Humanitarian NGOs work under a set of assumptions drawn from Reformed Protestantism

What is it about?

Humanitarian relief organizations value impartiality, independence, and neutrality. I show here that other ways of providing humanitarian relief were historically also valued, and that in the mid-nineteenth-century, a Reformed Protestant movement based on Geneva pushed forward ideals of impartiality and neutrality through the Red Cross. The Red Cross's work laid out the field of humanitarian work as we know it today.

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Why is it important?

Many humanitarian organizations today claim that they must be independent from state authorities to work properly, but this article shows that this idea is culturally specific, and that other models of humanitarianism could also be taken into consideration. The research also shows theoretically that the way social and professional fields are formed depends on their cultural and religious contexts.