About 5 — The Humanising Development Collective

Do you have questions?

We hope so!

Q - What is the Humanising Development Collective?

Humanising Development Collective is an emerging, collaborative process to support a global center and space for positive development practices and paradigms.

What we hope will emerge out of the process is -

A space to animate new imaginations and practices of international solidarity and collective well-being in development

A global center for new ways of thinking about and practicing development that are anti-racist, anti-colonial, anti-elitist, anti-supremacist

Q - Who have you spoken to already?

Over the past few years we have formally and informally conducted multiple interviews with almost 50 civil society leaders, development practitioners and funders who have all called for a market-independent space for anti-racist, anti-colonial, non-harmful thought, learnings, practice, evidence and conversations.

We look forward to soon making this list public so that the momentum can continue to build!

But we are just beginning. Contact us if you wish to give your perspective on what a global center for “better” development should look like, represent and do.

Q - What stage are you at now? What is the process?

We are very conscious that the vision for this work needs to be a collective and multi-cultural effort.

We will begin as we have to date - with 1:1 conversations so that people can share their experiences, thoughts, dreams and desires. During these conversations, we are also hoping to find a core group of collaborators who will shape the future of the center - its name, its purpose, its mission, its structure and more.

In 2024 we will aim to bring together some of the most inspirational thinkers and doers – those who are challenging traditional development paradigms from all spaces and all over the world - to put vision into action.

In 2024 we will also concentrate on engaging donors to fund the center.

Q - Why Humanising Development?

The global development machinery as we know it today was set with the stated intention to do good. While there have been multiple motivations for global development throughout the decades, its conception in the post-colonial and its re-conception in the post-world war era has always claimed to be based on a desire to create the global and local conditions in which everyone could flourish and live safe and productive lives. We have seen multiple generations and expressions of aid and development efforts since then, dominated by many different understandings of what “flourish” and “doing good” meant.

But while these efforts may have been statedly well-intentioned, they were designed, controlled and perpetuated largely by western “Global North” nations and peoples.

Today, our global development system is based on western-constructed visions of what outcomes non-Western populations should achieve and how, where, when and why they should achieve them. Not only are the outcomes decided by external actors, the processes and methods to achieve those outcomes are also pre-determined based on theories of behavioural or social change created by “experts”, trained in the Western, Cartesian and hyper-intellectual problem-solving approach. The validity of evidence of “development” is also subject to a Western scientific hierarchy that privileges data generated using methods created in the West (with an undisguised preference for quantitative epidemiological ones) and discards non-Western indigenous ways of producing and disseminating knowledge as untrustworthy.

In developing these efforts, non-western nations were (and often still are) treated as incomplete, backwards states, their populations characterized as uncivilized, un- or under-developed against the western norm. Non-western people, knowledge, structures and systems of being were demeaned and degraded. Non-western populations and nations learned that they were not as good, not as “civilized” or “developed,” but that with some beneficent effort on the part of white, western agents, they could be. They were made to wait in the foyer of the western elite - only by “westernising” or “developing” would they be admitted to the table of the global powers.

The current global development paradigm transforms populations into objects, a means to achieving an externally-determined outcome that will lead to further funding for the external actor. Around these norms has also grown an global development machine led by and benefitting western protagonists emotionally, physically or financially, who profit from this model, which has been rightly critiqued as a colonial-style repetition of power.

In this current development system, little time space is granted to deep reflections questioning the very essence of what we are doing. Disheartened development workers survive in pockets of resistance, without a place to coalesce across cultures and mental models, to imagine new ways of valuing non-western ways of lives and worldviews that would deeply challenge the existing capitalist, extractive and exploitative development status quo.

We believe that change needs a space and place that can foster an approach to development that sees humans (especially non-white humans) as wholly valuable, more than “other,” more than “beneficiary,” more than “needy,” more than “undeveloped,” more than a means to achieve someone else’s outcomes and more than a means to make money for someone else at their expense. A place where the process used to work with humans is the goal, the outcome itself; where development is not just human, it’s human-ising, because it elevates and values people’s dignity as fully formed humans from birth.

Q - If you are shifting power, why do you use the term “development”?

Much of the language used in global development began during the colonial times and was both embraced by and privileged Global North, Western-normative and elite institutions, ideas, practices, and more. This is not to say that it hasn’t changed in the last 50 years. But even today, when it is seemingly neutral or benign, it still de-humanises people and papers over harms by euphemizing negatives, without us even being conscious of it. The language of global development embodies the power relations that many are trying to change by keeping alive mental models of in-groups and out-groups, where the accent is on the difference and the less-ness of the out-groups.

“Development” assumes that those who are the recipients of international philanthropy or aid are “‘under-”’ or “‘un-developed”’. Whether economic or human, “development” is an evolution of the racist civilized/un-civilizsed to categorize and stature peoples which began as early as the Enlightenment and evolved further during the colonial period.

The explicit assumption is that “‘development”’ is the state that has been attained (or ordained) by mostly Western, majority-white nations or peoples who are “‘developed,”’ the state to which others, who are “‘un- or under-developed”’, need to aspire, only getting there with the beneficence and expertise of those who are already “‘developed”’.

The addition of the term “‘international”’ as a co-joiner to “‘development”’ only serves to reinforce the supremacy of these majority-white, Western nations and their actors and institutions, because it conveys that anything that is not inside “‘their”’ borders is deemed “‘international,”’ despite the fact that it is actually very “‘national”’ to its recipients. Used in this way, “‘international”’ is not only “‘other”’ but homogenous, universalised, massive and somewhere else.

We are deeply aware that “international development” is an example of terminologies that maintain the inequitable global development system that exists today and we have not offered alternatives. Indeed, some terms we continue to use, much to our chagrin. We believe that a true shifting of power requires new terms to come but not from us, from those whose lives, systems and futures are today marginalized by current development practices and - of course – by its terminology. We look forward to supporting that process in a true shifting of power.

Q - Why is this needed?

The “international or global development” system as we know it is in need of and ripe for a significant overhaul.

Despite the fact that many fortunate people around the world are living longer, safer and more prosperous lives than ever in human history, there still exist major challenges that threaten billions of people as well as non-human living beings.

Past and current global development paradigms have been the object of many sound and well-evidenced criticisms – that they are funded by extractivist capitalism, that they are dominated by Western or Global North norms and actors, that they are limited in their capacity to be systemically impactful, that they are reinforcing the very paradigms that led to global inequity in the first place.

The call for shifting power in global development is aspirationally trying to address the internal inconsistencies in this system. Yet, we believe that several critical elements are missing from these conversations to achieve actual evolution of the system. These, for instance, include:

Most of these conversations do well at denouncing the current development systems but lack the the concrete steps for shifting those systems;
The few proposals for shifting development systems are largely driven by those already holding power;
Dissenting voices that hold transformative imagination are relegated to pockets of resistance without a space to gather;
Conversations are siloed and bifurcated; and
There is too little time to sit with the origins of these systems and their negative impacts and – most importantly – to create solutions collaboratively.

In a series of conversations that we held between 2019-2022 with civil society leaders and others in global development, we heard the need for a space that can foster an approach to development that sees all humans as wholly valuable, more than a means to achieve outcomes and funding. A place where the process used to work with humans is the goal, the outcome itself. A place where development is not just human, it’s human-ising, because it elevates and values people’s dignity as fully formed humans from birth. A place where power in the current development paradigm is assessed and re-aligned. A central place where the many individual groups and actors seeking to change the power structures in global development can find a home. A place where practitioners can listen and learn, so they can do development better, more justly, more equitably and also therefore, more effectively.

Built existentially on the feedback and collaboration of both powerful and non-powerful actors in the global development sector, we envision the creation of a place and space where real stories can be told, real experiences documented, real and practical options are explored to support changes in the current systems, dynamics, structures and practices of global development, so that they truly achieve the promise of solidarity that the sector holds.

Q - What is unique about this?

We want to collaborate with others who are committed in the same way
There needs to be a/This is a central space
We do not believe we can fix the master’s house with the master’s tools BUT we believe that we can work differently

Q - Do you make grants?

At this stage, we do not make grants.

Q - In five years are you going to be an INGO?

No.

Q - Why are you concentrating on “development” when so many other things are broken?

We are deeply aware that there are many challenging systems and structures that contribute to inequity around the globe - patriarchy, hyper-capitalism, neoliberalism, extractivism, racism and more. We are also aware that there are significant crises facing our planet and our people. We do not wish to be myopic or limited in our thinking - not least because we know everything is connected - but we know that the systems and structures of “international development” control billions of dollars, powerful racial narratives, and billions of lives. We also know that it was/is centered around a goal and narrative of helping others, achieving positive outcomes for everyone around the world.

If any sector should be biased towards positive introspection, change and more equitable and just structures, systems, paradigms and practices, it should be development.