Between Samaritans and States

By Jennifer C. Rubenstein,

Book cover of Between Samaritans and States: The Political Ethics of Humanitarian INGOs

Book description

This book provides the first book-length, English-language account of the political ethics of large-scale, Western-based humanitarian INGOs, such as Oxfam, CARE, and Doctors Without Borders. These INGOs are often either celebrated as 'do-gooding machines' or maligned as incompetents 'on the road to hell'. In contrast, this book suggests the picture…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Between Samaritans and States as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book illuminates the wrenching moral problems humanitarian international NGOs (like Oxfam and Save the Children) face.

How should NGOs balance their responsibilities to aid those who depend on them with their responsibilities to avoid entrenching that dependency? How should they react when the resources they provide are siphoned off by malicious third parties and used to fuel conflict? Given that NGOs are not democratically elected, can their power over aid recipients be justified?

Rubenstein addresses questions like these, drawing on her expertise as an ethicist and several months of fieldwork. I left this book thinking there were no easy…

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Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

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