The “New-Old” Dimensions of Caring in Humanitarian Response

How can palliative care framings advance humanitarian discourse? The imperative for palliative care in humanitarian settings is increasingly urgent. Recent efforts by health and humanitarian organizations demonstrate increasing attention to the issue.

Yet palliative care is still not adequately formally considered or enacted by humanitarian agencies in rhetoric, policy, research, or practice. Even where it is considered in humanitarian action, palliative care is often assumed to be a novel intervention, rather than a caring practice that has existed from time immemorial, including in humanitarian situations.

The generation of ideas in this paper has followed a dynamic, iterative, and reflexive process through engagement with key literature, critical thinking, conversations with colleagues across both sectors, primary data, and debate amongst the authors.

The paper argues that the current dominant frame of a new, specialized, professionalized, and medicalized palliative care in the humanitarian sector would perpetuate existing challenges.

It posits that the humanitarian-development nexus, decoloniality, and localization thought can benefit from palliative care practice through critical interaction with a broad range of literature.

This paper was first published online in the The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing on September 11, 2024. Click here to read the full article (open access).

Image: An HIV/AIDS patient lies in bed at the Bairo Pite clinic for comprehensive community health service in Dili, Timor-Leste.UN Photo/Martine Perret