Humanitarian Challenges And Intervention

Second Edition

Thomas G Weiss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429974816
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

There are two distinct contemporary challenges to the relief of war-induced human suffering--one within the institutions that make up the international humanitarian system, the other on the ground in war zones. Varied interests, resources, and organizational structures within institutions hamper the effectiveness of efforts on behalf of war victims. And at the same time, on the ground, there are ethical, legal, and operational challenges and dilemmas that require actors continually to choose a course of action with associated necessary evils.Humanitarian challenges and intervention concerns within the international humanitarian system--combined with the domestic context of armed conflicts--often yield policies that do not serve the immediate requirements of victims for relief, protection of rights, stabilization, and reconstruction. Based on compelling, up-to-date case studies of the post-Cold War experience in Central America, northern Iraq, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia, and the African Great Lakes, the authors Thomas G. Weiss and Cindy Collins make recommendations for a more effective international humanitarian system.

One
Evolution of the Humanitarian Idea

Above all Nations—is Humanity.

—Creed of the Geneva Red Cross

By nightfall on June 24, 1859, the corpses of more than 40,000 Austrian and French soldiers lay scattered on a battlefield near the Italian village of Solferino. Witness to their slaughter was a young Swiss pacifist and businessman, Henri Dunant, who was in Italy seeking the assistance of French emperor Napoleon III in remedying a problem Dunant was having with his mill in Algeria. Dunant, so the story goes, had been inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe's accounts of slavery in the United States, Florence Nightingale's service to the wounded in the Crimean War, and Elizabeth Fry's efforts at prison reform. Without hesitation, he began to assist the wounded. The carnage on the battlefield was great; the magnitude of the casualties and the lack of sufficient medical personnel, facilities, and supplies were overwhelming. Within two months, 40,000 more would be dead from war-related wounds and insufficient medical attention.

Within a week of the battle, Dunant had convinced Napoleon III to render the first official proclamation regarding the rights of those suffering from war injuries. Napoleon III ordered the release of all Austrian doctors and surgeons so that they could return to their regiments and treat their own wounded. The morally inspired and politically astute actions of Dunant following the Battle of Solferino set into motion an advancement of the idea of international humanitarian action and the necessary institutional form to help ensure the actualization of the ideal—at least, in certain circumstances. Dunant would go on to found the Red Cross in Geneva in 1864. The precedent that he set—of seeking the approval of the sovereign authority for politically neutral, humanitarian intercession on behalf of the victims of war—is still the operating procedure of today's International Committee of the Red Cross. These principles were later codified in the 1864 Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field.

For some, Dunant's response to the Battle at Solferino marks the beginning of modern humanitarian action, even though charitable acts and religious organizations existed long before. The potency of that historical moment lies in the fortuitous convergence of four significant factors: the idea of humanitarian action, the codification of the idea through Napoleon's proclamation and the Geneva Convention, the institutionalization of the idea through the creation of the Red Cross, and the will of a powerful sovereign authority to place humanity before narrow self-interest. In studying a detailed history of humanitarian action, one can easily get lost in the number and meaning of various charters, conventions, declarations, and treaties and in the bureaucratic maze of institutions that seem, at times, to hinder a standard and predictable response to humanitarian crises associated with war. On a more general level, one need only remain mindful that the normative framework undergirding the written instruments and formalized institutions is the idea of humanitarian action or the humanitarian impulse, which continues to evolve and manifest itself as international norms.

The historical evolution of the humanitarian idea is represented not by a steadily progressing line but by sudden upward surges followed by temporary losses of momentum, plateaus, and sometimes backpedaling. After great losses of life resulting from war, new laws and institutions are quickly established. The greater the temporal distance from cataclysms, the slower the pace of humanitarian evolution, until events occur that again remind the world of the need for renewed restraint on inhumane behavior. This pattern cannot be explained by either idealist or realist perspectives. Idealism claims that war is not inevitable, that humankind is perfectible, and that state-to-state relations are moving progressively (and linearly) toward what political liberal Immanuel Kant called "perpetual peace" in the international system.¹ An idealist perspective does well in explaining the entrenchment of humanitarian ideals in largely democratic countries and the proliferation of nongovernmental humanitarian actors, but it is limited in its ability to explain the continual reemergence of war and the resistance to collective humanitarian action by states and nonstate actors.

In contrast, realism refutes claims of human perfectibility.² The motivations for behavior among individuals as well as among states are self interest and domination. Realists do not see a linear progression toward harmony among individuals or states, or any pattern to the evolution of humanitarian ideals; any appearance of humanitarianism in the actions of states is simply a smoke screen for self-interest. A cursory glance at Cold War politics seems to confirm this notion. However, realism cannot explain, for example, why Nordic countries have continually devoted a large percentage of their resources to humanitarian endeavors seemingly devoid of self-interest, or why the liberal values that were internationalized as a result of U.S. hegemony since the end of World War II continue to influence states to resist their own aggressive inclinations and to respond to the call for humanitarian assistance. This phenomenon, often referred to as embedded liberalism,³ is mirrored in the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, expressed in Roosevelt's four freedoms, and codified in the United Nations' 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Preamble to the Charter. Humanitarianism is a reflection of embedded liberalism. It dampens unequivocal acceptance of realists' overgeneraliza-tions of what guides states' behavior toward other states and toward suffering populations.

The pattern of humanitarian evolution is best represented by liberal institutionalism, a compromise between the perspectives of idealism and realism. In agreement with realism, liberal institutionalism views states as the most important actors in the international system (although not the only significant ones) and defines power capabilities and self-interest as the primary factors determining how states behave. However, according to this view, a conflict-mitigating factor emerges from transnational institutions and regimes—that is, from "principles, norms, rules, and decision making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue area."⁴ Regimes are consequential because they foster cooperation among states. International humanitarian conventions and institutions with humanitarian agendas constrain, in various degrees, certain types of state behavior. States pursue their self-interests within successively narrower ranges of action as a result of increases in codification of international humanitarian law; increases in the number of humanitarian non state actors; increases in authority given to intergovernmental institutions such as the United Nations; and the embeddedness of liberal values in an expanding number of democratic societies.

In addition, turbulent conflicts that attract attention because of gross violations of basic human rights are often followed by additional augmentation to humanitarian law and by calls for changes in institutional forms and state action. For example, the atrocities of World War II prompted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the replacement of the League of Nations by the United Nations, and U.S. involvement in bringing the war to an end and assisting in Western Europe's reconstruction. As a result, progress in the evolution of humanitarianism took another turn up-ward—the range of acceptable state behavior became narrower, whereas acknowledgment of international responsibility to alleviate human suffering expanded.

The Evolution of the Idea of Humanitarian Action

Political discourse, religion, and philosophy provide generous narratives to describe the genesis of the humanitarian impulse. In Second Discourse, political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-–1778) found the seeds for humanitarian action in the nature of humankind: "It is pity which carries us without reflection to the assistance of those we see suffer.... Commiseration is nothing but a sentiment that puts us in the place of him who suffers. . . . Commiseration will be all the more energetic in proportion as the Onlooking animal identifies more intimately with the suffering animal."⁵

All such social virtues as clemency, humanity, benevolence, and friendship find their origin in the virtue of pity For Rousseau, pity stems from the intervener's identification with those in need of assistance. Rousseau might argue that if Westerners cannot "see" themselves in the hollowed and frightened faces of Rwandans or Sudanese, then the television channel will be changed, the newspaper page turned, and the aid withheld.

Grounded in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are principles of human conduct that require a person to acknowledge his or her obligation toward the needy without consideration of self-interest or payoffs. The fourth chapter of Proverbs is illustrative: "Refuse no one the good on which he has a claim when it is in your power to do it for him. Say not to your neighbor, 'Go and come again, tomorrow I will give,' when you can give it at once."

Philosophy has left a trail of thought throughout history regarding obligations to intervene on humanitarian grounds.⁶ Cicero (106–43 B.C.) suggested that assistance to suffering groups is a matter of justice, not morality. Some modern-day humanitarian scholars and practitioners agree with Cicero that there is a humanitarian imperative rather than simply a humanitarian impulse. An impulse might allow other concerns to prevail over the offering of assistance. A humanitarian imperative, subscribed to by a number of individuals and by many NGOs such as the ICRC, stifles any consideration other than providing assistance wherever it is needed, regardless of personal safety or negative potential consequences of involvement. In this we can find some explanation for varied responses by different actors in the international humanitarian system: Some are guided by the humanitarian imperative; others are sensitive, although not always responsive, to the humanitarian impulse. Another group—and this is the reason for this book—are aware that yielding to an impulse or respecting an imperative can be problematic if more harm than good results from a particular humanitarian activity.

During the Middle Ages, the belief emerged that all people are internally connected as one universal, mystical body To current scholars, this universal body, minus the mystification, is referred to as international society St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) laid the groundwork for challenging a sovereign authority's maltreatment of people. Human rights scholar Hersch Lauterpacht has interpreted Aquinas as believing that "justification of the state is in its service to the individual; a king who is unfaithful to his duty forfeits his claim to obedience."⁷ Both statements—the recognition of one bond common to all humankind, with implied rights and obligations, and the justification for compromising the integrity of the sovereign authority should that authority fail to fulfill its duty to the welfare of its people—are integral to current debates about humanitarian action.

The Age of Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought into open public debate long-standing rumblings against religious dogma and beliefs justifying oppressive acts by religious and governmental authorities. The Age of Reason was thereby ushered in. Hugo Grotius (1583-–1645), an exiled Dutch statesman who is now acknowledged as the father of international law, synthesized Aquinas's call for civil disobedience toward a malevolent king and the idea of one common humanity. Grotius's 1625 De Jure Belli ac Pads (On the Rights of War and Peace) "recognized as lawful the use of force by one or more states to stop the maltreatment by a state of its own nationals when that conduct was so brutal and large-scale as to shock the conscience of the community of na-tions."⁸ Grotius's doctrine is reflected in Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter.

Immanuel Kant (1724-–1804), whose ideas influenced the formation of the League of Nations, expanded on the notion of global solidarity by linking the idea of national and international peace and security with the idea of promoting and protecting individual human dignity. To preach of democratic values and human rights within domestic politics without transferring those values to foreign politics is hypocritical, according to Kant and modern-day ethicists.

Throughout history these ideas about humanitarian action have melded and evolved. Historical contexts have determined the pace of the evolution within various societies as well as among states. With colonization of "unclaimed" lands and peoples and the Industrial Revolution came an increase in the speed of transmission and the geographical coverage of the idea of humanitarian action. And ironically it was the spread of humanitarianism and human rights that led to the demise of slavery and imperialism. Codification and institutionalization of the idea were largely a Western product of the late nineteenth century. The West had no monopoly on humanitarian ideas; however, it did codify its ideas and create discernible institutions for their operationalization.⁹ According to many observers, there is also ample evidence of the humanitarian idea in Africa, within Native American communities, and throughout much of the non-Western world.¹⁰ Private journals, oral histories, and traditional songs and folklore chronicle many instances of generosity in times of famine and disease. Buddhism and Hinduism accentuate the virtues of compassion and responsibility as much as do the faiths of the Western religious traditions. Islam, if anything, is even more explicit in this regard.

The Idea's Codification and Institutionalization

Before World War I

The simultaneous rise of peace movements and more sophisticated war machines during the nineteenth century led Russia's minister of foreign affairs to call for a world conference to discuss international armament reduction in the interest of general peace. The work of pacifists such as Dunant and a more politically active and attentive world population, infused with information generated by capitalism and print media,¹¹ blended with sovereign authorities' concerns abou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface to the Second Edition
• List of Acronyms
• Introduction
• 1 Evolution of the Humanitarian Idea
• 2 Main Actors
• 3 Rey Post-Cold War Arenas
• 4 Choices and Challenges In the Field
• 5 Policies of Humanitarian Intervention
• 6 Policies of Militarized Humanitarian Intervention
• Discussion Questions
• Notes
• Additional Reading and Related Web Locations
• Glossary
• Index