Themrise Khan: Challenging Development Practise

The Good Problem

This week alone, in the midst of a devastating global pandemic, we have seen a massive earthquake hit Haiti, and horrific images and stories streaming out of Afghanistan documenting the fall of government and takeover by the Taliban. It’s difficult to process these events when we are already suffering collectively, and difficult to know what to do next, if anything.

These events, and others like them continually raise the question of the role aid and development work play in these crises, and the effectiveness of humanitarian responses. Aid and development effectiveness should be continually interrogated. Maintaining the status quo and doing things how they’ve always been done will never result in the outcomes those in the global north profess to want for those in the global south. And herein lies the problem – the power imbalance inherent in aid as a construct.

My guest today is someone infinitely more qualified than me to talk on these topics. Themrise Khan has spent that last 25 years working in the international development sector in Pakistan, South Asia and globally. Her work focuses on social policy, aid effectiveness, gender, and global migration and she actively speaks, writers and advises the global community on notions of decolonisation, North-South power imbalances in development, race relations, immigrant citizenship and integration.

You can find Themrise on Twitter here.