The “New-Old” Dimensions of Caring in Humanitarian Response: The Opportunity for Public Health Palliative Care to Advance the Humanitarian-Development Nexus, Decoloniality, and Localization Thought

Abstract

How can palliative care framings advance humanitarian discourse? The imperative for palliative care in humanitarian settings is increasingly urgent. Recent efforts by health and humanitarian organizations demonstrate increasing attention to the issue. Yet palliative care is still not adequately formally considered or enacted by humanitarian agencies in rhetoric, policy, research, or practice. Even where it is considered in humanitarian action, palliative care is often assumed to be a novel intervention, rather than a caring practice that has existed from time immemorial, including in humanitarian situations. The generation of ideas in this paper has followed a dynamic, iterative, and reflexive process through engagement with key literature, critical thinking, conversations with colleagues across both sectors, primary data, and debate amongst the authors. The paper argues that the current dominant frame of a new, specialized, professionalized, and medicalized palliative care in the humanitarian sector would perpetuate existing challenges. It contends that viewing both fields through a “new-old” lens, where historical and traditional caring practices intertwine with progressive discourse for a more just and appropriate public health response, can further humanitarianism. It posits that the humanitarian-development nexus, decoloniality, and localization thought can benefit from palliative care practice through critical interaction with a broad range of literature.