Making Sense of Ethical Challenges in Aid Work : Narrative Approach to Humanitarians' Ways of Coping with Everyday Ethical Dilemmas

Abstract

This thesis sets out to study ethical challenges in humanitarian aid from the perspective of field workers. The aim of the study is to move the focus from structural factors to micro-level by elaborating the practical ethical dilemmas that humanitarians working on the field are confronted with and study how humanitarians make sense of and deal with them. This is done by examining the ways in which humanitarians describe their experiences of ethically challenging situations and focusing on what kind of concrete and abstract ways they use to solve and cope with them. To conduct the study this thesis applies the narrative research approach, which focuses on understanding the narrators’ perspective and reality through their story. The data of the study was collected by conducting individual interviews with four humanitarian aid workers working for three different humanitarian organizations. The idea of the interviews was to focus on interviewees’ descriptions of how they cope with ethically challenging situations. The interviews were done by utilizing the narrative interview technique and the data was analyzed by using thematic, structural and performative elements of narrative analysis. The analysis focused on observing the social positioning of characters and the power dynamics within each story as well as the main arguments used when the interviewees described their actions when facing ethical conflicts. Based on the results, humanitarians used five key narratives, which each describe a different way of constructing, solving and coping with ethical conflicts. These were 1. dealing with challenges by not intervening or ignoring the dilemma, 2. solving challenges by considering what is best for the local context, 3. solving challenges in cooperation and interaction with others, 4. solving challenges by acting according to personal values and 5. dealing with challenges by positioning them as a part of life course. Some of the narratives brought up very practical and concrete ways of solving challenges in the situation, while others focused more on ideological justifications and ways of coping with the inner dilemma. Humanitarians described that their way of solving challenges depended on several factors, such as their own understanding of ethics, their values and personality, the nature and context of the conflict and humanitarian’s own role and power dynamics in the situation. The results of this study show how diverse and common ethical challenges in aid work are and bring up new aspects to the study of ethics in aid work by discovering ways in which humanitarians can overcome challenges in their daily work. The similarities within each interviewee's stories demonstrate that even though reflecting on ethical questions was seen to be in the responsibility of the individual, collective sharing of experiences could help humanitarians to make sense of complex situations and reflect on their own ethical views. In addition, this study highlights the importance of gathering more information on practical ethical questions in aid work to help humanitarians when solving challenges and coping with the difficult feelings that facing ethical challenges might cause.