Formulating professional identity

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Moral Legitimacy ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Palestinian Territories ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Moral Accountability ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Conflicting Demands ◽  
Palestinian Population

Recent scholarly and practitioner research on the work of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) has been concerned with questions about the moral legitimacy of humanitarian aid in settings of armed conflict. At issue is the extent to which NGO activities are said to affect the conduct and outcome of warfare, thereby potentially implicating humanitarian aid in the partisan interests which it has traditionally eschewed as a condition of its legitimacy. This paper explores how such issues are taken up in the explanations offered by humanitarian aid operatives in descriptions of the work they carry out in settings of armed conflict. Drawing on a corpus of conversational material recorded in open-ended interviews with representatives of various NGOs that operate in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), I examine how speakers work to make themselves accountable to demands for sympathetic affiliation with the losing (or vanquished) parties in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict while maintaining a non-aligned stance relative to the partisan considerations that animate that conflict’s conduct. Both in first-hand narrative accounts of personal transformation and in descriptions of contrastive examples where professional colleagues are said to maintain a too-sympathetic affiliation with the partisan concerns of the Palestinian population whose needs they service, speakers work to provide for the legitimacy of their professional activities in the context of otherwise conflicting demands for moral accountability.

The humanitarian imperative under fire

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Humanitarian Assistance ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Palestinian Territories ◽  
Humanitarian Aid Workers ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Competing Demands ◽  
The One

This paper explores how speakers manage the dilemmatic tension between competing demands for accountability in mundane explanations of humanitarian assistance in settings of armed conflict. Taking as analytic data talk recorded in interviews with the personnel of aid agencies and various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who work in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), we examine how demands for both non-partisan impartiality, on the one hand, and sympathetic alignment with the victims (or losing parties) of armed conflict, on the other, feature in the explanations that humanitarian aid workers formulate to account for their professional activities. While non-partisanship features as a source of legitimacy given that humanitarian assistance is regarded as a response to universal human suffering, the source of that suffering in armed conflict necessitates recognition of the antagonist-protagonist and victim relationship in order for aid recipients to be identified. Everyday accounts of aid work function to mitigate the otherwise mutually exclusive relationship between competing assumptions that inform the logic of humanitarian assistance.

scholarly journals Vicissitudes of laughter

Pragmatics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-300
Author(s):  
Kevin McKenzie
Keyword(s):  
Job Satisfaction ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Aid Workers ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Palestinian Territories ◽  
Humanitarian Aid Workers ◽  
Humanitarian Work ◽  
The Way

Abstract This paper is concerned with the way that laughter is employed to manage threats to interlocutor affiliation in talk among humanitarian aid workers as they describe their professional activities in settings of armed conflict. I first set out to situate my analysis within the tradition of work in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EM), exploring how that approach differs in significant ways from work in pragmatics and related traditions of discourse analytic research. Unlike the latter approaches, EM examines laughter for the intelligibility it is deployed by speakers to furnish, so that the presumption of laughter’s revelatory nature which characterizes a pragmatically-oriented analysis is seen as a participant resource for rendering the situated significance of actions visible by and for the involved parties of a given episode of interaction. Following this, I examine talk from open-ended interviews with aid agency operatives who work in Israel and the Palestinian Territories, exploring how laughter is employed to manage threats to interlocutor affiliation where the potential accusation of opportunism arises in accounts of personal job satisfaction as against the legitimacy otherwise afforded with an appeal to altruism and self-sacrifice. Where speakers attend to the criticism of humanitarian activity for its significance in affecting outcomes of warfare, the management of these different demands is accomplished in reflexive work to ironize their own and others’ formulations of motivation for pursuing humanitarian work.

Repräsentationen von Massengewalt

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim C. Savelsberg
Keyword(s):  
Field Theory ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Foreign Ministries

With the expansion of international criminal law, the causation and exercise of mass violence is increasingly criminalized. However, the fields of humanitarian aid and diplomacy generate representations completely different from what criminal law suggests. A comparative analysis of eight countries reveals variable susceptibilities for these competing narratives. The empirical evidence is based on a content analysis of more than 3,000 newspaper articles on violence in Darfur and on interviews with African correspondents and specialists in non-governmental organizations and foreign ministries of the eight countries. The analysis suggests differentiations in argumentation concerning field theory as well as theories of globalization.

International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law

1993 ◽  
Vol 33 (293) ◽  
pp. 94-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Doswald-Beck ◽  
Sylvain Vité
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The United Nations

International humanitarian law is increasingly perceived as part of human rights law applicable in armed conflict. This trend can be traced back to the United Nations Human Rights Conference held in Tehran in 1968 which not only encouraged the development of humanitarian law itself, but also marked the beginning of a growing use by the United Nations of humanitarian law during its examination of the human rights situation in certain countries or during its thematic studies. The greater awareness of the relevance of humanitarian law to the protection of people in armed conflict, coupled with the increasing use of human rights law in international affairs, means that both these areas of law now have a much greater international profile and are regularly being used together in the work of both international and non-governmental organizations.

Assessing the Civil Society’s Role in Refugee Integration in Turkey: NGO-R as a New Typology

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulaş Sunata ◽  
Salіh Tosun
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
Community Organizations ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Refugee Community ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The People ◽  
Main Factors

Abstract After the Syrian refugee influx in Turkey, the aspect of civil society in integration needs further clarification and categorization. Therefore, in this study, we aim to develop a general typology of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that are active in immigration and immigration-related areas (NGO-R; non-governmental organizations—refugees). Our findings show that NGO-Rs play crucial roles in helping the refugees to access the rights provided by state, in integrating them into society at the local level by creating new social spaces and in sending humanitarian aid to the people of concern in Syria. Additionally, we claim that the refugee crisis facilitated the opportunities both for active citizenship as demanded and for new mobilization to manage the humanitarian and integration assistance towards the Syrians. Lastly, our fieldwork shows that religious and belief motives are the main factors playing a large part in the creation and maintenance of the NGO-R activities and refugee community organizations (RCOs) can have a distinctive integrative function by preferring to stay outside the mainstream channels.

scholarly journals THE EXPERIENCE OF TRAINING EXPERTS IN THE FIELD OF EDUCATION IN EASTERN EUOROPE

2019 ◽  
pp. 88-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tryhub Ilona
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Postgraduate Education ◽  
Entrance Examination ◽  
Professional Activities ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Postgraduate Studies ◽  
The Republic

In the article has been singled out features of the classification of Eastern Europe countries according to the professional training of experts in the field of education (systematicity and length of training); founded the tendencies of professional training of experts in the field of education in countries of Eastern Europe: general tendencies (in particular: orientation of training of experts in the field of education in quality assurance; implementation of professional training of experts in the field of education in masters training, postgraduate education and non-governmental organizations; the introduction of seminars, workshops and conferences as forms of training of experts in the field of education; election of future experts in the field of education among experienced teachers; election of candidates are offered by universities, rectors conferences, schools and universities, students parliaments, national academic associations and employers’ organizations; implementation of the official Code of Ethics in professional activities of experts in the field of education; introduction of state and public control over the activity of experts in the field of education; exchange of experience of expert activity in the international cooperation); specific tendencies (in particular: entrance examination / briefing by experts in the field of education (the Republic of Lithuania); preparation of experts in the field of education at the level of the master’s degree in higher educational institutions (the Republic of Latvia); professional training of experts in the field of education in different forms (seminars, advanced training courses, postgraduate studies) (Russian Federation) etc.

scholarly journals AID FOR AFRICA AS ONE OF THE ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT BY POLISH NGOs: LEGAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH

MEST Journal ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-81
Author(s):  
Marek Stych ◽  
Beata Pawlica ◽  
Malgorzata Kmak
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Humanitarian Aid ◽  
International Aid ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The People

This article tackles the issue of aid for African states. Africa is one of the poorest continents, with many people living on the verge of poverty and suffering from malnutrition or famine. Hence, the humanitarian aid provided to the people of this continent is of particular importance. In Poland, such aid activities undertake entities defined in the Polish legal system as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). NGOs also conduct many other kinds of activities. The Act on public benefit and volunteer work is an example of creating legal mechanisms for the functioning of civil society in the legal system to provide international aid to those it needs. Assisting other societies is important for modern civil society the same as political or economic cooperations are. The role of NGOs operating in health protection, education, or entrepreneurship areas is crucially important. The authors of this paper discuss the issue of the said aid provided by selected Polish NGOs. The article aims to determine the extent and scope of the assistance to African countries provided by the NGOs, based on the respondents' experiences, whether such assistance is necessary, and what form it should take.

Keeping Camouflage Out of the Classroom: The Safe Schools Declaration and the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use During Armed Conflict

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marten Zwanenburg
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Safe Schools ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations

Abstract This article discusses the ‘Safe Schools Declaration’ and the ‘Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military use during Armed Conflict’. The latter are set of non-binding guidelines that aim to improve the protection of schools and universities during armed conflict. The former is a political declaration through which States can endorse the Guidelines. The article looks at the drafting process of the two documents, which involved non-governmental organizations (NGOs), international organizations and States. The article argues that the involvement of NGOs can be seen as reflective of a trend in which NGOs are increasingly involved in normative International Humanitarian Law (IHL) development. The role of international organizations was less pronounced, but nevertheless notable because international organizations traditionally do not have an active role in the field of IHL. The article contains an analysis of the Declaration and Guidelines, against the background of the applicable legal framework to the protection of schools and universities during armed conflict. It concludes that the principal focus of the Guidelines is the prevention of the use of schools and universities by armed forces in support of the military effort. IHL does not contain a rule prohibiting such use, but it can have far-reaching negative consequences for education. Other guidelines relate to, inter alia (limitations to), destroying or attacking schools and universities. These guidelines, while sometimes using phraseology from provisions of IHL treaty law, also largely go beyond existing obligations under IHL.

scholarly journals (A119) Ethical Issues in the Review and Conduct of Research during Active Conflicts: Reflections from Darfur, West Sudan

2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S1) ◽  
pp. s33-s34
Author(s):  
G.M.A. Hussein
Keyword(s):  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Ethical Review ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Rebel Groups ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Humanitarian Interventions ◽  
International Attention

A crisis has been evolving in the region of Darfur following an armed conflict between rebel groups and the assumingly government-supported militia in 2003. It has attracted international attention and intervention where 13 UN agencies and around 100 national and international non-governmental organizations have been serving the affected populations. Research as methodological means of data collection is crucial to timely assessment of the affected populations' needs before humanitarian interventions, raising fund to fulfil these needs, and to assess the effects of the humanitarian aids that have been delivered. However, the factors of (1) insecurity; (2) limited resources; (3) vulnerability of the population; and (4) the potential cultural and moral differences among researchers and the surveyed populations make the research process methodologically and ethically challenging. The aim of this paper is to present the effects of these factors on the ethical review and implementation of research, with emphasis on the issues of benefit-risk analysis, conflict of interests, and informed consent. A practical framework for the ethical review that responds to the need of timely provision of information as well as promoting the adherence to the international ethical principles also will be provided.

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