Transforming Humanitarian Response towards Local Humanitarian Leadership

We are at a crossroads in the humanitarian community. Despite global commitments made in 2016 to shift power away from international to local actors to lead during crisis response, little has changed. We know that humanitarian action led by responsible governments in crisis-affected countries, assisted and held accountable by civil society, can more quickly save lives and act more appropriately to meet the needs of local populations. Simply put, governments and civil society in crisis-affected contexts should be leading humanitarian action wherever possible, with international actors assuming a supporting role. How do we get there? Fatema will share examples from recent crises in Mozambique, Indonesia, and the Philippines and explore how we can transform global humanitarian response towards local humanitarian leadership. In this CID Speaker Series podcast, CID student ambassador Mark sits down with Fatema Sumar, VP for Global Programs at Oxfam America to discuss the need for transformation in humanitarian response towards local humanitarian leadership. // Interview recorded on October 11, 2019. About the Speaker: Fatema Z. Sumar joined Oxfam America in 2018 as Vice President of Global Programs, where she oversees our regional development and humanitarian response programs. Fatema comes to Oxfam with a distinguished career in the U.S. government, leading U.S. efforts to advance sustainable development and economic policy in emerging markets and fragile countries. Most recently, she served as Regional Deputy Vice President for Europe, Asia, Pacific, and Latin America at the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), where she managed investments focused on international growth and poverty reduction. Prior to MCC, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia at the U.S. Department of State and as a Senior Professional Staff Member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Fatema holds a Master’s in Public Affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School and a Bachelor of Arts in Government from Cornell University. She studied abroad at the American University in Cairo. View the transcript for this episode here: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/Transcripts/Transcript-%20Transforming%20Humanitarian%20Response.pdf

Om Podcasten

Incredible progress has been made throughout the world in recent years. However, globalization has failed to deliver on its promises. As problems like unequal access to education and healthcare, environmental degradation, and stretched finances persist, we must continue building on decades of transformative development work. The Center for International Development (CID) is a university-wide center based at the Harvard Kennedy School that seeks to solve these pressing development problems—and many more. At CID, we believe leveraging global talent is the key to enabling development for all. We teach to build capacity, conduct research that guides development policy, and convene talent to advance ideas for a thriving world. Addressing today’s challenges to international development also requires bridging academic expertise with practitioner experience. Through collaborative, in-country partnerships, CID’s research programs, faculty, and students deploy an analytical framework and context-dependent approaches to tackle development problems from all angles, in every region of the globe.