Humanitarian Alert:

Do humanitarian NGOs function as autonomous—and even influential—nonstate actors with their own value-driven agendas? Or do they serve merely as the paid agents of national governments, providing a service-delivery function in line with those nations' foreign policy goals? Shedding light on this often-contentious issue, Abby Stoddard uses examples of US policy in the conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, and elsewhere to chart the flow and impact of NGO information from its experience-based formation on the ground to its use by officials at all levels of government.

Stoddard draws on an array of sources, from embassy telegrams to interviews with state and nonstate actors, to create a compelling picture of how narratives and numbers in humanitarian crises variously help or hinder responses.