HumanEuroMed aims to investigate the role played by Southern European countries in shaping the contemporary regime of international aid. It examines the humanitarian undertakings of Portugal, Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece since the end of the Second World War to the end of the Cold War, looking at the experience of different actors – such as institutions, administrators, experts, non-governmental organisations – in a comparative and transnational perspective. In doing so, HumanEuroMed innovatively asks: what does the history of humanitarianism look like when we bring the Mediterranean actors and their main recipients of international aid back in focus?
HumanEuroMed spans up to 1990, when the end of the Cold War drastically changed the structure of international aid. However, the project has much to say about recent developments in international aid. A more profound knowledge of the past allows for a better understanding of the humanitarian dilemmas of the present. HumanEuroMed offers new insights on the humanitarian tensions and challenges the countries of Mediterranean Europe face today.
The main objectives of the project are:
1. Looking at the countries of southern Europe as active players in shaping the international humanitarian regime in the second half of the 20th century.
2. Scrutinising the complex relationship between decolonisation and humanitarianism from the overlooked perspective of Spain, Portugal and Italy, as well as Greece with regard to its relations with Cyprus.
3. Tracing the role of multiple actors (institutions, non-governmental organisations, professionals and experts) in generating transnational networks which connected the countries of Mediterranean Europe among themselves and to the Global South.
4. Exploring the linkages between international relief and national social welfare programmes, and trace the transnational circulation of policies, practices and cultures of social care between the countries of Mediterranean Europe and the Global South.
5. Examining the impact of shifting political and economic contexts (e.g. the end of dictatorship in Portugal, Spain and Greece) on the shaping of humanitarian policies in the countries under investigation.
6. Paying specific attention to the role played by recipients in the co-construction (together with donors) of humanitarian action.
