Regardless of their circumstances, people strive not just to exist, but to live, in ways that they believe have meaning and value. This is as true for people experiencing crises as anyone else. Yet the focus of humanitarian aid tends to be largely restricted to meeting the biological and economic requirements of keeping people alive in the most efficient way possible. While focusing narrowly on
questions of survival may be necessary in the weeks and months following a crisis, it can become more problematic as the length of humanitarian responses drags on into years, or even decades.

Over these timescales, humanitarian aid inevitably ends up drifting beyond its original life-saving function. In these circumstances, decisions aid actors make can end up impacting not just if people survive, but the kinds of lives they are able to live. Yet in many cases humanitarian actors remain unable or unwilling to engage in thinking about what matters people beyond basic survival and neglect
the importance of agency and aspirations. This can leave parts of the human experience that are vitally important to people—such as sex and intimacy, death and mourning, leisure and social connections, or building a sense of home or of belonging—side-lined as “out of scope” by humanitarian actors.

These blind spots can have serious consequences. They can render the experience of aid dehumanising and disempowering for people on the receiving end. They can actively block people’s efforts to re-establish a sense of normality. And they can limit the effectiveness of assistance when it is designed or delivered at odds with how people actually understand and experience the world.