Salvador Santino Regilme

TEDxTheHague

November 8, 2025

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TEDxTheHague

November 8, 2025

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Profile

Salvador Santino Regilme is an Associate Professor and Program Chair of International Relations at Leiden University and a leading scholar of global human rights, inter-state rivalries, and foreign aid. Born and raised in the Philippines, educated in Germany and the United States, and now based in the Netherlands as a Dutch citizen, he brings a unique perspective shaped by lived experience across the Global South and North.

He is the author of the award-winning book Aid Imperium (2021) and his expertise has been featured by major media outlets including CNN International, Deutsche Welle, BBC, and Al Jazeera. His work uncovers how aid is often wielded as a tool of power, while also imagining how it can be reclaimed as a force for human dignity, equity, and genuine partnership.

Talk Topic

In his talk, “Beyond Charity: How Foreign Aid Shapes Power, Inequality, and Our Future,” Salvador Santino Regilme challenges the comforting myth that foreign aid is an act of pure generosity.

Drawing on his personal experience living across the Global South and North, as well as his award-winning academic research, Regilme reveals how aid often serves as a powerful tool of statecraft. He will explore how it can fuel inequality, militarization, and geopolitical rivalry. More importantly, he will also point to hopeful pathways for reclaiming aid as a genuine partnership one that is grounded in dignity, human rights, and the power of local voices.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxTheHague, where x = independently organized TED event.

At our TEDxTheHague event, TED Talks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.