ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the way of humanitarian aid organisations shield their operations from public scrutiny. It presents Barnett's and Fassin's perspectives, but adopts more mundane political economy perspective. In Humanitarian Reason Didier Fassin explores the reconfiguration of what can be called the politics of precarious lives over the past few decades' and he aims to describe how moral sentiments have recently reconfigured politics'. Beneficiary accountability is a buzzword but will never play a substantial role because of the structural inequalities built into the humanitarian system. The existence of objective physical needs makes the practice of impartiality appear possible. It needs only one among several potentially more decisive factors in humanitarian decision-making. Media attention also plays a role in NGO decision-making because some mediatised crises generate large private and public donations. Barely any of the German non-governmental organisations can be compared to principled humanitarian organisations such as Mdecins sans Frontires (MSF) or the International Committee of the Red Cross.
