Together with the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA), the team has edited a blog series on ‘The politics of food and technology’ based on their IHSA conference panel.
After several weeks of mass starvation in Gaza dominating global television coverage, news reports of similar conditions in Sudan’s El Fasher, once Darfur’s capital, are finally emerging. Both regions remain under siege, with starvation deployed as a weapon for the purpose of emptying and occupying them.
This article argues that the digitalisation of food assistance mimics aspects of colonialism, especially in terms of the asymmetries involved in the extraction of data (as a valuable resource) from vulnerable populations and the dominating role of US-based multinationals.
A freedom of information request has revealed that an AI system used by the UK government for assessing benefits cases is apparently getting it wrong by a “statistically significant” amount.
In this blog, IHSA Vice-President and Senior Research Fellow at the Food Studies Centre at SOAS (University of London) Susanne Jaspars summarises and expands upon a contribution to the roundtable that followed the inaugural IHSA Annual Lecture on “War and Humanity” held in Bergen in May 2024.
The past two decades have seen an acceleration in the digitalisation of food assistance and social welfare.
Sudan has experienced a catastrophic increase in violence since 15 April, particularly in Darfur and in the capital Khartoum.
يشهد السودان تصاعداً مهولاً في العنف الدائر بالبلاد، منذ ١٥ أبريل الماضي، تحديداً في دارفور وفي العاصمة الخرطوم. ترك الصراع العنيف بين قوات الدعم السريع شبه العسكرية، والقوات المسلحة السودانية للسيطرة على البلاد ومواردها، أثراً بالغاً على حيوات معظم سكان السودان. وعلى الرغم من أن هذه المعركة تبدو للوهلة الأولى وكأنها حدثاً طارئاً ، إلا أن الواقع الحالي يقتضي النظر إليها كتكثيف لنشاط الاقتصاد السياسي السوداني الاستخراجي (الريعي)، بجانب استخدام المليشيا في خوض الحروب الداخلية السودانية
The current crisis in Sudan has deep roots. Seemingly erupting suddenly, it has in fact been a long time coming. Sudan is a highly unequal country – socially, politically, and economically, along geographical, ethnic and class axes.
The 2008 financial crisis and the Covid pandemic have dramatically accelerated the use of digital technologies to respond to food insecurity and humanitarian crises.