Expanding Humanity’s Moral Consciousness: A Humanitarian Call

Today, the forces of inhumanity are gaining ground: more than 60 wars and conflicts have displaced and harmed hundreds of millions of people. Borders are closing and humanitarian funding is evaporating.

We have entered the age of human displacement—an era when vast numbers of people are forced to flee home, often with little time to prepare or pack. Climate change and its consequences—wars, fires, floods, droughts—may uproot a billion or more people in our lifetime. 

Recognizing this new reality, we have to find new ways of behaving toward one another. There is an opportunity to expand humanity’s moral consciousness. Even amid rising inhumanity, transformation is possible. It’s also necessary.

History shows us what’s achievable when moral consciousness expands: the abolition of slavery, the spread of universal suffrage, the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These turning points emerged from unspeakable horror, oppression, and injustice. 

As more people recognized the inhumanity—and as more voices rose to say, we can be better, we must be better—momentum for change gathered and culminated in watershed ideas. Each widened the moral scope of who is included in “us.”

Clearly, another watershed moment has arrived. With unprecedented numbers of people displaced in the world, we are also seeing a democratization of humanitarian response. More people than ever are on the front lines, meeting those who are fleeing. These first responders are often ordinary people who never saw themselves as “humanitarians” until they were confronted with someone in need. Such encounters can be transformative.

I know this from personal experience. When I came face to face with a profound injustice —human beings trapped in the midst of warfare – I was forced to make a hard choice about what to do. That decision was put to me in the form of a question from my colleague: “are we or are we not humanitarians?” In other words, should we act according to values that give priority to the welfare of others, even if doing so was dangerous in our situation?

That decision revealed something in me I hadn’t fully recognized. Acting on it connected me to values deep in my DNA. It led to founding RefugePoint so that people fleeing war would never be left behind.

As more people flee, a greater moral consciousness is emerging. That’s what drew me to the Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity and the humanitarianism they recognize and inspire. 

At their salon dinner during the recent UN General Assembly week, one of the Prize founders used the term “inhumanitarians” – the growing forces of evil. And we talked about the antidote: how everyone can be a humanitarian.

Helping a friend or neighbor. Offering support to a stranger. These acts may feel small, even natural—but they do more than ease another’s burden. They connect us to a deeper sense of who we are, and sometimes, even, who we might become.

Often helping is easy. But sometimes it demands difficult choices, or even risky ones. In those harder moments, our rock-bottom values often come into sharper focus.

So what should guide us in this new age? Perhaps first is this: that all of us, no matter who we are or what we do, can claim the identity of “humanitarian.” (This idea came from another founder of the Aurora Prize.) I am a teacher and a humanitarian. A barista and a humanitarian. A programmer and a humanitarian.

One person at the dinner suggested we each add a small “h” to our names, as lawyers use “Esq.” or doctors use “M.D.” Perhaps that’s how this new era begins: with the recognition that in an age of displacement, each of us can be part of the solution. Each of us can, in our own way, be a humanitarian. 

Maybe this is not only the age of displacement. Maybe it is also the age of humanitarianism.

Sasha Chanoff, h