ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the essence of humanitarianism and humanitarian action what lies behind it, and how it is evolving. The argument goes like this: coloniality is seen as an exclusively European phenomenon that has spread with modernity. The Anbal Quijano ended the argument with the natural consequence: if knowledge is colonised, the task ahead is to de-colonise knowledge. This epistemic decolonisation achieved by its implosion and the emergence of a "pluriversality" of systems of knowledge. As Immanuel Wallerstein reminds, "There is nothing so ethnocentric, so particularistic, as the claim of universalism". In addition to the hidden software the secret code that underpins western modernity, and the humanitarian discourse, there are the manifest codes of network power. These are easier to unscramble and are linked to globalisation. Globalisation is also about the expansion of a particular set of values such as democracy and human rights, including individual freedoms that are sometimes seen as at odds with particular traditional or non-western cultures.
