Harvard Book Store: since 1932Events
publishers weekly bookseller of the year 2002
harvard book store

Home
 
Search
 
Events Quality
Bargains
Scholarly
Section
Remainders
Section
About Us
& Contact

Events : Home

Calendar View

Archived Events

Scholarly Books


Search

select seventy

Select Seventy
20% off great titles selected by our staff!


A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis
Simon & Schuster
Oct 2002
isbn: 068480977X
$26.00 buy

David Rieff, October 28

A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis
Simon & Schuster

Monday, 6pm
Weiner Auditorium, Taubman Building, Kennedy School of Government
79 JFK Street, Cambridge
No tickets are required
Cosponsored by the Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy

Timely and controversial, A Bed for the Night reveals how humanitarian organizations trying to bring relief in an ever more violent and dangerous world are often betrayed and misused, and have increasingly lost sight of their purpose.

Humanitarian relief workers, writes David Rieff, are the last of the just. And in the Bosnias, the Rwandas, and the Afghanistans of this world, humanitarianism remains the vocation of helping people when they most desperately need help, when they have lost or stand at risk of losing everything they have, including their lives.

Although humanitarianism's accomplishments have been tremendous, including saving countless lives, the lesson of the past ten years of civil wars and ethnic cleansing is that it can do only so much to alleviate suffering. Aid workers have discovered that while trying to do good, their efforts may also cause harm.

Drawing on firsthand reporting from hot war zones around the world -- Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo, Kosovo, Sudan, and most recently Afghanistan -- Rieff describes how the International Committee of the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, the International Rescue Committee, CARE, Oxfam, and other humanitarian organizations have moved from their founding principle of political neutrality, which gave them access to victims of wars, to encouraging the international community to take action to stop civil wars and ethnic cleansing.

This advocacy has come at a high price. By calling for intervention -- whether by the United Nations or by "coalitions of the willing" -- humanitarian organizations risk being seen as taking sides in a conflict and thus jeopardizing their access to victims. And by overreaching, the humanitarian movement has allowed itself to be hijacked by the major powers, at times becoming a fig leaf for actions those powers wish to take for their own interests, or for the major powers' inaction. Rieff concludes that if humanitarian organizations are to do what they do best -- alleviate suffering -- they must reclaim their independence.

Except for relief workers themselves, no one has looked at humanitarian action as seriously or as unflinchingly, or has had such unparalleled access to its inner workings, as Rieff, who has traveled and lived with aid workers over many years and four continents.

A cogent, hard-hitting report from the front lines, A Bed for the Night shows what international aid organizations must do if they are to continue to care for the victims of humanitarian disasters.

 

Home | Search | Scholarly | Bargains | Events | About Us | Contact

Copyright 2004 Harvard Book Store
Phone: 800-542-READ    FAX: 617-497-1158