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Drawing on first-hand reporting from hot war zones around the world - Bosnia, Rwanda, Congo, Kosovo, Sudan and, most recently, Afghanistan - David Rieff shows us what humanitarian aid workers do in the field and the growing gap between their noble ambitions and their actual capabilities for alleviating suffering. Tracing the origins of major humanitarian organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and CARE, he describes how many of them have moved from their founding principle of neutrality, which gave them access to victims, to encouraging the international community to take action to stop civil wars and ethnic cleansing.   Rieff demonstrates how this advocacy has come at a high price. By overreaching, the humanitarian movement has allowed itself to be hijacked by the major powers, sometimes to become a fig leaf for actions that major powers take in their own national interests, as in Afghanistan, sometimes for their inaction, as in Bosnia and Rwanda. With the exception of cases of genocide, where the moral imperative to act overrides all other considerations, Rieff contends that if humanitarian organisations are to continue doing what they do best - alleviating suffering - they must remain independent.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49536863011089,"sku":"GOR001861794","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49565295345937,"sku":"GOR002083758","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49633962426641,"sku":"GOR002563616","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49802007511313,"sku":"CIN0099597918VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":50696925282577,"sku":"NGR9780099597919","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51177839493393,"sku":"GOR010945355","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0099597918.jpg?v=1751434047"},{"product_id":"reproach-of-hunger-book-david-rieff-9781784783389","title":"The Reproach of Hunger","description":"In 2000 the world's leaders and experts agreed that the eradication of hunger was the essential task for the new millennium. 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The hope that the crisis of food scarcity of food production can be solved by a technological innovation.  In response Rieff demands that we rethink the fundamental causes of the world's grotesque inequalities and see the issue as a political challenge we are all failing to confront.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49537058537745,"sku":"GOR007255470","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53144708153617,"sku":"GOR014773864","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1784783382.jpg?v=1751091112"},{"product_id":"slaughterhouse-book-david-rieff-9780099478317","title":"Slaughterhouse","description":"Reporting from the Bosnian war zone, American author David Rieff indicts the West and the UN for standing by at the annihilation. 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And yet is this right?   David Rieff, an independent writer who has reported on bloody conflicts in Africa, the Balkans, and Central Asia, insists that things are not so simple. He poses hard questions about whether remembrance ever truly has, or indeed ever could, “inoculate” the present against repeating the crimes of the past. He argues that rubbing raw historical wounds—whether self-inflicted or imposed by outside forces—neither remedies injustice nor confers reconciliation. If he is right, then historical memory is not a moral imperative but rather a moral option—sometimes called for, sometimes not. Collective remembrance can be toxic. Sometimes, Rieff concludes, it may be more moral to forget.     Ranging widely across some of the defining conflicts of modern times—the Irish Troubles and the Easter Uprising of 1916, the white settlement of Australia, the American Civil War, the Balkan wars, the Holocaust, and 9\/11—Rieff presents a pellucid examination of the uses and abuses of historical memory. 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