Oxford HR’s Josje Reinartz, our Associate Director for Asia and the Pacific, attended the 2021 Humanitarian Leadership Conference of the Centre of Humantarian Leadership, Melbourne, Australia, where Oxford HR was a ‘knowledge change partner’.
The conference was titled ‘who are the humanitarians’, and was a very lively online event where 8 keynote speakers, 50 presenters and thousands of participants worked together to explore the decentralisation of humanitarianism, and how to transition from rhetoric to action. They gathered to interrogate what a genuinely transformed humanitarian system could look like based on economic, environmental and political justice for affected communities. A system where the affected communities, local organisations and business communities, and their national governments themselves are the ‘humanitarians’. The conference investigated where change is needed and what a reshaping of the humanitarian ecosystem might look like. The conference challenged traditional humanitarian systems, actors and perceptions through several sub-themes, like ‘Decolonising the humanitarian ecosystem’, ‘Leadership in a world of upheaval and crisis’, ‘Transformative ways of working’, and ‘The political economy of aid and solidarity’.
