About the author: Scarlett Hawkins is a Rotary Peace Fellow at the Duke-University of North Carolina Rotary Peace Center, a Master's Graduate of Global Studies at the University of North Carolina, and Co-President of The Global Gazette. Specializing in Gender-Based Violence, Migration, and the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus, Scarlett has 10 years of experience in policy, strategy, and program management in international development and humanitarian response, including over 3 years in the United Nations system spanning Pakistan, Vanuatu, Uruguay, and New York.

About the piece: The international sector is dynamic, compelling, and abundant with opportunities to do meaningful work. However, as the discourse of social justice evolves, people motivated to pursue participatory, and anti-colonial work may struggle with the ethical implications of working abroad. This opinion-editorial acknowledges the challenges of – and offers a conceptual frame for – negotiating this positionality.