Humanitarianism in Question

Politics, Power, Ethics

Michael Barnett, Thomas G. Weiss, Michael Barnett, Thomas G. Weiss

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780801465086
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Peace & Global Development
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Years of tremendous growth in response to complex emergencies have left a mark on the humanitarian sector. Various matters that once seemed settled are now subjects of intense debate. What is humanitarianism? Is it limited to the provision of relief to victims of conflict, or does it include broader objectives such as human rights, democracy promotion, development, and peacebuilding?

For much of the last century, the principles of humanitarianism were guided by neutrality, impartiality, and independence. More recently, some humanitarian organizations have begun to relax these tenets. The recognition that humanitarian action can lead to negative consequences has forced humanitarian organizations to measure their effectiveness, to reflect on their ethical positions, and to consider not only the values that motivate their actions but also the consequences of those actions.

In the indispensable Humanitarianism in Question, Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines to address the humanitarian identity crisis, including humanitarianism's relationship to accountability, great powers, privatization and corporate philanthropy, warlords, and the ethical evaluations that inform life-and-death decision making during and after emergencies.

Contributors: Michael Barnett, University of Minnesota; Craig Calhoun, New York University; James D. Fearon, Stanford University; Laura Hammond, SOAS, University of London; Peter J. Hoffman, Hunter College; Stephen Hopgood, SOAS, University of London; Peter Redfield, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Jennifer C. Rubenstein, Princeton University; Jack Snyder, Columbia University; Janice Gross Stein, University of Toronto; Thomas G. Weiss, CUNY Graduate Center

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HUMANITARIANISM

A Brief History of the Present

MICHAEL BARNETT AND THOMAS G. WEISS

For the last two decades, humanitarian organizations have been careening from one major emergency to another. Although aid agencies never anticipated that the end of the cold war would dampen the demand for their services, they certainly were not prepared for the challenges that they were about to encounter. Some of these spectacles made front-page news and profiled their heroic and not so heroic activities. In Somalia, relief workers attempted to save hundreds of thousands of people from conflict-induced famine generated by warlords seeking food aid to feed their ambitions. In Bosnia they provided relief to those trapped in so-called safe havens—the United Nations Security Council intended them to be a sanctuary from Serbian attacks, but they quickly became prisons of violence. In Rwanda they were largely absent during the genocide itself but soon began attempting to save millions of displaced peoples in camps militarized and controlled by the architects of the genocide. In Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, they were funded by and operated alongside the invading parties, and then discovered that they were treated as enemy combatants by opposing factions. In addition to these "loud" high-profile disasters there were "silent" orphans in places such as Pakistan, Congo, and northern Uganda, where aid agencies tried to feed the needy with scant resources in a hostile context. The end of conflicts produced other challenges, as aid agencies aimed to help survivors reclaim their lives and rebuild war-torn societies. Humanitarian organizations have been in a constant motion, frantically attempting to keep pace with the new, growing, and unanticipated demands.

Analyses of humanitarian action in the post-cold war period typically highlight two defining trends. The first is the growing willingness and ability of outsiders to help those at risk. Radical improvements in information technology and logistical capacity, growing international support for a duty to aid and a responsibility to protect victims, multiplying numbers of relief organizations, and spikes in available resources offer the promise of an enhanced collective capacity to provide war victims with relief, rescue, and reconstruction. Although the slow-motion genocide in Darfur and other tragedies are stark reminders that good thoughts and solemn proclamations are never enough, there now exists an international network that can act when and if called. Although these pledges serve as a bittersweet reminder of unkept promises, they at least represent the possibility of a more just world order.

The second trend reflects the mounting dangers that complex emergencies pose for humanitarianism.¹ Although willing to answer the call, humanitarian organizations have been generally ill-equipped for what they have found: war zones where civilian populations are the intended victims, where access is difficult, where aid workers are in danger of being received as a threat or as a resource to be captured, and where their own physical safety is in doubt. Their standard operating procedures provided little guidance for how they might operate in places such as Bosnia, Rwanda, Afghanistan, and Iraq, forcing them to improvise constantly. When, if ever, should they request armed protection and work with states? Would armed protection facilitate access or create the impression that aid workers were now one of the warring parties? Should they provide aid unconditionally? What if doing so means feeding the armies, militias, and killers who are responsible for and clearly benefit from terrorizing civilian populations? At what point should aid workers withdraw because the situation is too dangerous? Can aid really make a difference? The contemporary moment has proved so challenging that even stalwart defenders of humanitarianism concede that the moral necessity of humanitarian action is no longer self-evident.² Aid workers, thus, should be forgiven if they seem almost nostalgic for the supposedly more straightforward emergencies of the past.³

These two trends, the first suggesting that humanitarianism is experiencing a golden era and the second that it is descending into a new dark age, have combined to cause the humanitarian community to engage in soul-searching about who they are, what they do, how they do it, and what impact their efforts have. This conversation has been animated by three identity-defining questions.

First, what does humanitarianism aspire to accomplish? For many it is best identified with the provision of relief to victims of human-made and natural disasters. For others, though, humanitarianism does not end with the termination of the emergency; just because lives are no longer at immediate risk does not mean that suffering has ended or that other destructive forces that might appear in the future have been removed. No longer satisfied with saving individuals today only to have them be in jeopardy tomorrow—the infamous "well-fed dead"⁴ —many organizations now aspire to transform the structural conditions that endanger populations. Their work includes development, democracy promotion, establishing the rule of law and respect for human rights, and postconflict peace building. These more ambitious projects expand the ability of aid workers to help more people in need and are designed to create the possibility of a more hopeful future—but, for better and worse, they coincide with and sometimes become part of the grand strategies of many powerful states.

Second, what are the defining principles of humanitarianism? In his famous desiderata, Jean Pictet of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) identified seven core principles: humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity, and universality. The first four principles, though, arguably constitute the core.⁵ Humanity commands attention to all people. Impartiality requires that assistance be based on need and not on the basis of nationality, race, religion, gender, or political opinion. Neutrality demands that humanitarian organizations refrain from taking part in hostilities or from any action that either benefits or disadvantages the parties to the conflict. Independence demands that assistance should not be connected to any of the parties directly involved in armed conflicts or who have a stake in the outcome; accordingly, there is a general rule that agencies should either refuse or limit their reliance on government funding, especially if the donors have a stake in the outcome.

For some, these principles are nearly sacrosanct and constitutive of humanitarianism, in essence defining what it is. These principles also serve as functional guidelines because by adhering to them agencies can better provide relief and protection. If aid agencies are perceived by combatants as partial, allied with the opposing side, or as having a vested interest in the outcome, then they will have a difficult time getting access, or even worse, they may become targets. These principles, if followed and respected, create "humanitarian space" that provides a sanctuary for aid workers and victims. Others agree on the general desirability of these principles but insist on moving beyond idealistic dogmatism toward making them contingent on how effective they are in specific situations. And, under certain conditions, they can be so dysfunctional as to be counterproductive. How does neutrality help the victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide? If states are the solution to humanitarian emergencies and are required to end mass killing, then what good is independence?

Third, what are humanitarianism's relations to politics? One perspective, most closely identified with the International Committee of the Red Cross, is that politics is a moral pollutant. The crux of the issue concerns the precise degree of independence. Indeed, many relief agencies nearly define the very meaning of humanitarianism as the opposite of "politics" and work hard to distinguish their actions as apolitical.⁶ Although they confess that it is impossible to completely seal off humanitarianism from politics, they nevertheless insist that agencies must guard that border. Activities such as human rights, development, democracy promotion, and peacebuilding are political because they propose to treat causes and not symptoms and thus are implicated in a politics of transformation. The more that aid agencies depart from the ICRC's template of principles, the more political they will become, and the more difficult it will be to provide relief.

The contrasting position holds that it is neither possible nor desirable to separate humanitarianism and politics. It is impossible for humanitarian agencies to be apolitical. Their actions have political consequences, and they are viewed by those on the ground as political. The necessity of becoming political, however, is driven not only because of consequences or perceptions but because of the intention to alter the conditions that cause suffering. It is all well and good to deal with symptoms in the thick of an emergency, but afterward any attempt to rebuild lives and societies will necessitate an encounter with politics. It cannot be avoided, nor should it be. Moreover, humanitarian agencies cannot and need not engage in these activities on their own. They are resource starved, and states should be sought and welcomed as partners in promoting progressive change.

This contemporary debate over the purposes, principles, and politics of hu-manitarianism reveals a struggle to (re)define the humanitarian identity. Although it is a tad melodramatic to claim that humanitarianism is in the midst of a full-blown identity crisis, humanitarian agencies do exhibit an anxiety associated with deep ontological insecurity. Several features of this debate over the humanitarian identity are particularly noteworthy. To begin, similar to all debates about collective identities, there is an attempt to mark the boundaries between social kinds. Identities are not only personal or psychological, they also are social and relational, generated by the actor's interaction with and relationship to others; therefore, identities are contingent, dependent on the identity's location within a structured context. As aid agencies debate who they are and what practices are reflective of their identity, they simultaneously reveal who they believe they are not and the practices that they deem illegitimate. The attempt to define the humanitarian identity, in other words, reflects a desire to define difference. Although identities are always being negotiated and thus difference is constantly being constructed, over the last twenty years global developments, such as the growing prominence of states in relief-oriented activities and the proliferation of postconflict operations, have weakened once reasonably settled distinctions between humanitarianism and other areas of social life. Boundaries blur as aid agencies perform functions once viewed as the domain of the state and states perform functions once viewed as the domain of relief agencies.

The debate over the humanitarian identity reflects a search to recapture the unity and purity that is tied to its presumed universality. What unifies humanitarianism? There always have been different strands of humanitarianism that are constituted and defined by different configurations of practices, principles, and understandings of the proper relationship between politics and humanitarianism. Arguably, though, the ICRC's definition of humanitarian action—the impartial, independent, and neutral provision of relief to those in immediate need because of conflict and natural disasters—was the industry standard until the late 1980s. Humanitarianism, in this view, meant relief and nothing but relief. Although other organizations such as Save the Children, CARE, and Oxfam also began as relief organizations and thus initially saw themselves as part of the humanitarian system, once relief was no longer a priority they soon tackled reconstruction and development activities and no longer identified as closely with a "humanitarian" system still very much defined by relief, leaving ICRC as the unchallenged guardian.⁷

Global developments, and especially the end of the cold war, have called into question ICRC's hegemonic position, frayed humanitarianism's unity, and dissolved the boundaries between humanitarianism and other activities. If humanitarianism, for instance, now includes development, human rights, democracy promotion, gender equality, and peace building, then exactly what distinguishes it from these other areas of life that are populated by various interest-driven actors, including states? The search for unity represents nothing less than an attempt to fix a meaning to humanitarianism and repair breaches in its increasingly porous boundaries.

This search for unity also relates to a desire to restore purity. For man...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1. Humanitarianism: A Brief History of the Present
• 2. The Rise of Emergency Relief Aid
• 3. The Imperative to Reduce Suffering: Charity, Progress, and Emergencies in the Field of Humanitarian Action
• 4. Saying "No" to Wal-Mart? Money and Morality in Professional Humanitarianism
• 5. Humanitarian Organizations: Accountable—Why, to Whom, for What, and How?
• 6. The Grand Strategies Of Humanitarianism
• 7. The Power of Holding Humanitarianism Hostage and the Myth of Protective Principles
• 8. Sacrifice, Triage, and Global Humanitarianism
• 9. The Distributive Commitments of International NGOs
• 10. Humanitarianism as a Scholarly Vocation
• 11. Humanitarianism and Practitioners: Social Science Matters
• Contributors