Abstract

ASEAN member states have invested substantially in cooperation on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR). Despite broad support for the idea of ‘localizing’ HADR governance, the rise of regional agency has in practice led to uncertainty and frictions between humanitarian stakeholders. The article makes sense of these tensions by investigating the narratives through which intra- and extraregional agents construct the role of the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Centre). Based on the assumption that narratives are central legitimating practices when new agents enter a governance arena, it analyzes textual material produced by different humanitarian organizations that operate in Southeast Asia, as well as interviews with representatives from these organizations. Their accounts of the AHA Centre’s role can be grouped into four narratives that are bound up with competing ideas about regional humanitarian order: an affirmative one, a skeptical one, a critical one and a transformative one. The article thus rejects characterizations of regional HADR as a rationally designed ‘architecture’ and instead defines it as a deeply political arena where different conceptions of order are asserted, contested and negotiated.

摘要

东盟成员国在人道主义援助和救灾（HADR）合作方面投入了大量资金。尽管广泛支持“本地化”HADR 治理的理念，但区域机构的兴起在实践中导致了人道主义利益相关者之间的不确定性和摩擦。本文通过调查区域内和区域外代理人构建东盟灾害管理人道主义援助协调中心（AHA 中心）角色的叙述来理解这些紧张局势。基于叙述是新代理人进入治理领域时的核心合法化实践的假设，它分析了在东南亚开展业务的不同人道主义组织制作的文本材料，以及对这些组织代表的采访。他们对 AHA 中心角色的描述可以分为四种叙述，这些叙述与关于区域人道主义秩序的相互竞争的观点相联系：一种是肯定的，一种是怀疑的，一种是批判的，一种是变革的。因此，本文拒绝将区域 HADR 描述为合理设计的“架构”，而是将其定义为一个深刻的政治舞台，在此不同的秩序概念被断言、争论和协商。