HPG Working Paper The new humanitarian basics Marc DuBois May 2018 HPG Humanitarian Policy Group About the author Marc DuBois works as an independent humanitarian analyst and consultant based in London. He previously spent 15 years in various roles with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), most recently as the Executive Director of MSF-UK. This Working Paper is part of the HPG series ‘Constructive Deconstruction: Imagining Alternative Humanitarian Action’. Humanitarian Policy Group Overseas Development Institute 203 Blackfriars Road London SE1 8NJ United Kingdom Tel. +44 (0) 20 7922 0300 Fax. +44 (0) 20 7922 0399 E-mail:
[email protected] Website: http://www.odi.org/hpg © Overseas Development Institute, 2018 Readers are encouraged to quote or reproduce materials from this publication but, as copyright holders, ODI requests due acknowledgement and a copy of the publication. This and other HPG Reports are available from www. odi.org.uk/hpg. Contents 1 Introduction: prototyping a new humanitarian action 1 2 Setting the stage 3 2.1 What do we mean by ‘humanitarian action’? 3 2.2 Neither a fire department nor a rescue team 3 3 Rescoping crisis response 5 3.1 ‘Seeing’ less humanitarian crisis: rescoping the basis for intervention 5 3.2 Fitting the means to the end: identifying the limits of the humanitarian role 7 4 Towards a humanity-centred humanitarian action 9 4.1 A new humanitarian connectivity: rescoping humanitarian productivity 9 4.2 Going local 10 4.3 The principles of humanitarian action 11 4.4 Reorienting humanitarian protection 13 5 The