17 Aug World Humanitarian Day 2012

The World Health Organization has announced that Sunday 19 August is World Humanitarian Day. This day, they say, “offers the chance:

• for the public to learn more about the humanitarian community, what aid workers do and the challenges they face;
• for nongovernmental and international bodies and UN agencies, to demonstrate their humanitarian activities;
• to pay respect to those who have died or been injured in the course of their humanitarian work.”

The date was trategically chosen to coincide with the anniversary of the 2003 bombing of UN Headquarters in Baghdad. The theme this year is “I was here” – a chance to share voices through Social Media Networks. The system, apparently, is set up to save your message and to release them all at the same time to the chosen social network medium (am i saying that right?). The hope is to release 1 billion messages at once – right now, the count is showing 222,000,000 – not a bad start. And if you need some convincing, Beyoncé has been brought on board as the international community service ambassador. Last Friday, she recorded “I was here” at the UN General Assembly Hall, last Friday (August 10), for a music video to be released on Sunday.

The difficulty, i have with this, is not the commemoration that this day is meant to be. In fact, i was a little overwhelmed this morning thinking about what it means to lose lives in the course of working to bring peace (in all its guises) to others. What i find problematic, however, is the uncritical way in which people are invited to “help others” to “do something for others.” The conversation about what it means to “give” is not being had. There is an unspoken silencing of questions, of the desire to ask the very tough questions – as though any thought to “kindness” is unquestionable.

This project reminds me of the Kony 2012 campaign and the massive backlash that ensued. I struggled then as i do now, as i am reminded of Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History. I know that at the time of his writing, he was not thinking about humanitarianism and aid, and yet his angel is swept along by the same kind of progress – one that does not allow time to look into the past, to “piece together what has been smashed” – rather, we sweep along with the next phase, the next moment, the march into a modernity that is always reframing itself against a past that is unexamined.

For a much more eloquent look at this project, see Derek Gregory’s post.