In today’s post-truth era, where “objective truth” has lost influence in the public sphere, it is becoming increasingly difficult for humanitarians, who seek to preserve human life, to carry out their work.
“The post-truth era has dramatic repercussions on humanitarian work, not only because it affects NGOs’ reputation, but also because it presents a distorted vision of the reality of people in need,” says Lubiana Gosp-Server, a humanitarian and development professional.
Humanitarians tackle hidden or poorly understood social issues and help people in difficult or extreme situations. All of this is threatened if people are no longer able to discern what is true or real.
Despite its contemporary prevalence in public discourse, fake news is not new. Propaganda and rumors have always existed and are something that humanitarians increasingly need to manage during the course of their duties, especially in the current “infoglut” environment of being bombarded with information from all sides, which exacerbates the problem.
High levels of propaganda and false information damage public trust and have led people to question whether humanitarians really have humanity’s best interests at heart.
Humanitarian Work and Its Challenges
The modern concept of humanitarianism was born from the founding of the Red Cross after the 1859 Battle of Solferino and the establishment of the First Geneva Convention, which sought to limit harm to human beings, particularly in times of war. Humanitarians uphold a set of moral principles, and though they vary by organization, they usually include high standards of truth, honesty, and integrity.
“At its core, a humanitarian is a person dedicated to reducing suffering and protecting human dignity. Whether in war zones, after natural disasters, or during health emergencies, humanitarians put people first,” explains the nonprofit Action Against Hunger.
Humanitarian organizations are not without their faults. They suffer from several issues, including a lack of accountability to those accessing their services and a history of furthering Western imperialism. Humanitarian organizations, in many instances, are responsible for supporting the political or military agendas of hegemonic powers, which often fund their work.
“NGOs have in many cases become extensions of Western foreign policy. This has most obviously been seen in contexts such as Afghanistan where many NGOs supported and formed an integral part of U.S.-led stabilization activities following the U.S. invasion in 2001,” states Jonathan Whittall, head of humanitarian analysis at Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
Humanitarian aid has also been used as a tool to intervene in and impact a country’s sovereignty, raising concerns about the intent behind the work. For instance, the UN Peacekeeping missions have often aligned with the political interests of the US and other members of the Security Council.
Whittall says that it is essential for humanitarian organizations to stick to their core mission of representing the interests of the marginalized rather than furthering the “interests of the core state,” and that they need to form alliances with social movements, grassroots organizations, etc., to be truly effective. This is necessary for these organizations to “regain their legitimacy and face with integrity the push-back from those in power who see the delivery of assistance as impinging on their political and military strategies.”
Humanitarians also need to be aware of how false information (sometimes called misinformation) and propaganda (sometimes called disinformation) undermine their ability to do their job, worsen already complex crises, harm the people they are trying to help, and can even result in their death.
“The emergence of hybrid conflicts, mixing the spread of harmful information and cyber operations with kinetic operations, creates more suffering for affected populations. Harmful information… hinders the work of humanitarian organizations by calling into question their mandates and intentions, undermining their integrity, and making them and their staff a target of online and offline harassment and violence,” according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Humanitarians are uniquely positioned to help combat this problem by working with communities to address concerns both caused by and arising from the spread of false information.
How Is False Information Spreading and Why?
Some researchers, like Zoë Adams and Magda Osman et al., have argued that concerns about false information causing harmful behavior are “illusory.” “The assumption is that there is a direct causal link between the prevalence and consumption of misinformation and subsequent harmful behaviors. To date, however, this link has not been sufficiently demonstrated,” states their 2023 study, published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science. They point out that we have shifted from viewing the world via “objective facts” to viewing it via “intersubjectivity,” which they define as “a coordination effort by two or more people to interpret entities in the world through social interaction.” The study adds that there is nothing inherently harmful about this shift and that there may be some benefits to democratizing concepts of truth.
However, there are many circumstances in which an increased amount of false information shared very rapidly has caused human suffering. “Spreading harmful information… could exacerbate the suffering of the most vulnerable people, and humanitarian operations. Harmful information is reported to induce psychological and social harm in both communities affected by conflict and among people serving those communities. Incorrect information prevents communities experiencing humanitarian emergencies from accessing important and lifesaving services, and undermines the ability of humanitarian organizations to deliver and implement effective interventions,” according to the Lancet.
Understanding how false information and propaganda spread and how they influence people helps us determine what can be done about it. As Mark Thomas Kennedy, from the Imperial College of London, argues, “Unless you understand how people consume information and learn, you’re not going to be able to have anything more than a conversation in which you’re shouted down or dismissed.”
According to a 2021 MIT study, most people are unaware that they are sharing false information online. However, other studies have indicated that a small population seeks to deceive—motivations for sharing disinformation range from financial to ideological. Based on a 2022 survey conducted in the U.S., researchers found that 14 percent of people were aware that the information they shared on social media was false. They also concluded that participants who “[share] false political information online” tend to be a specific type of person: they report having anti-social behavioral traits, such as a psychological need for chaos, a tendency toward psychopathy, sadism and paranoia; are more likely to have positive feelings for extremist groups like QAnon, the Proud Boys and white supremacists; and harbor desires to run for office and support political violence. Evidence also suggests that foreign governments are responsible for spreading false information in attempts to influence global affairs and shape political outcomes.
Another factor to consider in the spread of propaganda and false information online is technology itself. Social media is the new epicenter of harmful information. Investigations by Amnesty International found that X’s “For You” page is designed to promote content that provokes outrage, heated exchanges, and reactions—otherwise known as “engagement.” Decisions to allow influencers with a track record of sharing fake content with their followers on social media platforms to spread that information can be directly linked to an increase in fake online news.
The rapid development of large language models (or LLMs), also known as AI, has led to a surge in computer-generated images. Now, stock image platforms like Adobe are allowing computer-generated content to be purchased from their libraries without any warning about whether the image is real. Worryingly, AI is increasingly spreading false information in its responses to the public’s queries. As people shift from asking “experts” for information, they have less control over the false information they are consuming. Not only do these models contain in-programmed biases, but they are also “hallucinating” inaccurate information. All of this has consequences for humanitarians and how they can perform their job effectively.
How False Information and Lack of Trust Are Impacting Humanitarian Work
According to the Lancet, “Complex humanitarian settings have become fertile environments for spreading misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.” The situation is especially stressful for those witnessing humanitarian emergencies, as it is very challenging to distinguish between false and beneficial messages, given the sheer volume of information available on social media platforms.
The challenge of countering propaganda and false information becomes more difficult if people do not trust humanitarian organizations as reliable sources. “Unfortunately, too many human-rights NGOs—both large and small—suffer from a crisis of credibility. Persistent questions about their sources of funding, political bias, and lack of due diligence undermine the reliability of the information they espouse,” points out an article in the National Interest.
To understand how propaganda and trust affect humanitarian work, we examine its effects across three key areas of humanitarian work: global health, war and conflict, and support for refugees and asylum seekers:
Global Health
As writer and journalist Erica X Eisen states in her 2021 essay, hesitancy and propaganda campaigns around vaccines are as old as the first vaccine. Earlier, false information casting doubt on vaccines was limited to one or two pamphlets; it can now be found in hundreds of posts, articles, and videos being consumed daily. The World Health Organization (WHO) has labeled the rapid spread of misinformation as “infodemics” and sees it as a direct threat to public health. “Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus and is just as dangerous,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a review, the WHO found that 51 percent of posts talking about vaccinations contained false information.
During a disease outbreak, combating vaccine hesitancy has become a key part of the humanitarian response, taking up time and resources. The British Red Cross launched a campaign to dispel false information to support the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in the UK, and UNICEF released a “Vaccine Misinformation Management Field Guide” for its workers.
To a certain extent, this hesitancy is understandable for new vaccines, as well as in communities where vaccines are less common or where they’ve led to avoidable negative experiences, for instance, due to unethical practices by international organizations. “In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded experimental malaria and meningitis vaccine trials across Africa and HPV vaccine programs in India. All of these programs resulted in numerous deaths and injuries, with accounts of forced vaccinations and uninformed consent,” according to an article by Sharmeen Ahmed in the Annual Survey of International and Comparative Law.
The lack of priority to human life over profits by pharma companies during the COVID-19 pandemic also contributed to vaccine hesitancy. As Gloria Giraldo of Latino Health Access pointed out in 2021, the inequities in the distribution of vaccines globally could result in “skepticism about the motives of vaccine makers and public health officials… especially among immigrants.”
Humanitarian organizations’ mistrust of local populations exacerbates the situation further. During the Ebola outbreak in 2014 in West Africa, aid organizations stereotyped the locals as “irrational, fearful, violent and primitive: as too ignorant to change.” This resulted in the treatment intervention focusing on “central, resource-intensive facilities, ignoring for months ‘responses and strategies that engage with and rely on communities,’” stated an ICRC blog.
Humanitarians need to be better equipped to navigate the issues of distrust and false information around public health and have been taking necessary measures to do so. When vaccine hesitancy becomes too widespread, it becomes very difficult to address and interferes with the ability of humanitarians to preserve human life.
“Measles, whooping cough, and other vaccine-preventable diseases are on the rise around the world, and cuts to foreign aid, coupled with growing vaccine hesitancy, and persistent gaps in vaccine access are fueling outbreaks in poor and wealthy nations alike,” states the Council on Foreign Relations.
Results from a randomized 2021 trial indicated that false information about COVID-19 vaccines “lowered the intent of recipients to vaccinate,” according to the BMJ. Missing vaccinations directly causes outbreaks of disease and preventable deaths. Previously controlled diseases like measles and meningitis are spreading in direct relation to an increase in the number of children missing their routine vaccines. These could lead to future epidemics. Resources used to tackle easily preventable diseases detract from the work needed to tackle other diseases or disasters.
In 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “to cast aside its long-held position that vaccines do not cause autism,” stated the Politico. These unfounded claims amplify the spread of propaganda and are used to justify cuts to funding for international organizations supporting vital vaccine drives. Communities in conflict particularly rely on humanitarian organizations to deliver vaccines, and children are most vulnerable without proper vaccinations. These circumstances could lead to more children dying if humanitarian organizations have fewer resources and are overstretched trying to tackle vaccine hesitancy in countries where vaccines are available.
This article was edited for length. This is the first piece in a two-part series. This article was produced for the Observatory by the Independent Media Institute. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
