Decolonise UoM

Humanitarianism is a loosely gathered bundle of numerous myriad organisations and individuals whose common goal is improvements to human welfare and positive social development. So how does decolonisation fit into this enormous global phenomenon? Simply put, humanitarianism as a concept exists now due to Western empires. This is not to say that the concepts of charity and solidarity did not exist before Britain invaded a fifth of the world (a glance at the holy texts of any large religion will quickly prove that humans have always felt a keen urge to help one another), but instead to acknowledge that the way that most humanitarianism functions now is largely built on colonial imperialism.  During the long era of Western subjugation of the rest of the world at large, people became increasingly informed of the suffering of others. The economic routes which fuelled empires with slavery and extorted goods also carried news around the world, and ordinary people – regardless of...

In the UK, the environmental sector is the second ‘most-white’. In recent years, the environmental movement has emerged as a white middle-class movement, despite the biggest contributors to climate change being Western society. Over the last few decades, people in the global south have been fighting for their voices to be heard in this movement, because even though the global south contributes the least to the destruction of our planet, it is this part of the world that is disproportionately affected. Colonialism relied on the stealing of natural resources of colonised countries and the removal of peoples from vast areas of land to conquest landscapes for colonial powers to use as their own. Damaging the environment was a key tool in the ‘conquering of the third world’ game that Western Superpowers played for centuries. The legacies of colonialism still live on today in how our environment is lived in, managed and protected, particularly in former colonised states. In an ...