Bruno De Cordier

The 'humanitarian frontline', development and relief, and religion. What context, which threats and which opportunities?

Abstract This paper examines the emergence of a humanitarian frontline in several operational contexts. Over the past 15 years, and since 2001 in particular, the international aid sector has been confronted by a climate of polarisation. With the traditional aid and donor landscape dominated by Western or Western-aligned parties who are sometimes involved in armed conflict too, aid organisations face the impact of the supposed or real instrumentalisation of development and relief in a wider security and geopolitical control agenda. At the same time Western or Western-associated secular development models that are often promoted by traditional aid have either encountered their limits or failed in several parts of the global periphery. The expanded space for religion resulting from globalisation and the social changes that it causes have also expanded the space for faith-based development and relief actors, especially in operational situations that have a large cultural and ideological dimension. The paper f...Abstract This paper examines the emergence of a humanitarian frontline in several operational contexts. Over the past 15 years, and since 2001 in particular, the international aid sector has been confronted by a climate of polarisation. With the traditional aid and donor landscape dominated by Western or Western-aligned parties who are sometimes involved in armed conflict too, aid organisations face the impact of the supposed or real instrumentalisation of development and relief in a wider security and geopolitical control agenda. At the same time Western or Western-associated secular development models that are often promoted by traditional aid have either encountered their limits or failed in several parts of the global periphery. The expanded space for religion resulting from globalisation and the social changes that it causes have also expanded the space for faith-based development and relief actors, especially in operational situations that have a large cultural and ideological dimension. The paper focuses on the Islamic world and Islamic faith-based aid, but several factors and trends discussed in it bear relevance for Christian faith-based aid and majority Christian parts of the global periphery as well.

On the Thin Line Between Good Intentions and Creating Tensions: A View on Gender Programmes in Muslim Contexts and the (Potential) Position of Islamic Aid Organisations

The relationship between religion and development remains a contentious issue, especially when it comes to the position of women in the Muslim world. Western and international gender approaches encounter the limits of their effectiveness and legitimacy for reasons that have as much to do with global political factors as well as contextual issues. Adequate gender approaches often require engagement with social actors and with the culture ‘as they are’, including religious actors, even if the values they espouse are often considered incompatible with international standards, or they do not correspond to the kinds of partners that many Western actors and local secular elites desire. Is there an Islamic alternative in this regard? Through three case studies set in majority Muslim contexts characterised by a high degree of social mobility, this article looks into the question of how and to what extent Islamic faith-based aid organisations anticipate or tackle such challenges.Le lien entre religion et développement reste une question controversée, particulièrement lorsqu’il s’agit de la situation des femmes dans le monde musulman. La légitimité et l’efficacité des approches occidentales et internationales quant aux questions de genres sont limitées en raison aussi bien de facteurs politiques mondiaux que de facteurs contextuels. Il est souvent nécessaire d’aborder la question des différences de genre en collaborant avec les acteurs sociaux ‘tels qu’ils sont’ – et ceci comprend les acteurs religieux – et en prenant compte et du context culturel, même si les valeurs associées à celui-ci sont souvent considérées comme incompatibles avec les normes internationales, et même s’ils ne correspondent pas aux types de partenaires avec lesquels les acteurs occidentaux et élites laïques locales souhaitent s’associer. Existe-t-il une alternative islamique à cet égard? Cet article se base sur trois études de cas réalisées dans des contextes majoritairement musulmans caractérisés par un fort degré de mobilité sociale afin d’examiner comment et dans quelle mesure les organisations musulmanes d’aide au développement anticipent et abordent de tels défis.

From Once-Dominant Minority to Historical Christian Outpost on the Southern Caspian: Azerbaijan’s Orthodox Christians

Based on field observations and an empirical survey on religion and identity that was conducted among the Slavic Orthodox population in the wider Baku area and in Ganja, this article examines the identity and social position of this community, now the country’s main Christian population group. While earlier research on the nominally Christian Slavic groups in the Caspian–Central Asian space tended to concentrate on ethnolinguistic and political issues, this research focuses on religious identification, religious practice, and the status of the Orthodox Church. Numbering just 1.5 percent of the population, the Orthodox Christian community in Azerbaijan is nearing extinction due to its aging membership. Nonetheless, Orthodox Christianity will keep a presence in the country and its society, although it could attract a more heterogeneous following.

Russia’s international aid donorship: from diplomatic status symbol to ‘frontline aid’?

Russia is generally considered to be a so-called ‘emerging aid donor’ since Moscow officially announced, at the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg in 2006, that it wanted to become a donor economy again after it had been a recipient economy for one and a half decades. More recently, Russia’s reception of refugees from south-eastern Ukraine and the Russian humanitarian convoys to resistance-held areas there added new controversy about the nature of its aid. Russia also manifested itself as an aid actor with its proposal to the International Red Cross, to have humanitarian truces in Yemen. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the proportions, characteristics and motives of Russia’s current official and officious policies of international development and humanitarian aid, and compare these with what some authors have identified as the identity dilemma in international relations which Russia has struggled with over the last 15 years, one between becoming a (regional) power again despite a number of lingering ...Russia is generally considered to be a so-called ‘emerging aid donor’ since Moscow officially announced, at the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg in 2006, that it wanted to become a donor economy again after it had been a recipient economy for one and a half decades. More recently, Russia’s reception of refugees from south-eastern Ukraine and the Russian humanitarian convoys to resistance-held areas there added new controversy about the nature of its aid. Russia also manifested itself as an aid actor with its proposal to the International Red Cross, to have humanitarian truces in Yemen. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the proportions, characteristics and motives of Russia’s current official and officious policies of international development and humanitarian aid, and compare these with what some authors have identified as the identity dilemma in international relations which Russia has struggled with over the last 15 years, one between becoming a (regional) power again despite a number of lingering internal social-economic challenges, integrating into the G8 or leading among emergent economies, and promoting development and thus the export of a societal model or rather privilege the redistribution of wealth.

International Aid, Frontier Securitization, and Social Engineering: Soviet–Xinjiang Development Cooperation during the Governorate of Sheng Shicai (1933–1944)

This article looks into the nature and dynamics of Soviet assistance to the Governorate of Sheng Shicai, a military de facto state that existed in Xinjiang between 1933 and 1944. Besides discussing how the various forms of Soviet aid shaped the policies of the Governorate, it also examines how Sheng Shicai used the aid to pursue his desire for inclusive patriotism and social modernization into practice. The article further shows how the USSR actively supported Sheng Shicai’s development policies in an urge to securitize its borderlands by abetting ideologically aligned state-building and social transformation there. Although it was done with entirely different actors, methods, and within very different political frameworks, the aid securitization and borderland control logic makes this episode a historical forerunner of the state-building and social development aid in international neo-protectorates today.