Rather than settle these one email at a time, we wrote them down. Thirty-seven terms, each with what the word means, how it is used in practice, why people disagree about it, and a concrete example. The glossary is now available on our shared drive for easy access. Then we looked at the result and thought: this is not really internal. Everyone working in this sector is having the same arguments. And no, no one has necessarily got it right, but it’s important to recognise that.

What it does

Each entry carries one of five markers showing how we treat the term in our own writing: we use it, we avoid it, use with care, under review, or context term. Where we retire a word, we always offer an alternative — there is no point flagging “vulnerable communities” as a problem without saying that naming the specific risk (“households displaced twice this year and beyond the reach of banks”) tells the reader far more.

But most entries are not rulings. They explain a live disagreement. Is neutrality possible, or even ethical, for mutual aid groups who are from the communities being bombed? Does gender mainstreaming change institutions or generate paperwork? Can the aid system reform itself, or does “decolonising aid” mean something else entirely? Important conversations to be had.

Where a term has more than one definition in use, we show them all rather than pretending one is neutral. “Diaspora” is the clearest case. The African Union ties membership to a willingness to contribute to the continent. The IOM rests it on identity and connection alone. IGAD states plainly that no universally agreed definition exists — and then uses the word anyway. CARICOM roots it in histories of enslavement and colonialism and holds that the Caribbean people’s boundaries are not its geographical ones.

None of these is correct. But each has consequences. The definition determines who gets counted, who is consulted, who qualifies for funding, and who is expected—or entitled— to contribute. A Chadian doctor in Kampala sending money home and advising a clinic remotely is a diaspora response that, by most of these definitions, is invisible to a programme that defines diaspora as citizens living in the West. She might simply call it looking after family. 

A note on Arabic 

Nafeer stays in Arabic. English offers “volunteering” or “community spirit”, and neither carries the sense of a call answered as a matter of shared obligation rather than individual choice. Keeping the Sudanese word keeps ownership of the idea with the people it belongs to, rather than folding their practice into aid-agency vocabulary.

It is a start

We are starting with these thirty-seven terms, but they are just a fraction of what is contested, and some entries are marked “under review” precisely because we have not finished arguing about them ourselves. We will publish updates when there is something worth updating.

Language shapes power. Choosing a word is a decision about who is described as capable and who as needy, whose knowledge counts, and where decisions sit. Worth being deliberate about.

Shabaka Glossary