This chapter describes how NGOs adapted the language of scientific rationality – here labelled ‘humanitarian modernity’ – to construct a sustainable model of intervention based on the idea of universal needs. It does so by examining the sector’s response to the conflict that created independent Bangladesh in the early 1970s and the refugee crisis that it created. In South Asia, the need to negotiate access, first to refugees, then to the welfare systems of the new state, created the conditions of what this chapter terms a ‘compassionate space’ that would have long-term consequences for how NGOs were embedded in Third World contexts. This was a unique type of association, which could not be shoehorned into conventional categories of Western domination or neocolonial influence. As this chapter shows, collaboration with Third World authorities became a vital currency in convincing supporters of the NGO sector’s legitimacy, based on its ability to reach those in need, while in the field it paved the way for long-term engagement with postcolonial governments. It also became integral to the concept of protection that emerged in this period: the tropes it employed, the problems it faced and the communities of practice that flourished in that context.

This chapter describes how NGOs adapted the language of scientific rationality – here labelled ‘humanitarian modernity’ – to construct a sustainable model of intervention based on the idea of universal needs. It does so by examining the sector’s response to the conflict that created independent Bangladesh in the early 1970s and the refugee crisis that it created. In South Asia, the need to negotiate access, first to refugees, then to the welfare systems of the new state, created the conditions of what this chapter terms a ‘compassionate space’ that would have long-term consequences for how NGOs were embedded in Third World contexts. This was a unique type of association, which could not be shoehorned into conventional categories of Western domination or neocolonial influence. As this chapter shows, collaboration with Third World authorities became a vital currency in convincing supporters of the NGO sector’s legitimacy, based on its ability to reach those in need, while in the field it paved the way for long-term engagement with postcolonial governments. It also became integral to the concept of protection that emerged in this period: the tropes it employed, the problems it faced and the communities of practice that flourished in that context.