This paper examines humanitarian assistance practices to understand how approaches followed by various actors address – or fail to address - social vulnerability to disasters. This question is addressed through a study of humanitarian responses in two disaster-affected villages of Baltistan in northern Pakistan. Through analysis of key informant interviews, semi-structured interviews with men and women, group discussions and secondary data sources, we identify how government, non-governmental and faith-based organisations understand and seek to address underlying socio-political processes that define vulnerability. We analyse how knowledges and practices serve to legitimise authority relations between and among humanitarian organisations and local populations. The paper finds that a simplistic understanding of vulnerability - that people with higher losses are more vulnerable and deserve more assistance in comparison to those who suffer lower losses - tends to favour well-off people, as they own (and lose) more physical assets. This understanding is shared between humanitarian actors and the local elite, such as settlement leaders. This convergence of knowledges enabled the elite to privilege themselves, both in terms of material benefits and influential positions. The reliance of local humanitarian organisations on external actors, such as national governments and donors for funding and legitimacy further hindered contextual understandings of disaster vulnerability. This finding demonstrates how politics of humanitarian assistance transcend geographical scales. We conclude that humanitarian actors not only failed to address the socio-political drivers of vulnerability but also contributed to the exacerbation of vulnerability through reinforcing inequitable village-level and cross-scalar authority relations.

本文研究了人道主义援助的实践，以了解各种行为者遵循的方法如何解决（或未能解决）社会对灾害的脆弱性。这个问题是通过对巴基斯坦北部两个受灾村庄巴尔的斯坦村庄的人道主义对策进行研究而解决的。通过对关键知情人访谈，男女半结构化访谈，小组讨论和二级数据来源的分析，我们确定了政府，非政府组织和基于信仰的组织如何理解并寻求解决界定脆弱性的潜在社会政治过程。我们分析知识和实践如何使人道组织与当地居民之间的权威关系合法化。该论文发现，对脆弱性的简单理解（与损失较小的人相比，损失较高的人更容易受到伤害，应得到更多的帮助）往往会偏爱富裕的人，因为他们拥有（并失去）更多的实物资产。人道主义行动者与当地精英（如定居者领导人）之间有这种理解。知识的融合使精英阶层在物质利益和影响力方面都享有特权。地方人道主义组织对外部行为者的依赖，例如国家政府和捐助者在资金和合法性上的依赖，进一步阻碍了对灾害脆弱性的背景理解。这一发现表明，人道主义援助的政治如何超越地理范围。