become the greatest and ‘last agricultural frontier’ of the country and even the new ‘promised land’.
The Colombian Altillanura was part of a broader phenomenon of spectacular, multi-faceted land grabs across the world known as the ‘global land rush’. Roughly between 2004 and 2017, multiple corporate land deals were pursued in the area. Other land deals were halted at early stages of implementation or never really touched the ground, but nevertheless contributed to fuel the investment frenzy. Meanwhile, land accumulation by stealth, effected by low-profile actors, progressed apace – taking part in the bandwagon effect driven by the land rush.
For the indigenous peoples and the peasantry inhabiting the Altillanura, the tropical savannas were not an investment target. They were their home sites and key a source of livelihoods. For decades now, both communities have suffered from the effects of multiple iterations of land dispossession and forced displacement by different actors (including the state, economic elites, armed guerrilla groups, narcotraffickers and paramilitary). The recent land rush in the area, and the ensuing social and environmental crisis, further exacerbated the precarious living conditions experienced by these – making them the poorest strata of the rural population.
An improvised kitchen at the indigenous settlement of ‘Iwitsulibo’ (Puerto Gaitán, Meta). Photo by author, June 2022.
Against this background, the work of the Norman Pérez Bello Claretian organization (Corporación Claretiana Norman Pérez Bello – CCNPB) is fundamental. The Claretians is a Colombian non-profit organization that promotes social justice and peace and accompanies peasant and indigenous communities who assert their rights through non-violent mechanisms. It offers legal advice, as well as psychological, pedagogical and communications support. Since around 2003, the Claretians has continually supported efforts by various rural peoples to improve their living conditions in Colombia’s eastern plains and other regions of the country. To date, it is perhaps the only organization in the area whose work in the defence of rural communities has endured the test of time and the brutality of various forms of violence – including persecution of its members and threats against their lives.
As a PhD researcher within the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant-funded RRUSHES-5 project, based at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam, I am pleased to have collaborated with the Claretians and to have learned first-hand from the work it does in the Altillanura. My first engagement with its work happened when I accidentally came across short online publications by the organization, in which it denounced recent land grabs in the area and the effects these had on Sikuani indigenous peoples. I later heard about the organization from other researchers and investigative journalists and became an admirer of its work.
On the basis of collaborative agreements, the Claretians facilitated a significant part of my fieldwork in the Altillanura for my doctoral dissertation. Together we visited what had become key investment sites by large corporations and political and economic elites in the municipality of Puerto Gaitán in the Meta department and in La Primavera and Santa Rosalía in Vichada. We listened to and documented people’s retelling of harsh stories of dispossession associated with the investment rush and the consequences to their livelihoods of land lost.
While collaborating with the Claretians, the alleged boundaries between scholarly research and activism suddenly becoming less rigid. This collaboration has also taught me the often-challenging practice of scholar activism and how indispensable it is today.
Traversing the open plains and water springs by foot in rural Puerto Gaitán, Meta. Photos by author, June 2022.
On a number of occasions, I inevitably performed tasks closer to advocacy work – which clearly influenced my research outcomes. For instance, at most field sites we visited, I cooperated in setting up meetings and assemblies between indigenous community members and government officers, hoping these could result in the challenges faced by the indigenous people (for example, in terms of their land access and their living conditions) being better addressed. I also helped draft press releases denouncing abuse and threats of coercion by the local police and illegal armed groups against community members and the Claretians and demanding that the state ensure the fundamental rights of the indigenous peoples. I also devised tools that could help to leverage indigenous peoples’ decision-making power in response to state authorities, such as printed maps of their territories.
Public assembly converging indigenous communities across the eastern plains and government functionaries from the National Land Agency in La Primavera, Vichada. Photos by author, March 2023.
At the same time, the collaboration allowed the Claretians to systematize much of the evidence it had collected over the years about the politics of land access in the Altillanura, as well as to reach larger audiences – through reports and other publications that came out of our partnership.
Of course, experiences of scholar-activism such as this are not exempt from challenges. How could both parties ensure that the research project I was representing would be useful and impactful to the people on the ground? What other research strategies should I employ to validate the conclusions resulting from the collaborative work, apart from fieldwork? Also, were the Claretians – given its knowledge of the area and of the communities it accompanies – entitled to set the objectives and terms of our collaboration? Could I object to the organization’s practices or disagree with the behaviour of some of its members in the field? If so, could that risk our collaboration or compromise particular outcomes from it? In the end, all of us, both the members of the organization and myself, had to deal with these questions and several other contradictions arising along the way.
All in all, the underlying message is clear: in contexts of widespread land dispossession, such as the one shaping the Colombian Altillanura, struggles over land remain a key axis of mobilization, which in turn make of scholar-activism an analytically crucial and politically empowering undertaking and method of work – despite of (or even because of) the difficulties surrounding it.
***
Nowadays in academia, research with positive societal impact has gained wide support. It is often interpreted to mean that academic work impacts and transforms society and societal actors. This is certainly valid and important. But in my case, another dimension is also clear: non-academic societal actors can profoundly impact and transform academics and academic work. While the first interpretation is significantly explored in academic circles, the impact of society and societal actors in academia is relatively less so. Yet I believe it is equally important to think about how non-academic societal actors, especially social justice activists like Anita and her Claretian colleagues, positively impact and transform academic researchers like me, and, for that matter, academia and academic work I am embedded in. And that feels right.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the Author
Lorenza Arango is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS, The Hague) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is a member of the research team of the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant awarded project ‘Commodity & Land Rushes and Regimes: Reshaping Five Spheres of Global Social Life (RRUSHES-5)’, led by Jun Borras. As part of this project, she is working on the interactions between contemporary commodity/land rushes and the spheres of labour and food politics, as well as on state-citizenship relations in Colombia.
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In this blog, Sister Agrippina Nandjaa (Caritas Namibia) marks the opening of the Humanitarian Observatory in Namibia, considering the importance of ‘neglected crises’ and their intersection with climate change. The Observatory in Namibia joins a growing network of spaces for research, discussion, and advocacy, coordinated by The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre (HSC).
The Namibia Humanitarian Observatory was launched on 24 May 2024 to create a space for discussion with communities and stakeholders around vulnerability to disasters across the country. The self-governed Observatory aims to engage communities prone to recurrent climate-related shocks to share experiences and explore pathways toward creative and self-reliant communities, especially in the case of drought. The widespread impact and long duration of drought make it one of the most costly hazards in Namibia. However, the impacts of drought can often be lessened through preparedness and early action aimed at decreasing community vulnerability and exposure. Namibia is the most arid sub-Saharan country, experiencing very high evapotranspiration rates (Mendelsohn et al., 2002). Consequently, it is exposed to recurrent droughts, with historically devastating consequences. A growing population, persistent poverty, and climate change provide even greater threats in the future. And, with the situation in Namibia often falling into the category of ‘neglected humanitarian crises; affecting international support and aid, we are reminded of the importance of the everyday actions and practices that drive humanitarian action from the local and grassroots level.
A platform for discussion and analysis around drought
In partnership with The Hague Humanitarian Studies Centre (HSC) of the International Institute of Social Studies, the Namibia Humanitarian Observatory will be a platform for discussions that enable communities and authorities to respond to humanitarian crises. It will bring together communities to assess historical drought events and their extent and impacts in Namibia. It will facilitate the gathering and analysis of relevant data and explore the current institutions and systems involved in drought monitoring, forecasting, early warning, mitigation, and reduction in the country by subsistence farmers.
This space will also act as an early action initiative that initially focuses on rapid-onset hazards such as climate change awareness and strategies for subsistence farming. Agriculture is primarily the main activity for subsistence farming in Namibia. In its humanitarian work across the country, particularly now with the distribution of food parcels for vulnerable households, which includes undocumented people, Caritas Namibia has been thinking of what skills, training, and advocacy of recovery programs are needed in the long term in order to cope with protracted drought in the 14 regions of Namibia. Traditional farmers seem unable to cope with the changing weather and climate that has resulted in low rainfall during the farming season compared to 50 years ago. Now, Caritas Namibia, together with the local government authorities, wants to explore the way of rethinking lost skills, new skills, advocacy, and training for subsistence farmers to improve their household livelihood to counter dependence syndrome and increase the communities’ adaptive capacities. The Namibia Humanitarian Observatory will contribute to this objective and will also safeguard the importance of local and indigenous knowledge and practices when it comes to disaster preparedness, response, and prevention.
The launch was hosted in the Zambezi Regional Councils and was attended by the Governor of Zambezi region, the Councilors, and council staff, Joseph Moowa Kalokela, member of Namibia Observatory, Gabriela Anderson, community manager of HSC, Joram Tarusarira from the University of Groningen and member of the Namibia Observatory, and Agrippina Nandjaa, Coordinator of the Namibia Humanitarian Observatory and Caritas coordinator. The attendees of the launch were able to leave reflecting on how countries like Namibia, who are adversely and continuously vulnerable to the effects of climate change, can play a vital role in international politics in holding other countries accountable for their own roles in the changing climate, like the environmentally damaging consequences of warfare in Israel and Russia.
Together, the presenting team at the launch of the Namibia Humanitarian Observatory were able to gain the support of the local government in the Zambezi region of Namibia and further the roots of the Humanitarian Observatories. That is, the importance of discussing the role of different actors within the humanitarian field and how they work together (or not) in addressing humanitarian needs in a highly contextual and locally relevant way.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the Author
Sister Agrippina Nandjaa
Sr. Agrippina Nandjaa is a Catholic religious sister lives and work in Namibia, and directing Caritas Namibia-Namibian Catholic Bishop’s Conference. Agrippina hold a master degree in development Studies-Social Policy from International Institute of Social Studies-Erasmus Rotterdam University, Honor degree in adult education and community development and Diploma in community education from the University of Namibia. She has experience over ten years. Agrippina is also coordinating the Namibia observatory which was lunched on 24 May 2024 in Zambezi region-Namibia.
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Religious institutions, leaders, and grassroots movements hold the potential to be powerful allies in achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). From combating poverty to promoting climate action, the reach and influence of religion are vast and often undervalued. In this blog, Kim Tung Dao explores how religion’s moral authority, extensive networks, and community-driven initiatives can be integrated into global development strategies, offering fresh insights into tackling humanity’s greatest challenges. Discover why embracing religion as a catalyst for sustainable development is crucial to bridging gaps and accelerating progress toward a better future.
Why Religion could be an important driver of achieving the SDGs
In a world where 84% of people identify with a religious group, an enormous untapped force for sustainable development remains largely overlooked. While governments and NGOs race to achieve the United Nations’ ambitious development goals, religious institutions – which reach over 6.5 billion people globally – could hold the key to accelerating progress (2012 report from the Pew Research Center).
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), introduced by the United Nations in 2015, represent a global framework for addressing the most pressing challenges facing humanity, from eradicating poverty to ensuring environmental sustainability. Despite its worldwide endorsement and growing efforts to achieve these goals, significant gaps in progress remain. Even more troublingly, some of the goals seem to be delayed or even regressing, raising concerns about the overall feasibility of the SDGs.
The continuity of these issues prompts the question of whether the current approach to achieving the SDGs is missing a crucial force. In this context, one area that has received little attention is the role of religion. Given that religion continues to play a vital role in the lives of billions of people, especially after COVID-19, its potential impact on sustainable development will be argued for here. This blog explores how religion might be incorporated into the discussion on the SDGs to provide new insights and solutions to these enduring challenges.
Religion has historically shaped the values, ethics, and behaviors of societies. Whether through teachings that promote social justice, natural environment sustainability, or community solidarity, religion has the capacity to influence large populations in undeniable ways. This influence makes religion a potentially powerful force in the quest to achieve the SDGs.
This blog will explore the intersection between religion and sustainable development by discussing three key aspects: the role of religious institutions, the impact of religious leaders, and the power of grassroots religious movements. By examining these facets, we can better understand how religion can contribute to the SDGs.
However, the potential for religion to contribute to the SDGs may go beyond these shared values. Religious institutions often have extensive networks and resources that can facilitate development initiatives. In addition, religious leaders’ words and actions hold significant weight over their followers and can be great allies for achieving the SDGs. Finally, grassroots religious movements can motivate the local communities to take action, promoting local ownership of the SDGs. While the SDGs have been shaped largely and mainly from scientific, secular, and governmental perspectives, incorporating religious factors could make achieving these goals more feasible.
Religious institutions: An important force for Sustainable Development
Religious institutions, with their long-established history and widespread influence, can be powerful agents of change. One striking example of how religious institutions support sustainable development can be found in the Catholic Church’s environmental efforts, particularly through Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si. The Laudato Si’ (‘Praise be’) 9 has encouraged environmental engagement and social justice, both of which are highly in line with the SDGs. This document has inspired Catholics to consider the ethical dimensions of environmental issues, leading to increased activism and policy advocacy. Thus, urging Catholics to see environmental issues as moral concerns. This aligns with SDG 13 (Climate Action), as the document encourages responsible stewardship of the Earth through ethical consumption and reducing environmental degradation. This has spurred various environmental initiatives among Catholic communities, from promoting renewable energy to waste reduction campaigns.
Furthermore, religious institutions often have resources and networks that can benefit the sustainable development process. For example, faith-based organizations like Caritas and Islamic Relief Worldwide have played significant roles in humanitarian aid and poverty alleviation, directly contributing to the achievement of at least two SDGs namely SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 2 (Zero Hunger). The impact of these organizations is substantial and measurable. In 2022 alone, Islamic Relief Worldwide reached an unprecedented 17.3 million people across various regions, providing aid to those affected by crises and working to alleviate poverty (according to the Islamic Relief Worldwide Annual Report 2022). And the Caritas Internationalis 2021 annual report indicates that they implemented 15 projects, assisting 5.3 million people in 14 countries. These efforts directly contribute to SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), demonstrating how religious institutions can effectively mobilize resources for sustainable development.
Religious Leaders: Promoters of Changes
While religious institutions provide structural support and resources for sustainable development, it is often the voices of religious leaders that inspire personal commitments and actions. These leaders, through their moral authority, can influence the entire community towards achieving the SDGs. Religious leaders can have significant influence over their followers, often serving as moral and spiritual guides and examples. This influence can be utilized to promote the SDGs. A good example is the role of the Dalai Lama in promoting peace, compassion, and environmental responsibility. His teachings have inspired millions, inspiring efforts toward peaceful coexistence (SDG 16) and environmental sustainability (SDG 13).
On the other hand, while religious leaders can be pivotal allies, tensions may arise when their goals conflict with those of secular development agencies. For example, certain religious values might conflict with policies around reproductive health (SDG 3) yet fostering dialogue and cooperation between these entities could help find common ground, such as shared concerns around poverty or education.
Grassroots religious movements: fuels for local action
Beyond the influence of prominent religious leaders, grassroots movements rooted in local communities can serve as powerful engines of change. These movements engage people at a personal level, fostering a sense of ownership in sustainable development efforts and driving collective action from the ground up. Grassroots religious movements often emerge from local communities that are deeply tied to their cultural and religious identities, giving them a strong position to steer sustainable development actions at the heart of community life. These movements, because of their close connection to local people, can bring a sense of ownership and empowerment to each community member, encouraging them to take action in support of the SDGs usually at their own pace.
For instance, a movement named Greenfaith unites people of various religious backgrounds in environmental activism. Emphasizing ‘grassroots’, ‘multifaith’, and ‘climate justice’, they have successfully mobilized communities to combat climate change and protect natural resources. By framing environmental protection as a moral and spiritual obligation, Greenfaith has inspired grassroots actions that contribute directly to SDG 13 (Climate Action) and SDG 15 (Life on Land).
Conclusion
Considering the role of religion in achieving the SDGs opens new and potentially effective perspectives. Religious institutions, leaders, and grassroots movements have the capacity to move a large number of people (e.g. their followers), material resources, and spiritual resources (such as innovative ideas) in support of sustainable development. By integrating religious perspectives into the SDG framework and process, we can enhance the feasibility of these goals.
This approach is not only useful for policymakers and development practitioners but also for the religious communities themselves, who can find new ways to contribute to global development efforts while at the same time increasing their influence. As we continue to strive towards a more sustainable future, the insights offered by religion should not be overlooked or ignored but rather embraced as valuable input for achieving the SDGs.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the Author:
Kim Tung Dao
Kim Tung Dao is a recent PhD graduate of the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research interests include globalization, international trade, sustainable development, and the history of economic thought.
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In this blog post, Fernando Garlin and Juliana Poveda explore the ethical and methodological dilemmas faced by researchers working with forced Venezuelan migrants in politically polarized contexts in Latin America. Through personal reflections, they delve into how the researcher’s identity shapes their relationship with the research participants and the interpretation of migratory realities, highlighting the tension between neutrality, authenticity and adaptability. They suggest that building human relationships and recognizing local complexities are essential for overcoming the double standards of engaged academics and fostering a deeper understanding of the migratory situation.
Image by Authors
In contexts marked by violent conflicts, institutional crises, fast changes and high degrees of political polarization, researchers encounter varying degrees of distrust, suspicion and openness from participants in the field. In our case, both of us have worked with Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, Spain and the United States. Amidst polarizing right- vs. left-wing politics and sentiments, the question constantly arises about how to present ourselves to our research participants: Is it important to disclose fully our personalities and positionalities? Should we embrace the neutrality and formality expected from researchers? Or ought we perform a mixture of authenticity and detachment to open the dialogue with our interviewees?
In this blog post, we use dialogue to explore how each one of us has addressed this situation. Our dialogue is itself a necessary collaboration to enrich our standpoints. Fernando is Venezuelan and Juliana is Colombian and we have both worked with Venezuelan migrants in the same region. However, we have noticed how our nationalities condition our gaze on forced migration.
Fernando: I spent more than a year on the Colombia-Venezuela border, between 2020 and 2022, mostly in Cúcuta. Over time, the whole issue of my ‘position’ gradually lost relevance in my reflections. Not because it stopped being important, but because, little by little, I started blending into my relationships, my surroundings and my belonging to an organization of Venezuelans in the region. So people already knew what my role was and where I stood before even agreeing to an interview: ‘Oh, he’s the guy who works with that aid organization and is interested in those issues.’
While researching violence, abuse and extreme precariousness, I think people cared less about my political stance and focused much more on evaluating my personality – for example, how witty, available or sensible I was. Those things gradually became way more important for coexisting and building human relationships. It helped me move beyond the usual observer-observed/participant mould.
That being said, my political position did matter in institutional spaces with humanitarian officers from the government and international cooperation sectors. My push for more quotas, aid and responses to the situation was seen as ‘left-wing; I pointed out things that needed improvement, to be denounced or reformed. But was I merely a ‘useful leftist’ being used to justify right-wing policies? In governmental or international cooperation settings, people even asked me ‘Are you here to help or not?’ Or was I just here to criticize, a ‘bad leftist’. Being aware of and discussing these issues allows us to be more critical of the role of the researcher in the field, not just as an observer but also as an actor.
I feel that my positionality has been shaped by these two tensions: local sensitivities and national policy discussions in each country. What about your experience, Juliana?
Juliana: I also arrived at the Norte de Santander region in Cúcuta in 2019. One of my first learnings was that authorities and NGOs make distinctions and present measures and procedures for Venezuelans as ‘novel, special and temporary’. Yet these legal measures were very disconnected from the daily life and reality of people forced to migrate into Colombia and join local communities. For example, it was enough to step away from the desk to figure out that the distinction between different types of ‘populations’ and ‘migrations’ might be artificial and pernicious. People with similar needs, newcomers and locals, were competing for attention and resources. Although it was undeniable that an extra layer of vulnerability came from the lack of regular migratory status of Venezuelans in Colombia, their needs and risks were similar to Colombian civilians within the context of armed conflict. This is not novel in forced migration dynamics; similar problems were experienced by Syrians and local communities in Turkey and Lebanon (Müller-Funk 2021).
My second learning was that, although bilateral relations shape migration policies, irrespective of whether there was a right- or left-wing government in Colombia, the change of political wing does not necessarily imply higher compliance with migrants’ rights. Pragmatism informs decision-making. Neither fiercely opposing Maduro’s authoritarian regime nor keeping cautiously silent about it has translated into an open recognition of Venezuelans as refugees or into higher standards of economic and social rights protection.
So, observing the dynamics of Colombian and Venezuelan migrant communities more broadly enabled me to seek a new stance from where I could take a critical and panoramic view of the law and its social context. Thus, I chose social research as a tool to address the law-context interaction. Fernando, how did ethnography help you to be closer to your research participants from an academic standpoint?
Fernando: In my ethnography, I try to distance myself from opinions or reactions that might make me seem like an outsider, as this could jeopardize trust. I prefer to get to know people and adapt to them, rather than taking a fixed stance. After all, every relationship is human, even in research. I find it hard that we must constantly remind ourselves and our colleagues of this. My job as an anthropologist is to explore what people think and how they think. And you have to allow space and time for that to happen.
This doesn’t mean I can’t speak out against authoritarian acts, violence or state terror in Venezuela, but when I’m doing research, all of that is just the backdrop so that the real protagonists – people – can come forward with their beliefs, ideas, opinions, sensitivities and emotions. So, my position leans more towards figuring out where to understand from, with whom and how to make sense of the confusion.
In your experience as a lawyer and researcher, how do you choose to position yourself? Do you have different behaviours, attitudes or decisions that you make depending on the people you’re meeting?
Juliana: From a socio-legal lens, I look at migration and refugee law from the opposing and interacting view of diverse stakeholders. These perspectives have enabled me to develop more reflexivity in my own gaze: conditions, experiences and assumptions. Thus, I can find nuances amidst the binaries suggested by the context and recognise my standpoint. Beyond the partisan right- vs. the left-wing binary (Roht-Arriaza y Martínez 2019), others have struck me: the attention and resources given to Venezuelan migrants undermine those for peacebuilding in Colombia. Or, its analogue, but from another side: the Colombian peace talks with the ELN and the FARC dissidents validate Maduro’s regime and neglect forced migrants.
I also find myself constantly justifying not only why I am researching from a Global North University but also why I am not researching my country’s affairs (Abasli and Elassal 2021). I find only ‘empathy’ as the answer. The experience of Colombian internally displaced people and forced migrants abroad should have also taught us to recognise vulnerability and depart from there. Hence, it is senseless to argue about whether the Colombian or Venezuelan crisis in the region deserves more attention, or should attract more international condemnation and cooperation. They are now entwined. I would rather begin with the fact that both civil societies deal with deep traumas due to polarization, failed democracies, inequality and violence (Bejarano 2011).
Once the polarization noise lowers, it is necessary to spotlight the main role of forced migrants (Clark-Kazak 2021). Nobody can speak on their behalf about how they face challenges such as ‘anti-migrant’ expressions in Global North countries (Achiume 2022). Hence, the researcher, alongside reflexivity, should collaborate with local organizations to protect the interests of forced migrants and amplify their voices (Harley, T. and Wazefadost 2023). Have you found another dichotomy? How did you solve it, Fernando?
Fernando: This might sound abstract and a bit lukewarm, but for me, anthropology isn’t activism or politics; it’s about building connections, relationships and concepts to understand activism and politics. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that understanding makes us ‘better’ at anything – maybe that’s just a knowledge-based illusion. That’s why I believe the role of the ethnographer and anthropologist is to accompany, shape and give meaning and strength to social experiences.
Beyond slogans about defending the most vulnerable – which I consider obvious unless you’re some kind of colonial exploiter – it’s about constantly searching for the spaces where the seeds of change, new futures and hopes for humanity can grow.
Our conclusion
Finally, we both agree that our positionalities are flexible. They evolve as we interact with our research participants and colleagues and reflect on our contexts and biases. We avoid identifying ourselves with binaries or exclusionary positions. That does not mean that we are ambivalent or vague. On the contrary, we believe that rather than being a bystander we should engage with others and collaborate, especially with those on the move. The more researchers can allow themselves to listen to any argument, trying to understand why someone may think or act in a particular way, the more their work might be collaborative with migrants and local communities. In this sense, socio-legal approaches may be informed by ethnography. We thus believe that the most challenging positionality is imagining new horizons with others: constantly stepping outside oneself, time and again, and returning with multiple perspectives. Every researcher carries something of the migrant, always seeking to understand the other; and every migrant carries something of the researcher, in their own search for understanding.
Achiume, E.T. (2022) Empire, borders, and refugee responsibility sharing. California Law Review, 110 (3), 1011-1040.
Bejarano A. (2011). Democracias precarias: Trayectorias políticas divergentes en Colombia y Venezuela (Precarious democracies: Divergent political paths in Colombia and Venezuela). Bogotá, D. C., Colombia: Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. Retrieved September 4, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7440/j.ctt18crz6b
Harley, T. and Wazefadost, N. (2023) Guidelines for Co-Produced Research with Refugees and Other People with Lived Experience of Displacement. UNSW.
Müller-Funk, L. (2021) Research with refugees in fragile political contexts: How ethical reflections impact methodological choices. Journal of Refugee Studies, 34 (2), 2308–2332.https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaa013.
Roht-Arriaza, N. and Martínez, S. (2019) Grand corruption and the international criminal court in the Venezuela situation. Journal of International Criminal Justice, 17 (5), 1057–1082.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the Authors:
Fernando Garlin
Fernando Garlin is a PhD candidate at Université Paris Cité (CEPED, IRD, INSERM). His research intersects border studies, violence, and migration. Using ethnographic methods, he seeks to understand hate narratives within the governance regimes where they emerge. His publications focus on the political and aesthetic forms that alternative or marginalized groups adopt during sanitary and political crises.
Juliana Poveda
JulianaPoveda is a PhD student in the Law Department at Ulster University. Her research project addresses the linkages between reparative justice, responsibility-sharing, and durable solutions, addressing the case of Venezuelans forced to migrate to Colombia, the United States and Spain (EU). She is interested in sociolegal and interdisciplinary research that engages forced migration, human rights protection, and peacebuilding.
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On 19th July 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestinian territory is a violation of international law. In this blog post, Michelle Rudolph and Rachel Kurian analyse how the water governance regime imposed by the Israeli occupation in the West Bank generates systemic injustice and water insecurity for Palestinians. Their study was presented at the Teach-In Series on Water Justice in Palestine hosted by IHE Delft in May 2024 and held at IHE and at the Universities of Amsterdam and Wageningen.
Palestinian herders’ encampment in the northern Jordan Valley, West Bank (Photo by Michelle Rudolph, Jordan Valley, July 2019).
The sun blazes fiercely, its early morning heat already engulfing the dry landscape. In this wide expanse, a community of tents stands resolute, their silhouettes distinct against the dusty backdrop. Dust settles on every surface, coating the worn fabric of shelters and clinging to the hot iron roofs and water troughs.
Abdullah stands quietly at the edge of the encampment. He wipes his sweat from his brow, his weathered face a testament to years spent under the sun. His sheep huddle in the scant shade, their woolly bodies pressed close together. Each animal is precious, providing milk, meat and wool that sustain his family. As he tends to his flock, a distant rumble disrupts the quiet, catching Abdullah’s attention. The sound of live military training echoes through the valley. His brows furrow as he listens intently, wondering if the manoeuvres will draw closer and disrupt the fragile peace. For a moment, he stands still, his eyes scanning the horizon, the weight of uncertainty heavy on his shoulders.
Yet, immediate concerns press upon him, anchoring him firmly in the present. The problem of finding water for his family and sheep looms large. The water troughs lie empty, a stark reminder of his ongoing struggle to secure this vital resource. Abdullah draws a deep breath, bracing himself for the challenges that lie ahead today, much like every other day before it.
Since the war of June 1967, nearly 90% of the Jordan Valley, West Bank, has been under Israeli military control and so has the distribution of water. As a Palestinian Bedouin in the valley, Abdullah lives alongside his extended family in tents devoid of running water. Groundwater lies beneath their feet, yet regulations prohibit them from digging a well. The Jordan River flows nearby, but its access has been blocked by the Israeli military and Civil Administration. Below the Bedouin encampment, a water pipeline supplies a neighbouring Israeli settlement with continuous water, but Abdullah and his family are strictly forbidden from tapping into it. In an attempt to secure water, Abdullah once constructed a small water tank, only to have it demolished by the Israeli military for lacking proper permission. Each morning, Abdullah grapples with the pressing question: How can he procure enough water for drinking, washing, cleaning, cooking, and caring for his children, while ensuring his sheep thrive to provide income for his family’s survival? Abdullah’s experiences, shared with us during an interview in July 2019, are similar to those of many Palestinians in this area.
In this blog post, we delve into the critical issue of water and human insecurity faced by Palestinian Bedouins and farmers. Drawing from our study on water governance in the West Bank, we explore the underlying causes of these insecurities.
Our research sheds light on the asymmetrical power relations that shape water governance, significantly impacting the lives of vulnerable communities. Central to our discussion is the concept of hydro-hegemony, introduced by Zeitoun and Warner in 2006. This concept was developed to help us understand how stronger riparian states use various tactics and strategies in cross-border water conflicts to assert their dominance. However, we can also apply it to our case in which Israel’s hydro-hegemony over groundwater resources in the West Bank is manifested through three forms of power:
Material Power: This includes the use of military force, financial resources, and technological advancements.
Bargaining Power: This involves strategic negotiations and the use of incentives to influence outcomes.
Ideational Power: This encompasses the use of discourse and ideologies to shape perceptions and narratives.
Our study shows that these power dynamics are not just abstract concepts but have real, tangible effects on the daily lives of Palestinians. The systemic and structural nature of water insecurity means that many Palestinians are not only denied their basic right to water but also their right to livelihoods and to life itself.
The research we draw on combines historical and contemporary data with information based on 27 in-depth interviews we conducted in 2019. These interviews were held in the West Bank, primarily with Palestinian women and men from various communities in the Jordan Valley. In addition, we spoke to representatives from crucial institutions like the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA), the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), and the Palestinian development and training institution MA’AN.
West Bank, Area C, and the Jordan Valley
The West Bank is a landlocked territory spanning approximately 5700 square kilometres – about one-seventh the size of the Netherlands. It is bordered by Jordan to the east and Israel on the north, south, and west and it has been under Israeli military occupation since June 1967.
The region is rich in freshwater resources, including the Jordan River and three major aquifers: the Western Aquifer, the North-Eastern Aquifer, and the Eastern Aquifer, that are collectively known as the ‘Mountain Aquifer’ and that extend through the West Bank and Israel (see image 2) (World Bank, 2009).
Image 2 – Water resources in the West Bank (by Michelle Rudolph after Zeitoun et al., 2009).
In 1967, the establishment of Kfar Etzion marked the beginning of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. These settlements, built by Israel and populated by Israeli citizens, have grown significantly over the decades. They are illegal under international law, as Article 49(6) of the 1949 Geneva Convention IV – also signed by Israel – explicitly prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilians into the occupied territory (ICRC, 2018). That Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory and settlement building are unlawful has also been confirmed by International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its recent ruling of 19 July 2024.
In 1993, the first Interim Agreement, the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements known as Oslo I, was signed by the Israeli government and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). It recognised Israel as a state and created joint Israeli-Palestinian committees for ‘mutual security’ and economic cooperation on several aspects, including water. The second agreement of 1995, the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip known as Oslo II, divided the West Bank into three administrative zones – Areas A, B, and C – each with a different governance system. Area C which covers 60% of the West Bank and contains most of the agricultural lands and water resources, came under full Israeli civil and security control.
While these agreements seemed to facilitate some level of cooperation, in reality, they allowed Israel’s continued control over Palestinian resources. They legitimized Israel as the sole authority to decide which lands would come under Palestinian control and left open the resolution of key areas of conflict such as borders, refugees, Jerusalem, and settlements. Moreover, they provided no legal power to stop the expansion of settlements and roads in the West Bank (Roy, 2002).
The Jordan Valley, where Abdullah lives with his family, is situated in the eastern part of the West Bank. Most of this area falls within Area C (blue and purple areas on the map), meaning it is under full Israeli military control. Often, these lands are designated as Israeli military zones (grey marked areas) or nature reserves (green marked area), restricting Palestinian access.
Referred to as a “giant greenhouse,” the Jordan Valley is ideal for irrigated agriculture due to its fertile soil, groundwater resources, ample sunlight, and warm climate. However, the stringent controls over land and water have led to a steady decline in Palestinian agricultural production throughout the occupation.
The Jordan Valley (image by Michelle Rudolph after OCHA 2012).
Impact on Palestinian Communities and the Urgent Need for Action
So, what do asymmetrical power relations in water governance mean for Palestinians famers and herders in the Jordan Valley? Our research reveals that they are confronted with various, interconnected, and cumulative forms of water insecurity in their daily lives:
Quantity– The quantitative supply gap is the starkest expression of the discriminatory water regime, as shown by the huge discrepancy in water consumption between Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the Jordan Valley (see image). For example, in the Ro’i and Beka’ot settlements in the northern Jordan Valley, the average household consumption exceeds 400 litres per capita per day (lpcd), compared to just 20 lpcd in the neighboring Bedouin community of Al-Hadidiya (Hareuveni, 2011).
Not being served by any network, many Palestinian Bedouin communities are forced to rely on water trucking, obtaining water from wells, springs, or filling points in other communities (UN, 2021). Some Palestinian farmers own their own wells. However, these are usually only a few dozen metres deep, in contrast to Israeli wells that regularly go down hundreds of metres to reach the aquifer. In past decades, groundwater levels have dropped significantly and so have the pumping rates from Palestinian wells. When Palestinian farmers have applied for permission to deepen their wells in order to regain access to fresh groundwater, their applications have often been denied by the JWC or the permission that they have received has not allowed them to dig as deep as required. Quality– While the quality of the water from springs and the Israeli network was generally considered good, water from wells often has high concentrations of chloride, rendering it unsuited for domestic use and posing health risks to families and livestock when they do drink from it
Distance and time– Water insecurity also results from the distance to water sources and the time required to collect water. Bedouin families who depend on water trucking endure long daily journeys to access fresh water, particularly challenging during the summer months.
Price and Affordability– Access to water is often financially burdensome, the price depending on the cost of the electricity needed to pump groundwater, the cost of water distribution, and the cost of transporting the water. Particularly for Bedouins, it challenges their economic stability.
Frequency and Reliability– Several of the issues discussed above show how Palestinians in the Jordan Valley experience water insecurity in relation to both the frequency and reliability of their water supplies. During the interviews, it was highlighted that frequency and reliability of water access were also compromised through the use of military force by Israel’s Civil Administration, as when construction and movement restrictions were imposed on Palestinians and water-related supply systems (e.g. water tanks and pipes) were demolished by Israeli soldiers.
Safety– Finally, the enforcement of military power in a context of conflict and occupation creates significant issues around safety of water access. One Bedouin father of eight shared his experience, explaining how he had been arrested several times by the Israeli military for unknowingly letting his sheep graze on closed-off land. “There are no borders. Only by experience you learn where (…) you can’t go”.. The situation is further aggravated by acts of violence perpetrated by armed Israeli settlers against Palestinians, including shootings and vandalism to property, which create a pervasive atmosphere of fear and insecurity. A local NGO member captured the dire reality of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley with stark clarity: “[They] are feeling threatened all the time. They are feeling insecure all the time. They have a lack of everything all the time”.
Daily domestic water consumption in litres per person (image by Michelle Rudolph after OCHA, 2021).
Living under these different forms of water and human insecurity has profound and far-reaching consequences for Palestinians, impacting their farming, herding, livelihoods, health, families and social relations. They are not just denied their fundamental right to water, but also their right to livelihood and life itself. As poignantly noted by a doctor from a health clinic in Area C in the Jordan Valley: “People here die twice in their lives. They die when they are alive, and they die when they are dying. […] no water, no cleaning, no hygiene, problems, conflicts […]”. At the same time, Palestinian farmers and herders are determined to remain on their land, undertaking various strategies to sustain their livelihoods and lives under extreme forms of violence, which we detail in another ongoing study.
This summer marks five years since we spoke with Abdullah and many other Palestinian farmers and herders in the Jordan Valley. During this time, several Bedouin communities in the area have been demolished, and Israeli pressures have only intensified (UNRWA, 2024). Since October 7, reports of settler violence and Israeli military offenses have surged: As of now, 20 Bedouin communities in the West Bank have been forcibly displaced by armed extremist settlers often with the consent and support of the Israeli military which is, as argued by Forey (2024), a form of ethnic cleansing.
These escalating challenges underscore the dire and urgent need for action. The struggle for water and human security faced by Palestinians in the West Bank is not just a local issue but a fundamental human rights crisis. It demands our continued attention, advocacy, and efforts to support those affected and to push for lasting and just solutions.
Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.
About the Authors:
Michelle Rudolph
Michelle Rudolph is a social scientist, water engineer, and visual designer, holding an MSc in Environmental Engineering (Delft) and an MA in Development Studies (SJP) at the ISS. Michelle’s professional endeavours encompass research, fieldwork, and teaching, with a focus on water governance, disaster risk reduction, social vulnerability, and communication across various global contexts. She currently works as a consultant at HKV, a firm based in the Netherlands, specialized in flood risk and water management.
Rachel Kurian
Rachel Kurian is (retired) International Labour Economist at the ISS. She has done fieldwork and research on Palestine since 2014.
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