This study maps Western humanitarianism as an imaginary that positions the Western world as superior to other places. Humanitarian and international development activities work to recruit local populations into Western worldviews and economic practices, instead of meeting them on their own terms. In placing the focus on the supposed deficiencies of the peoples and places they work in, Western humanitarianism evades and actively obscures how global economic forces–originating in and supported by the West–are the reason why people face challenges of conflict, poverty and displacement.

         I learn from the context on the Thailand-Myanmar border, site of some of the world’s longest civil wars and land sovereignty struggles, where exploitative development projects are accelerating. I conducted interviews with 33 humanitarian workers in that region to learn how they understand humanitarianism, and what their organizations are doing or not doing about land theft. I combine the results with a review of historical and current literature, analysis of INGO annual reports, and theorizations from across the fields of critical humanitarian studies and Black and Indigenous Feminist Studies. I observe that the problem of land confiscation is largely ignored by INGOs in the Thailand-Myanmar border region, and this is also true of humanitarian practices globally.

        I trace how INGOs self-define their work, constructing concepts of an international humanitarian community that is separate from communities in the places they work, that is accountable not to those communities but to Western audiences: humanitarians report. I consider how humanitarianism idealizes a certain type of human: civilized, developed and progressive: humanitarians are human. Humanitarian projects exoticize and pathologize places that Westerners travel to, conceiving of those places as open to exploration: humanitarians travel. When they arrive in places, they reinforce models of extractive capitalism imported from the West: humanitarians create economies. Finally, they ignore local relations to land, avoiding support for land sovereignty struggles, and in doing so reproduce settler colonial ways of being: humanitarians settle. This work also considers questions of research ethics and suggests practices of refusal in research. The final chapter incorporates suggestions from participants on how academic research might be more useful.