More logistics, less aid: Humanitarian-business partnerships and sustainability in the refugee camp
基于对五个国家人道主义物流从业者的实地调研，分析了联合国难民署伙伴关系中物流如何成为优先事项，并指出可持续政策倾向于通过市场整合而非物质援助来解决难民问题，揭示了人道主义部门在推动物流伙伴关系中的核心作用。
This article identifies logistics – the science and practice of managing complex operations and moving goods – as an essential yet overlooked dimension of the alignment of global business and global aid in the UN 2030 Agenda era. Focusing on refugee aid, it draws on qualitative fieldwork with practitioners in the field of humanitarian logistics, active in the partnership environment of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in five countries (Greece, Jordan, Lebanon, Rwanda and Sweden). The analysis shows how aid workers see profit and non-profit partnerships for humanitarian logistics as a priority in the context of the so-called humanitarian-development nexus. In particular, logistics is considered essential to bring refugee aid in line with emerging standards of sustainability. The article puts forward a twofold argument. First, it shows how sustainability policies prioritize logistical solutions that are based on the integration of the displaced in local and transnational markets, rather than on the delivery of material goods and infrastructures. Second, in a slight departure from existing literature on humanitarian logistics, it argues that the agency of the humanitarian sector, and not just that of the corporate world, is central in the promotion of humanitarian logistics partnerships. The conclusions discuss the ethical and political implications of a humanitarianism increasingly oriented towards supply-chain rationales, in which more sustainable logistics often equates less material aid.