The New Humanitarian

The New Humanitarian brings you an inside look at the conflicts and natural disasters that leave millions of people in need each year, and the policies and people who respond to them. Join TNH’s journalists in the aid policy hub of Geneva and in global hotspots to unpack the stories that are disrupting and shaping lives around the world.

Will big donors “smell the coffee” or get left behind? | Rethinking Humanitarianism 08/13/2026

Error and trial: What really makes the humanitarian system change? | Rethinking Humanitarianism 08/06/2026

Error and trial: What really makes the humanitarian system change? | Rethinking Humanitarianism Humanitarianism evolves, whether the system is ready or not. This six-episode series explores how. Ben Ramalingam has spent 20 years thinking and writing about the complexity of the humanitarian system and what makes it shift. His conclusion? It changes the wrong way around. “We've tended to evolve not through trial and error, but through error and trial. So we respond to what goes wrong, we absorb the shock through processes which are often very painful, and then we return to something that's not too far removed from what we had before.” In this first collaborative episode between Rethinking Humanitarianism and Start Network, hosts Tammam Aloudat and Christina Bennett set the stage for a series that explores how the humanitarian system can change for the better as it faces a crisis of legitimacy and funding. Guests Ben Ramalingam, author of Aid on the Edge of Chaos Nadine Saba, president of the Akkar Network for Development Key moments 07:11 – “Error and trial” and doing the right thing too late 11:18 – Was the Grand Bargain ever really “grand”? 21:13 – Reforming policies vs changing mindsets 23:30 – Cash as a disruptive force 36:06 – How systemic change actually happens (in three steps) 43:23 – “People don’t care about our jargon” 50:18 – Fear, funding, and the myth of neutrality 53:13 – If the system is so misaligned, why keep it? 59:31 – Tammam and Christina discuss why this podcast collaboration came to be Got a question or feedback? Email podcast@thenewhumanitarian.org or post on social media using the hashtag #RethinkingHumanitarianism. This episode was made in collaboration with Start Network as part of a series that explores what really drives change in the humanitarian system, and what it tells us about future efforts to transform the system for the better. /episode/index/show/humanitarianpodcast/id/42313915