The concept of humanitarianism has evolved greatly in recent decades, posing different implications for the operations of humanitarian NGOs. Practitioners and academics alike have recognized that the core principles of 'classical' humanitarianism (humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence), are challenging to uphold in practice. Thus, scholars have issued different calls for 'new' humanitarianism that embrace the linkage between aid, sociopolitical issues and human rights, then for a data-driven turn in humanitarianism (including evaluation, sector professionalization and NGOization), and more recently, calls for relational or decolonized humanitarianism, localized humanitarianism, and even calls for a return to classical humanitarianism, with a concerted enforcement of the core principles, emphasizing political neutrality. At this paradigmatic crossroads, humanitarian international NGOs (HINGOs) navigate the imperative to provide humanitarian relief, but also to advocate for structural changes to prevent future humanitarian catastrophes and improve livelihoods. As a result, human rights discourse has overlapped with humanitarian operations. However, human rights activism and humanitarianism have been referred to as "competing moral logics", and scholars often treat humanitarian and human rights NGOs as theoretically distinct. I argue that aid-providing humanitarian NGOs serve important advocacy functions due to operating in a post-neutral humanitarian space, through a process of norm delivery under constraint — selectively translating contested norms into public claims that are morally compelling, donor-legible, and operationally viable. In my dissertation, I trace 'political dilemmas' of humanitarianism — areas of ethical and instrumental contestation that emerge in international humanitarian aid operations in the post-neutral era — asking whether and how the adoption of rights-based advocacy by humanitarian aid agencies affects their political influence and donor support. Each dilemma is addressed in a study corresponding to a chapter of the dissertation:
(1) How can humanitarian NGOs uphold the universalist ethos of humanitarianism when donor preferences, media narratives, and racialized empathy create strong incentives to prioritize Ukraine and frame it differently from other crises? In Aiding the Civilized? Examining claims of a "Ukraine Effect" in UK humanitarian INGO emergency appeals, I argue that humanitarian aid appeals are an important advocacy tool used by HINGOs to frame humanitarian aid in a rights-based lens, and that these appeals are not impartial — they often apply differential framing to similar emergencies. Using an original dataset of emergency appeal texts from UK-based HINGOs, I find that a "Ukraine effect" is best understood as a civilian recognition effect rather than a crisis magnitude effect: Ukraine appeals are significantly more likely to invoke psychosocial and mental health framing (75% vs. 32% of non-Ukraine appeals) and directionally more likely to use rights-based civilian protection language. Critically discourse analysis of appeals for Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan reveals that civilianhood is a status constructed through gendered beneficiary scripts, attribution of blame, and moralized political-violence language — and that this construction is applied unevenly across crises.
(2) How do HINGOs advocate for the security and human rights of LGBTQ+ persons in the Global South, when accusations of imposing LGBTQ+ rights on unwilling societies come from both sympathetic supporters who decry 'homocolonialism', and queerphobic opposition from those favoring 'traditional' societies? The study, Humanitarian INGOs, Homocolonialism and the Global Recession of LGBTQ+ Rights, argues that HINGOs must balance solidarity with marginalized groups against accusations of cultural imperialism. Using original data scraped from the websites of the 200 largest organizations in the Global Database of Humanitarian Organizations (GDHO), I find that explicit SOGIE-related advocacy is limited and uneven across the sector, with most organizations addressing the issue indirectly through broader protection, health, or non-discrimination language. Contrary to common assumptions, religious orientation does not uniformly suppress LGBTQ+ advocacy once organizational size, headquarters country, and institutional embeddedness are accounted for.
(3) What policy solutions to the climate crisis incur lower political costs for HINGOs? The study What Determines US Public Support for Climate Reparations? Evidence from a Survey Experiment tests how demands for two reparative climate justice policies — (1) financial reparations for Global South nations and (2) acceptance of climate migrants into the U.S. — affect public support for the appeal and willingness to donate to a humanitarian NGO. I find that both frames depress public support, but that the public is significantly less supportive of solutions involving the relocation of climate refugees than of financial reparations. These results are moderated by 'charitable ethnocentrism' — the belief that 'charity begins at home' — as well as other ideological and demographic characteristics, suggesting that rights-based and reparative climate claims impose real donor costs for humanitarian actors.