Humanitarian diplomacy is making its mark today as a significant sub-field of diplomacy. The term has been widely taken up in recent years by governments, UN agencies and NGOs, all of whom are now running an increasing number of training courses on this niche area of diplomacy. This seminar looks back in history at the long practice of humanitarian diplomacy. It then examines how humanitarian diplomacy is being defined anew today and the challenges it faces in different types of organization.

About the speaker

Hugo Slim is a Senior Research Fellow at the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice at Blackfriars Hall at the University of Oxford, and also at the Institute of Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. His career has combined academia, policymaking and diplomacy and he has worked for Save the Children, the United Nations, Oxfam GB, hd Centre, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). His recent books are Solferino 21: Warfare, Civilians and Humanitarians in the Twenty First Century (Hurst, 2022) and Humanitarian Ethics: The Morality of Aid in War and Disaster (Hurst, 2015).