Promise, Power, and Charisma: Evaluating the Realities of Integrating Blockchain Technologies into Humanitarian Contexts

Paper Title

Promise, Power, and Charisma: Evaluating the Realities of Integrating Blockchain Technologies into Humanitarian Contexts

Publication Info

• Topic area: Blockchain applications in humanitarian aid and their sociopolitical implications.
• Keywords: Blockchain, humanitarian aid, decentralization, data sovereignty, localization, techno-colonialism, cash-and-voucher assistance, transparency, power dynamics, postcolonial computing.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Blockchain technologies are often promoted as transformative for humanitarian aid, promising decentralization, transparency, and efficiency. However, there is a gap between these promises and their practical implementation, particularly in low-resource, postcolonial contexts like Vanuatu.
• Significance: Understanding the realities of blockchain implementation is crucial for designing sustainable, equitable, and context-sensitive humanitarian technologies that do not reinforce existing power asymmetries.
• Motivation and related work: Prior research highlights blockchain’s potential for efficiency and transparency in aid delivery but also critiques its scalability, energy demands, and risks of techno-colonialism. There is limited empirical work on how blockchain reconfigures power, governance, and sovereignty in humanitarian contexts, which this paper seeks to address.

Solution

• Proposed approach: The paper examines Oxfam’s UnBlocked Cash (UBC) project in Vanuatu, a blockchain-enabled cash-and-voucher assistance (CVA) program, to analyze how blockchain technologies are implemented and their implications for power, transparency, and localization.
• Novelty:
  1. Empirical analysis of blockchain implementation in a humanitarian context, focusing on power dynamics and data sovereignty.
  2. Examination of how blockchain’s promises of decentralization and transparency intersect with governance and sovereignty in postcolonial settings.
  3. Insights for designing humanitarian technologies that embed dignity, co-governance, and local autonomy.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in UBC’s design, implementation, and governance.
  • Thematic analysis of interview data to explore logistical, organizational, and governance aspects of UBC.
  • Reflexive practices, including memoing and collaborative theme development, to ensure depth and credibility.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • UBC reduced aid delivery times by 96% and cut costs from $13.40 USD per bank transfer to $0.067 USD per Ethereum transaction.
  • Despite promises of decentralization, data and decision-making authority remained centralized with foreign actors (Oxfam and Sempo).
  • Blockchain’s technical complexity limited local stakeholders’ understanding and control, undermining claims of localization and empowerment.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • UBC streamlined aid distribution compared to traditional paper-based CVA methods, addressing logistical challenges in Vanuatu’s decentralized geography.
  • Enabled real-time transaction monitoring and reduced reliance on local financial institutions.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Focused on stakeholder perspectives, with interviews conducted virtually and in-person in Vanuatu.
  • Data analyzed through thematic coding, emphasizing interpretive depth rather than statistical reliability.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Excluded perspectives of beneficiaries and vendors, limiting insights into end-user experiences.
  • Findings are specific to Vanuatu’s sociopolitical context and may not generalize to other settings.
  • Future research should include comparative studies of blockchain and non-blockchain CVA programs and engage directly with aid recipients.

Summary

This paper critically examines the UnBlocked Cash (UBC) project in Vanuatu, a blockchain-enabled humanitarian aid initiative, to explore how blockchain’s promises of decentralization and transparency play out in practice. While UBC improved logistical efficiency and garnered local enthusiasm, it reinforced centralized control over data and decision-making by foreign actors, undermining claims of localization and empowerment. The study highlights the gap between blockchain’s rhetoric and operational realities, emphasizing the need for humanitarian technologies to embed co-governance, data sovereignty, and local autonomy. These findings offer valuable insights for designing equitable and sustainable aid systems in postcolonial, low-resource settings.