International organizations and framings of crisis: A comparison of organizational discourse on Venezuela and Ukraine

• In Event: Highlighted Session: International Organizations and Education Policy: Crisis, Collaboration, and Coloniality

Proposal

According to recent humanitarian aid allocation patterns, crises that impact populations in the Global North have received a disproportionate amount of resources, while crises across the Global South have experienced record funding shortfalls (Fassihi, 2022; NRC, 2022). While geopolitical and economic rationales may explain these disparities, critics have claimed that racist beliefs rooted in colonial legacies shape priorities in humanitarianism, with certain crises being deemed “extraordinary” and therefore in need of immediate response and resources, while others are considered “normal” and less worthy of attention (AMEJA, 2022; Howard, et al., 2022). In this paper, we explore the degree to which such critiques apply to the education in emergencies (EiE) sector.

This paper compares the ways in which IOs have discursively framed educational crisis in the Venezuela and Ukraine contexts. We conduct a critical policy analysis of three of the major EiE-supporting international organizations: UNICEF, UNHCR, and the World Bank. We examine how the organizations frame the nature and urgency of each humanitarian crisis through analyses of policy documents, social media, public announcements, and websites. We examine over 30 documents, publications, social media posts, and other relevant texts from each IO that relate to education during each crisis, and explore the ways in which UNICEF, UNHCR, and the World Bank frame educational crises and the degree to which such framings reflect the “normal” versus “extraordinary” binary.

This research is guided by the concept of coloniality, which highlights the persistence of colonialism within current global power structures (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2021; Quijano, 2007). Coloniality asserts that racial categories established during the colonial era influence how humanitarian actors from the Global North perceive populations in the Global South (Pailey, 2020; Wilson, 2013). By analyzing organizational discourses, this study examines if and how coloniality and racism shape priorities within the EiE sector.

Our findings indicate a large discrepancy in the number of publications and amount of rhetoric covering the Ukraine and Venezuela refugee crisis. The content of the discourse is very different as well, with Venezuela presented as a more natural crisis that befalls people in South America, whereas Ukraine is deemed “exceptional.” The analysis furthermore shows racialized and assumptions about those living in the Global South underpin these framings.

Authors

• Francine Menashy, OISE, University of Toronto

• Yara Abdelaziz, O.I.S.E. University of Toronto