Humanitarian work

Context

Natural disasters and armed conflicts affect lives of many people around the world, in developing and unstable countries especially. Impact of such events, which often have very varied time path – from very short events to protracted problems, on safety, economy and future development of local people is very dramatic and often affects primarily those, who are already marginalised in some way and more vulnerable, no matter these are people living in slums, minorities, people affected by floods or long-term droughts and expulsion due to a conflict. All these events result in destruction of a large number of lives.

Inspiration

The term “emergency relief“, which express better the necessity for fast intervention, which precedes other stabilization and recovery phases like rehabilitation, reconciliation, reconstruction, development planning and individual development cooperation, is increasingly used for post-catastrophic aid at the international level. The term “humanitarian aid” has been established within the short tradition of post-catastrophic assistance in the Czech country and that is why we have chosen it as the title of this study programme. This title is adhered also by the NOHA (Network on Humanitarian Assistance, http://www.nohanet.org/), a European educational network providing education in the field of humanitarian aid. We have adopted many of the key elements of this international association (management, anthropology, epidemiology, psychological assistance, geopolitics and international law), since it represents a high standard, at least in the European perspective.  

Own solution

The programme’s concept builds upon the basic belief that reconciliation and solidarity mobilization in local communities and societies are the basis of all effective aid in the course of foreign assistance after disasters, long-lasting conflicts and protracted crises. Recovery and development of these local and natural social sources at the level of communities and societies is then a presupposition of development of the whole region, according to our concept. To gain knowledge and skill of intervention at this level, our programme combines the perspective of social work and Christian social tradition.      

We consider religiosity of those who suffer from a humanitarian crisis to be the key factor and the energy for a change in their situation, since, as experience shows, it represents completely obvious and ubiquitous source of their behaviour. Although religiosity has different expressional form in many regions of humanitarian intervention, we consider the Christian social tradition to be the source of interreligiously sensitive inspirations.

The perspective of social work has been chosen intentionally, since its contemporary conception expressed in the definition of the International federation of social workers (2000) corresponds to the emphases and conception of our programme. From this perspective, we consider a humanitarian intervention to be a form of social work carried out in specific conditions of intercultural and interreligious differences and mostly within the context of developing countries.     

The presence of such programme at the theological faculty springs from the basic mission of the humanitarian work, which is moderation of suffering and promotion of a change in unbearable situation of humans affected by a disaster or side effects of a conflict. This completely resonates with the social, diaconical mission of the church in this world.