Lives of Dignity
How Aid Can Treasure Humans
Why do the rickety bureaucracies of development so often harm and disrespect the very people they set out to serve — and how can we build institutions that do better?
Human dignity is the first promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: that we be treated in a way that respects our full humanity. Yet the promise goes unkept. When people in their most vulnerable moments call for help, the bureaucracies of health and international development too often dismiss and disrespect them. I watched it happen to my own father in his final years of illness. My research across fourteen countries shows it is a global problem, falling hardest on the world’s poorest — and as we rush to add AI to everything, we risk making these systems more inhuman still.
There is a better way: development with dignity. We are called not only to respect the dignity of others, but to build institutions that do so, and to roll back the systems that deny it. Lives of Dignity draws on more than twenty original research projects and twenty-two collaborations with NGOs over the past decade, and synthesises insights from philosophy, medicine and social science. Readers will close the book with a blueprint for how to diagnose and repair disrespect — in their own work, and across their sector.
It builds on the evidence in my first book, Marketplace Dignity (2024, University of Pennsylvania Press), and on the work of the Dignity Initiative at IDinsight. Around 90,000 words; three of nine chapters drafted; full manuscript expected in early 2027.
Three things this book offers
Practical, tested ways to understand dignity through the lifecycle and around the world — grounded in more than twenty original research projects.
Actionable, evidence-based steps for charities and governments to live up to their stated value of respecting people — drawn from twenty-two NGO collaborations.
The case for dignity as a central value of development, in the voices of those failed by disrespectful systems in Kenya and thirteen other countries.
“Restoring human dignity to its central place sets off a profound rethinking of economic priorities.”— Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo, Good Economics for Hard Times. This book takes the next step: how to actually do it.
A life, stage by stage
The heart of the book follows dignity through the stages of a life. Between each chapter, the writer Kanyi Wyban contributes a short ethnographic close-up on someone living that experience — and each chapter closes on a different idea of where dignity resides.
The most vulnerable moment
Disrespect in healthcare, the harms it causes, and the professionals pushing their institutions to do better.
Dignity in the bodyHow we are shaped
The lasting relationships of childhood, our desire for human connection, and the cultures some have dared to build differently.
Dignity in the selfOur public adult lives
Everyday disrespect at our least vulnerable, the tactics we adopt, and the thick cultures institutions can foster.
Dignity in statusOur private lives
Affirming dignity in families and households — consent, money, food, care — and learning to do at scale what we do in person.
Dignity in relationshipsFighting for better
Communal change against the fiercest opposition. Class and power, unequal legacies, and the movement dignity needs.
Dignity in something moreSudden vulnerability
When any of us can lose our footing. Humanitarians’ commitment to do better, and the real trade-offs involved.
Dignity in the stories we tellWe shall all be vulnerable
The dignity we will want from our communal institutions — and a reimagining of what bureaucracy and systems are for.
Dignity in every object around usThe authors
Tom Wein
Founder and director of the IDinsight Dignity Initiative, building respectful development with nonprofits across the Global South. Author, with Cait Lamberton and Neela Saldanha, of Marketplace Dignity (2024, Penn Press).
He testified to the UK Parliament’s International Development Committee on dignity in 2021, and has advised the Gates Foundation, GiveDirectly, UNICEF, the World Bank and others across fourteen years in development.
Kanyi Wyban
A writer and musician based in Mathare, Nairobi. Founder of Heroes of Mathare, a storytelling project celebrating the people of a community too often branded a ‘slum’, and coordinator of the Mathare Green Movement.
His journalism has been widely published in Kenya and beyond. He is the author of They Were Us: Stories of Victims and Survivors of Police Brutality in Kenya.
A growing movement, eager for guidance.
For the millions who work in development, and the scholars and students who study it. If you’re an agent or publisher, or you’d like to follow the book’s progress, I’d be glad to hear from you.
Tom Wein 