Humanitarianism: Navigating between resilience and vulnerability

This chapter explores how humanitarianism navigates between resilience and vulnerability to set boundaries around what can and cannot be done in the name of humanitarian action. Humanitarianism has widely adopted a resilience approach, yet vulnerability remains a key indicator in targeting, although its application is increasingly complex. The chapter first outlines the complexities of who decides about vulnerability, using as examples humanitarian crises where disaster meets conflict. It then calls attention to the importance of critically analysing the technologies of vulnerability that humanitarians use, i.e. indicators, categories, and algorithms. While seemingly technocratic or science-based, these technologies tend to obscure power relations and throw up additional barriers for accountable humanitarian action.