Everyday humanitarianism amongst Tanzanian elites: a new perspective on localisation

The needs for humanitarian assistance outstrip human and financial resources, and the international humanitarian system has long proven unable to respond to all the needs. This has led to a call for more actors to get involved in humanitarian assistance, a call for inclusion of local actors to make humanitarian action more efficient and less ‘top-down’, and a call to build humanitarian responses based on the values and institutions of the affected communities. This call has most often come under the label ‘localisation’. This turn to the local has led to a sharp increase in the interest in everyday humanitarianism, i.e. the expanded series of practices in the everyday lives of citizens that purport to make a difference outside the traditional boundaries of humanitarian activity. Based on fieldwork in Dar es Salaam and Dodoma this paper analyses the giving practices of Tanzanian elites in a context characterised by both acute and protracted crises. It seeks to nuance existing debates around the ethics and practices of helping during times of crisis and thereby, it adds and complements both the everyday humanitarianism and the localisation literatures. The paper shows that ‘localisation’ goes beyond the organisations of the global South. It is also about the people that help others in times of crisis, i.e. everyday humanitarianism.