Distributed Humanitarianism: Digital Disruption and Poland’s Aid to Ukraine

Abstract: Since the end of World War II, most response to large scale refugee movements has been handled by the international humanitarian system. Made up of UN agencies, national governments, and large international NGOs, this system relied heavily on its ability to move goods to refugees in camps. This system, as many have pointed out is both broke (underfunded) and broken, and increasingly fails to meet refugees needs. However, a new alternative is emerging. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, millions of Polish citizens, mostly self-organized, have provided food, housing, clothing and more to the two million Ukrainians who have crossed into Poland. In the absence of both the nation-state and international aid agencies, this internet-mediated volunteer response has become one of the fastest, most efficient and cost-effective humanitarian actions ever. In this talk, I look at the volunteer response as a form of distributed networked action and ask if it can permanently disrupt the traditional humanitarian system.

Bio: Elizabeth Cullen Dunn is Professor of Geography and the Director of the Center for Refugee Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. She has conducted research on Poland since 1992, and her first book, Privatizing Poland, was awarded the Orbis Book Prize. Her latest book, No Path Home, looks at the failure of humanitarian aid in the wake of the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. Her current research, funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on humanitarian labor, including volunteer action and the role of refugee resettlement agencies in agricultural labor markets.