Humanitarianism in the age of the billionaire by Shanna Shepard

World Humanitarian Day arrives each year with the uncomfortable timing of an alarm clock nobody wants to hear. On 19 August, the world pauses to honour those who carry food into war zones, rescue children from rubble, treat the wounded and remain beside communities after the television cameras have moved on. It is a noble occasion. It is also an increasingly damning indictment of the world that requires such people in the first place.

Humanitarian workers are asked to perform miracles in places where governments, armies and international institutions have failed catastrophically. They enter Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar and countless forgotten crises carrying medicine rather than weapons, compassion rather than ideology. Increasingly, they do so at enormous personal risk. The very people trying to preserve human life are becoming targets in wars where the distinction between civilian and combatant is treated as an inconvenience.

And then there is the extraordinary spectacle of our age: the humanitarian crisis on one side of the planet, the billionaire spectacle on the other.

We live in a world capable of producing private fortunes so enormous that a single individual can accumulate wealth beyond the annual budgets of entire countries. Billionaires can spend fortunes on rockets, superyachts, private islands, vanity projects and the technological equivalent of medieval castles while humanitarian agencies struggle to finance food, shelter, vaccines and clean water.

There is something morally grotesque about this contrast. This is not an argument against wealth, entrepreneurship or technological ambition. It is an argument against a civilisation that has somehow decided that sending a billionaire into space is easier than ensuring a child on Earth has enough to eat.

The defenders of this system will insist that billionaires are not responsible for the world's wars. Fair enough. But responsibility is not confined to pulling a trigger. It also concerns what societies choose to value, reward and tolerate.

We have created an economic culture in which extraordinary accumulation is celebrated as evidence of genius, while humanitarian need is treated as an unfortunate expense. Governments announce vast military budgets with remarkable speed, yet humanitarian appeals are routinely underfunded. The weapons arrive. The food trucks wait.

That is not simply an economic contradiction. It is a political choice. Humanitarianism therefore deserves more than applause. It deserves anger. Anger at governments that invoke international law when convenient and ignore it when inconvenient. Anger at leaders who speak grandly about human dignity while civilians become statistics. Anger at wealthy societies that can mobilise billions for destruction but plead poverty when asked to finance survival.

Most importantly, World Humanitarian Day should remind us that humanitarian workers are not the solution to humanity's failures. They are the people trying to clean up after them.

The ultimate humanitarian achievement would be a world in which fewer people need humanitarian assistance.

Until then, we should honour those who enter the fire. But perhaps we should spend rather less time praising their courage and rather more time asking why we keep setting the world ablaze.