The New Humanitarians in International Practice

Emerging actors and contested principles

Zeynep Sezgin, Dennis Dijkzeul

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317570615
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Économie
• Subtopic: Développement durable

As humanitarian needs continue to grow rapidly, humanitarian action has become more contested, with new actors entering the field to address unmet needs, but also challenging long-held principles and precepts.

This volume provides detailed empirical comparisons between emerging and traditional humanitarian actors. It sheds light on why and how the emerging actors engage in humanitarian crises and how their activities are carried out and perceived in their transnational organizational environment. It develops and applies a conceptual framework that fosters research on humanitarian actors and the humanitarian principles. In particular, it simultaneously refers to theories of organizational sociology and international relations to identify both the structural and the situational factors that influence the motivations, aims and activities of these actors, and their different levels of commitment to the traditional humanitarian principles. It thus elucidates the role of the humanitarian principles in promoting coherence and coordination in the crowded and diverse world of humanitarian action, and discusses whether alternative principles and parallel humanitarian systems are in the making.

This volume will be of great interest to postgraduate students and scholars in humanitarian studies, globalization and transnationalism research, organizational sociology, international relations, development studies, and migration and diaspora studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners engaged in humanitarian action, development cooperation and migration issues.

Part I History Old and New Humanitarian Actors

1 A Brief History of Humanitarian Actors and Principles

Wolf-Dieter Eberwein and Bob Reinalda

DOI: 10.4324/9781315737621-1

Introduction

This chapter provides a brief history of humanitarian actors and principles, covering two complementary groups: humanitarian organisations in a wider (focused on improving people’s lives) and a more restrictive-sense (focused on saving lives, with a recognised status in international humanitarian law). It also analyses the rise of two branches of what is now called international humanitarian law: ius in bello or Hague Law, which regulates the conduct of armed conflicts and so-called Geneva Law that protects those who are not, or no longer, taking part in hostilities: civilian populations and prisoners of war.

The normative institutionalisation of humanitarian action by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), governments and in particular international governmental organisations (IGOs) associated with the UN has been a long process, which began with the first Geneva Convention of 1864 (Eberwein 2011). The main organisational institutionalisation process started at about the same time and intensified after the end of the Cold War.

The Rise of Private Actors with Public Aims

The appearance of private actors with public aims, such as NGOs, in Western Europe from the mid-eighteenth century on was related to the emergence of the middle classes and the growth in education and resources which enabled people to take part in the activities of such organisations, as well as to advances in communication (roads, trains, shipping, postal services, the telegraph, the press, etc.) (Seary 1996: 17).

This citizens’ engagement took place against the wider backdrop of the Enlightenment. Political theorists argued that democratic institutions would allow citizens to accept the curtailment of their various rights by the state and provide them with procedures to correct their government if necessary. This model for legitimate government was founded on the idea of a social contract. While citizens accept the power of the government, they are also guaranteed certain inalienable rights and liberties, according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The notion of ‘popular sovereignty’ then regards the will and consent of the people as the source of all political power and of a state’s legitimacy. This was clearly expressed in the 1787 Constitution of the United States, while the first declarations of the rights of the citizens followed during the French Revolution of 1789 and in the American Bill of Rights of 1791. However, the mere proclamation of such rights did not yet make them effective. The way to transform these new ideas into political reality was through political struggles by the citizens, first in Europe and Northern America and after the Second World War also elsewhere. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries this struggle included the restriction of state power through the greater accountability of the executive to the parliamentary representation of the people, the separation of powers between legislature, executive and judiciary in a trias politica and the acquisition of more power by the people through a gradual extension of the popular vote. The emergence and evolution of humanitarian actors and principles can be seen as part of this effort to modernise and democratise the state and the relations between states.

NGOs have been closely associated with democratisation processes within states and the international system of states. Partly this consisted of the formulation as well as the elaboration and specification of human rights, which allowed the emancipation of civil society (Davies 2013). Small groups of citizens took up ideas related to ethical, economic, social and political problems, predicated on the assumption that they could contribute to the solution of problems at the national and international levels by appealing to the (governments of) states. Some of these groups are social movements, characterised by public campaigns, action repertoires and collective self-representation (Tilly 2004: 3–4). Others are advocacy organisations, such as Amnesty International, appealing to the public and even more to governments, to respect human rights and refrain from human-rights violations. Still other associations deliver services related to disasters and development and environmental issues. A final group consists of people involved in the creation and dissemination of knowledge: epistemic communities.

Both governments and NGOs are faced with societal changes, forcing them to adapt internally and externally. Issues come and go; new problems are identified as they show up, very often as a result of the increase in scientific knowledge. Most non-profit NGOs could be characterised as humanitarian. Humanitarian organisations in a wider sense are those active in the domain of social welfare, such as development in general, the environment, peace and human rights. Humanitarian organisations in a more restrictive sense are those NGOs that provide emergency relief in case of war and natural or technical disasters. There is a basic distinction between the two: the wider group wants to improve the existence of individuals, or groups of individuals, while the more restrictive group wants to save lives. There is another relevant distinction, because unlike the wider group humanitarian organisations in the more narrow sense have a recognised status in international humanitarian law, which is a particular set of legal provisions prescribing and proscribing the behaviour of both governments and humanitarian organisations, as will be elaborated below.

The Rise of International Peace Movements and the Idea of Arbitration

The wars that revolutionary and later Napoleonic France fought from 1791 until 1815 popularised the ideas of a nation in arms, glorifying the figure of the soldier, but there was also awareness of the destructiveness and waste of war. The Spanish painter Francisco de Goya documented the cruelties of both the Napoleonic army of occupation and the Spanish people’s guerrilla resistance in the paintings and etchings he made during the wars in Spain, and saw his etchings about ‘The Disasters of War’ disseminated widely across Europe thanks to new printing techniques. In this vein, Quakers, who regard waging war as incompatible with Christianity, were among the first to establish peace societies in the UK (the British Peace Society of 1819) and the US, where 36 Quaker and other societies merged into the American Peace Society in 1828. The latter aimed at settling international controversies by an appeal to reason and by arbitration between states. In this it followed James Jay, who was the American negotiator in concluding a treaty between the UK and the US in 1794 to settle disagreements between the two states. Jay regarded arbitration as a means to prevent conflicts, rather than as a way to end hostilities. While old ethical critiques of warfare found new arguments in Goya’s etchings, arbitration emerged as a means to avoid the cruelties of war and was discussed at the first international peace congress in 1843 in London (Reinalda 2009: 44–45).

Free trade advocates also reflected on peace and peaceful means such as arbitration. They regarded trade as a more effective way of exerting influence in the world than the bullying of other states and argued that it could make war obsolete. During the 1840s free trade advocates gained support from businessmen who would profit from free trade and became allied to the Quaker-influenced peace groups. However, a closer look at the peace movement in the Anglo-Saxon world reveals that it was split between religion-inspired pacifists who wished to oppose all wars and peace advocates who gave primacy to free trade. Factors such as Protestantism and the rise of liberal politics and a free-enterprise economy provided a favourable setting for the promotion of peace societies in the US and the UK, which spread to the Continent, in particular Western Europe, with Central and Eastern Europe being less in favour of liberal and democratic aspirations.

The idea of arbitration attracted new diplomatic attention as a result of the Alabama dispute between the US and the UK, in which the US demanded compensation because the UK had violated neutrality by opening its ports to belligerent ships during the American Civil War (the Alabama was on the side of the Southern US states and operated from Liverpool). Negotiations resulted in the Treaty of Washington (1871) and in an arbitration procedure in Geneva the following year. That both parties accepted the outcome and the UK paid within the time stipulated enhanced the idea of arbitration and its practicability, both in public opinion and in parliamentary debates on international arbitration. Interstate arbitration became prevalent, in particular in tribunals in which either the US or the UK participated, while the Universal Postal Union of 1874 was the first IGO with a provision for (compulsory) arbitration in its constitution. Shortly after the Alabama issue citizens founded two private institutes of international law. The Institute of International Law (1873) aimed to encourage the general progress of international law and developed into an epistemic community of experts on international arbitration to which governments increasingly began to pay attention. The International Law Association, founded in the same year by lawyers committed to the peace movement, focused more on public opinion. In practice the two organisations proved to be complementary to each other in promoting arbitration. Another organisation in favour of arbitration was the Inter-Parliamentary Union of 1889, which created a network of parliamentarians who discussed the question of how to make their respective governments conclude permanent arbitration treaties and include arbitration clauses in commercial treaties. A division of labour evolved between these parliamentarians and the Universal Peace Congress, a collection of peace groups that organised annual international conferences.

The activities of the various international peace movements reached a high point in the so-called Hague system, which resulted from the 1899 Peace Conference in The Hague. The Convention on the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes promoted arbitration and was followed by the establishment of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 1900. Although these were the results of intergovernmental negotiation, the peace movements had done much of the preparatory work. Essential is the universal character of the Hague system; although its first members were mainly European states, the Latin American states decided to join the system en bloc in 1901. Other manifestations of universal peace efforts were the creation of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, paid out of the industrialist Alfred Nobel’s bequest, and the opening of the Peace Palace in The Hague in 1913, donated by the American industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

Geneva Law: Humanising War

As humanitarians in the wider sense the peace movements proved a constant factor in the nineteenth century, which should be kept in mind when discussing humanitarianism and international law. The conference in Paris that settled the outcome of the Crimean War of 1854–56 between Russia and Turkey was important for several reasons. It was the first enlargement of the Concert of Europe system beyond Europe in the strictest sense, because it admitted Turkey to the then-existing community of nations. It also marked the beginning of rule-making on navigation in times of war and the relations between belligerents and neutrals, when it issued the Declaration Respecting Maritime Law. This prohibited privateering and the capture of enemy goods on neutral ships, with the former requiring blockades to be effective. These rules were made more precise and were codified in later treaties, among them the Treaty of Washington of 1871 mentioned above and the sixth convention of the second Hague Peace Conference in 1907. The 1856 Paris Declaration marked the beginning of the branch of international law that regulates the conduct of armed conflicts, also called ius in bello. The law of ‘war proper’, as it was called at the time, defines the rights and duties of belligerents regarding the methods of warfare. Since the Hague Peace Conferences and their various conventions this has also been called ‘Hague Law’, to be distinguished from ‘Geneva Law’ (discussed below), the two branches of what is now called international humanitarian law.

A new element in the Crimean War was concern for the welfare of the wounded. Whereas the peace movements wanted to abolish war, the humanitarian movement was hoping that as long as wars were not abolished the fighting at least could be humanised. The beginning of humanitarian action can be associated with Florence Nightingale, who had gained experience in hospital administration. She had offered her help to the British secretary of war after she read about the unhealthy conditions at the front and in the military hospital in Scutari. She was sent to Scutari with a group of nurses, to support the British army by attacking the unhygienic conditions through proper organisation, ensuring sufficient medical supplies and thereby trying to reduce the death rate of the wounded soldiers. Following her work British military medical services were overhauled and expanded in such a way that they could adequately care for the military wounded without civilian assistance. This British attitude to taking care of the wounded on the battlefield became a state obligation as a result of a private initiative (Finnemore 1996: 79).

The Swiss banker Henri Dunant started the development of humanitarian action, humanitarianism in the narrow sense, but went much further than Nightingale by proposing a universal strategy. Having seen the wounded and dying soldiers on the battlefield of Solferino in the war between French and Austrian troops in 1859, he proposed the creation of national organisations to accompany the military to the theatre of war so that civilians could take care of the wounded, so-called comités de secours. His friend Gustave Moynier, who from personal experience knew about diplomacy, tried to persuade a number of European governments to agree to such an international convention. In the meantime Dunant had in early 1863 visited the international statistical congress in Berlin to gain insight into the available comparative health and death statistics and to raise political support for the proposed comités de secours. At the conference in Geneva in October 1863 representatives from 16 nations approved the foundation of private national societies, staffed by volunteers and funded by private donations, that were to seek recognition from national governments and could act as neutrals in armed conflict. Results were not achieved easily, as the British argued that the armies were already taking care of the wounded themselves; the French distrusted the competence and integrity of the volunteers; and the Prussians had a different tradition, of Knights Hospitallers. The designer of the Swiss flag, General Guillaume-Henri Dufour, managed to keep the debate going and recommended using the Swiss flag reversed – a red cross on a white background – as a symbol of neutrality for the medical units. Consensus was finally reached, which resulted in the establishment of the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross, in 1863. Thanks to the initiative of the Swiss government a diplomatic multilateral conference was convened in 1864, which signed the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field and recognised the Red Cross emblem.

This Geneva Convention was a first and major step in institutionalising humanitarian action. Revised versions of the first Geneva Convention followed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Brazil, Mexico and Turkey were absent in Geneva, but supported the project. The US Sanitary Commission sent an observer, given its interest in rules on the battlefield during the ongoing US civil war and its 1863 Instructions for United States Armies in the Field, also called the Lieber Code after its author Francis Lieber.

Implementing the new humanitarian principles proved difficult. The ICRC promoted the progress of national Red Cross societies, but came up against governments and military commanders who sought to nationalise and militarise the charitable contributions of the national societies. Those became subsidiaries of the army medical services in case of war, but were neutral in status and thus protected from hav...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction New Humanitarians Getting Old?
• 1 History Old and New Humanitarian Actors
• 1 A Brief History of Humanitarian Actors and Principles
• 2 New Donor Humanitarianism
• 2 India as Humanitarian Actor Convergences and Divergences with DAC Donor Principles and Practices
• 3 Turkey as a Rising Power An Emerging Global Humanitarian Actor
• 3 Developmental Humanitarianism
• 4 Multi-Mandate Organisations in Humanitarian Aid
• 4 Armed Humanitarianism
• 5 Blurred Lines, Shrunken Space? Offensive Peacekeepers, Networked Humanitarians and the Performance of Principle in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
• 6 Rebels without Borders Armed Groups as Humanitarian Actors
• 7 The Military, the Private Sector and Traditional Humanitarian Actors Interaction, interoperability and effectiveness
• 5 For-Profit Humanitarianism
• 8 Business in Humanitarian Crises For Better or for Worse?
• 9 Humanitarian Action for Sale Private Military and Security Companies in the Humanitarian Space
• 6 Diaspora Humanitarianism
• 10 The Invisibility of a Third Humanitarian Domain
• 11 Diaspora Action in Syria and Neighbouring Countries
• 7 Faith-Based Humanitarianism
• 12 International Muslim NGOs ‘Added Value' or an Echo of Western Principles and Donor Wishes?
• 13 Writing the Other into Humanitarianism A Conversation between ‘South–South' and ‘Faith-Based’ Humanitarianisms
• 8 Regional and Local Humanitarianism
• 14 Regional Organisations and the Humanitarian System History, Trends and Implications
• 15 Traditional and Non-Traditional Humanitarian Actors in Disaster Response in India
• Conclusions Convergence or Divergence?
• Index