Humanitarianism at a Crossroads: Past Legacies, Present Crises, and Future Models of Assistance

Humanitarian assistance is facing a period of uncertainty. The institutional model that expanded in recent decades—anchored in humanitarian principles, international humanitarian law, multilateral coordination, and donor-funded operational capacity—is increasingly challenged by geopolitical fragmentation, shrinking aid budgets, protracted conflicts, attacks on humanitarian personnel, and contested access. At the same time, localization, technological change, new financing arrangements, and shifting relationships between international aid agencies, states, and affected communities are transforming who defines, finances, and delivers assistance.
This panel examines humanitarian assistance across time. It asks how the political and institutional legacies of humanitarianism have produced the contemporary system; how humanitarian actors currently negotiate sovereignty, access, principles, and operational constraints; and what forms humanitarian action may take in the coming decade. Rather than treating current pressures as isolated operational problems, the panel asks whether they indicate a deeper transformation of the humanitarian order.
What happens when humanitarian needs increase while resources contract? How does declining respect for international humanitarian law affect access, protection, and the security of humanitarian personnel? Why do some governments cooperate with humanitarian actors while others regulate, appropriate, or coerce them? How are funding cuts changing priorities, risk, accountability, and relationships with affected populations? Can localization, technological innovation, alternative financing, and new forms of multilateral cooperation produce a more legitimate and resilient humanitarian system, or will they reproduce existing inequalities and political forms of control?
Bringing political science into direct dialogue with humanitarian practice, the panel welcomes historical, comparative, quantitative, qualitative, normative, and practitioner-led contributions. By connecting humanitarianism's institutional past to its contested present and uncertain future, it seeks to identify both what is changing and what forms of humanitarian action remain politically, ethically, and operationally possible.