Humanitarian Aid

11 Key excerpts on "Humanitarian Aid"

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  Love and Liberation

  Humanitarian Work in Ethiopia's Somali Region

  • Lauren Carruth(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • Cornell University Press

    (Publisher)

  3 The strategic use of foreign humanitarian interventions for political gain is only possible, however, when relief agencies and governments can effectively disclaim their own self-interests and appear motivated solely by the desire to end suffering. Humanitarianism, accordingly, provides a benevolent cover and a rationale for many interventions into sovereign nations and communities facing crisis.

  Organizations that deny the political intents and effects of aid, and, at the same time, depend on the political savvy of local aid workers and the political support of donors, perform what James Ferguson calls “anti-politics.”4 Humanitarian intervention entails not a rejection or avoidance of political action by relief organizations, donors, and recipient governments, but rather, an external-facing denial of political intentions and effects in donor countries, in order to achieve strategic political ends.

  Relief operations in Ethiopia and elsewhere are thus integral to international, national, local politics—in part through the labor of front-line nongovernmental aid workers and their government partners. Aid earmarked for humanitarian crises bolsters various governmental missions and funds governmental staffs, bureaus, and initiatives. In Ethiopia during the last decade, humanitarian interventions supported the decentralization of health care, the improvement of local disaster preparedness and response mechanisms, and the provision of various public services like community-based primary health care to rural and pastoralist households. It contributed to the popularity, power, and cohesiveness of the Somali Regional National State, as well. As Doctor Hamza proudly proclaimed in chapter 1, after many years, the Somali Regional Health Bureau was finally “100% Somali,” despite the federal government’s strategic efforts since to place Amharic-speaking Ethiopians from within the ruling EPRDF and Prosperity Party into prominent posts. Ethnic and regional sovereignty, autonomy, and power have been realized, in large part in eastern Ethiopia through control of humanitarian funding and operations by regional governmental entities like the Somali Regional Health Bureau in Jigjiga.

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  Security and Development in Global Politics

  A Critical Comparison

  • Joanna Spear, Paul D. Williams(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Georgetown University Press

    (Publisher)

  Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); Fiona Terry, Condemned to Repeat? The Paradox of Humanitarian Action (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002); Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time (New York: Penguin, 2005); and William Easterly, The White Man’s Burden (New York: Penguin, 2008).

  14 . See J. Brian Atwood, M. Peter McPherson, and Andrew Natsios, “Arrested Development,” Foreign Affairs 87, no. 6 (2008): 123–32.

  15 . OECD, “United States (2006) DAC Peer Review: Main Findings and Recommendations,” accessed January 30, 2011, www.oecd.org/document/27/0,3343,en_2649_34603_37829787_1_1_1_1,00.html .

  16 . See Adele Harmer and Joanna Macrae, eds., “Beyond the Continuum: The Changing Role of Aid Policy in Protracted Crisis” (London: ODI Humanitarian Policy Group Research Report, 2004), www.odi.org.uk/resources/download/236.pdf .

   

  HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE

  Editors’ Comments

  Joanna Spear and Paul D. Williams

  Although the security and development arenas broadly share a definition of humanitarian assistance, their ideas about what such assistance is for and the problem that it addresses are radically different. The development community conceives the importance of humanitarian assistance purely as a way to save lives and alleviate the suffering of those most in need. Moreover, such assistance is seen as a prior step to effective poverty reduction policies and longer-term development strategies. In contrast, security analysts and practitioners have tended to view humanitarian assistance instrumentally as an element in crafting desirable security outcomes. During the Cold War humanitarian assistance was a way to score points against the Soviets; today it is used to try and curry favor with the Muslim world and enhance counterinsurgency campaigns.

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  The Politics of Crisis-Making

  Forced Displacement and Cultures of Assistance in Lebanon

  • Estella Carpi(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Indiana University Press

    (Publisher)

  3 / Politicizing Aid and Moralizing Politics

  Old Formulas, New Scenarios

  Over the last few decades, governments have increasingly relied on their humanitarian affairs departments to manage domestic and international emergencies. Historically, political parties and the wealthy personalities aligned with them have also undertaken humanitarian relief programs in areas marked by crisis. The tendency of political actors to directly engage in aid is global, and Lebanon is no exception. Building on Ilana Feldman’s argument that the way in which displaced people live with politics and in politics informs the politics of humanitarianism itself (Feldman 2018, 4), I suggest a twofold understanding of the politicization of aid in the Lebanese context. First, humanitarian policies and practices are instrumentalized and reattuned in local, regional, and global politics; second, the moralization, humanization, and neutralization that both humanitarian and political actors purport to put in practice through public campaigns are used to uphold international accountability, receive international funding, and subsist as aid interlocutors and mediators. In this vein, I show not only the ways in which aid is highly politicized in today’s Lebanon—as it is worldwide—but also how the global political order has induced all actors to moralize their politics. These changes have offered to political and humanitarian actors a new ground to discard and belittle their rivals.

  Humanitarianism becomes not only a space where assistance contributes to making and unmaking political imaginaries and actual polities, but also where refugees and locals use their expected political identities to access the assistance regime, continually readapt to the social environment, and develop self-protection strategies (e.g., Bouris 2007; Cammett 2011; Feldman 2012a; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2014). Against this backdrop, political neutrality does not always emerge in the same guise as we learned it in the framework of the ICRC. Yet it remains a fundamental register that assistance providers need (more or less willingly) to relate to within the broader humanitarian arena.

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  Europe's Global Role

  External Policies of the European Union

  • Jan Orbie(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The Commission explains the commitment to non-political Humanitarian Aid by an appeal to the humanitarian imperative, the entitlement of each human being to emergency aid in times of crisis. A nation must ensure that the humanitarian needs of the population within its borders are met. However, when the government of a country is not capable or willing to take on this responsibility, international organisations and third countries with the necessary resources have the duty to support external Humanitarian Aid operations.

  The unconditional entitlement to humanitarian relief is in contrast to EU development aid which has become increasingly subject to political conditionality, namely the recipient country’s respect for human rights and democratic principles. For example, while in the spring of 2006 EU foreign ministers decided to suspend aid to the Palestinian Authority controlled by Hamas, this was not to affect Humanitarian Aid for the Palestinian people.

  The Commission argues that the integration of Humanitarian Aid in a broader political or development-oriented strategy might strain compliance with the humanitarian imperative. If, rather than pursuing the goal of life-saving, Humanitarian Aid is to contribute to conflict resolution and development, this might allow for the creation of deserving and undeserving victims, based on people’s expected contribution to peace-building and development. Such an approach potentially implies withholding aid, which might result in avoidable deaths (De Torrenté 2004, 3; Macrae 2004, 33). For instance, the political imperative to build peace by supporting transitional governments might require marginalising those rebels trying to undermine the transition process, and thus denying humanitarian assistance to those in need who are situated in rebel-controlled areas (Bryer 2003, 5–6).

  The apolitical character of Humanitarian Aid is also fostered because it is considered to be the main vehicle for safeguarding access to crisis victims and the security of Humanitarian Aid workers. Humanitarians conclude a ‘contract’ with belligerent parties, based on the understanding that assistance comes with no strings attached. This contract has to guarantee the acceptability of humanitarian operations and the immunity of humanitarian staff from attacks. When humanitarians are seen as part of a politico-military strategy, this might undermine their perceived impartiality, and erode their safety and freedom of movement. For example, it has been argued that during the Iraq war, the perception the local population had of some humanitarian organisations as ‘force multipliers’ of US foreign policy and military objectives, put all humanitarian workers in a dangerous position and triggered the deadly attacks on both the UN and Red Cross offices in Baghdad (De Torrenté 2004).

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  Global Governance and the New Wars

  The Merging of Development and Security

  • Mark Duffield(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Zed Books

    (Publisher)

  From being a radical aim, humanitarian assistance began to assume the form of a lowest international common denominator in the context of operations that, through experience, were being redefined as long-term and politically complex. In the absence of a clear political resolve to end conflict, humanitarian assistance could even be seen as counter-productive. For example, in providing transport and shelter, aid agencies in Bosnia were often accused of facilitating the very ethnic cleansing they abhorred. In the absence of clear and unequivocal international structures working effectively for peace, the idea of a neutral humanitarianism able to stand above politics became increasingly strained in the seemingly intractable conflicts of the 1990s. In this respect, the strategic complexes of liberal governance do not provide such a system. Liberal peace is a contested and regionally differentiated reality that, through its fluid and changing networks, is capable of marked hierarchies of concern. At the same time, through an exposure to ongoing conflict, aid agencies began to deepen their understanding of the interaction between aid and war and the complexities involved. While external assistance is capable of playing many roles (one should not overestimate the effectiveness of aid in this respect), it was increasingly understood as being far from neutral. Humanitarian assistance, while it could help keep people alive, like any other resource inevitably became part of the local political economy (Duffield 1991 ; Keen 1991) – especially when the new wars have effectively dissolved conventional distinctions between people, army and government. In other words, in today’s network wars the traditional distinctions – ‘military/civilian’, ‘combatant/non-combatant’, etc. – that a neutral humanitarianism ideally would base itself on, no longer properly exist

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  Humanitarianism and Challenges of Cooperation

  • Volker Heins, Kai Koddenbrock, Christine Unrau, Volker M. Heins, Kai Koddenbrock, Christine Unrau(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  9 After all, humanitarian budgets are being used to achieve several ends. These vary from responding to acute crises to supporting victims of those continuing for years or even decades. Addressing crises requires support in many forms, such as care and maintenance of refugees, building institutions in fragile states, and disaster prevention, risk reduction, and preparedness. General discussions of humanitarianism(s) and the ethics behind the humanitarian principles are often hindered by the fact that proponents have different humanitarian scenarios in mind. This section introduces a number of these scenarios.

  Open armed conflicts

  Historical commentary on modern humanitarian action usually begins with a reference to the battlefield of Solferino in 1859, where Henry Dunant witnessed heavy and bloody fighting inspiring him to organise medical care, and leading to the formation of the ICRC and the development of International Humanitarian Law. Ironically, humanitarian action is least effective in accessing and assisting affected people in these iconic situations of open, violent conflict. Conflict areas are often inaccessible. When it is too dangerous for aid workers, aid will be withdrawn. Needs in these situations are always vastly larger than aid can cover.

  The problem of instrumentalisation in these kinds of situations is nothing new. There are, however, some recent developments. Since 9/11 and the proclaimed ‘war on terror’, we are faced with international conflicts in which the so-called international community acts as a ‘neutral outsider’ or as a ‘warring party’ depending on the point of view of the observer. In some conflicts, politicisation and militarisation have indeed led to distrust of humanitarian organisations and the United Nations, as they are frequently associated with Western domination of the international response. The independence of Humanitarian Aid, and hence its credibility, have been severely affected in some countries.

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  The European Union and Humanitarian Crises

  Patterns of Intervention

  • Francesca Pusterla(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Introduction

  Issues in Humanitarian Aid

  Over the last few decades, interest in Humanitarian Aid has grown. International organisations, national governments and governmental and private actors have multiplied their efforts to limit and possibly put an end to natural catastrophes, man-made atrocities and political and economic breakdowns affecting civil populations. Consequently, cooperative and unilateral emergency actions have been carried out with the aim of recovering people in need during and after any humanitarian crisis all around the world. Several studies have been conducted addressing questions concerning the definition of humanitarian intervention, the reasons for it, its legitimacy, its goals and the role of actors allocating and receiving aid.1

  It follows that the evident political attention to Humanitarian Aid allocation also reverberates within academic research on this topic. Accordingly, a particular emphasis has been placed on studies addressing the strategies of foreign aid allocation in a context shared between bilateral aid – where donors finance Humanitarian Aid through the signature of bilateral agreements with recipient countries – and multilateral aid – where donors frame their aid within the institutional context of international organisations. Among the different scientific approaches, such contemporary studies addressing the central issue of bilateral and multilateral aid allocation take on specific relevance for the purpose of this work.

  Indeed, the analysis of Humanitarian Aid allocation in this study aims at answering the following general research question: how to explain the international actors’ choices between bilateral and multilateral Humanitarian Aid allocation?

  Specifically, there are two main focuses to the study of bilateral and multilateral aid allocation in need of preliminary clarification. First, relevant studies have been conducted with the aim of underpinning the main differences between bilateral and multilateral aid and disclosing the reasons for states’ preference in favour of the former or the latter. Second, many studies investigate more specifically the realm of multilateral aid allocation. These two approaches delineate the scientific debate into which this work inserts itself and frame the specific angle it takes.

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  Crisis Management Beyond the Humanitarian-Development Nexus

  • Atsushi Hanatani, Oscar A. Gómez, Chigumi Kawaguchi, Atsushi Hanatani, Oscar A. Gómez, Chigumi Kawaguchi(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Another difficult challenge relates to politicization. In humanitarian conflicts, almost all actors—both internal and external—politicize everything, even humanitarian access, for their own tactical and strategic interests and advantages. In the Syrian case, the regime and other armed actors deliberately restrict aid access for political and tactical gain. Consequently, apolitical organizations, such as UN humanitarian agencies and international NGOs, are obliged to operate in a highly politicized environment. Major donors also provide assistance within political contexts, particularly with the goals of facilitating a political transition and state-building. These political objectives may obscure the primary goal of humanitarian relief operations.

  In this chapter, I first provide an overview of the Syrian civil war and the humanitarian crisis. In the following sections, I explore responses to the crisis inside Syria by UN agencies, major donors (mainly the United States (US), European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK)), and their bilateral agencies. I focus particularly on restrictions on humanitarian access, cross-border assistance and remote management, and issues relating to emergency relief assistance and resilience building. Finally, I discuss three issues:

  1. dilemmas between adherence to the humanitarian principles and continuation of aid delivery;
  2. obstacles caused by the remote management approach; and
  3. political objectives set by major donors and their impacts on humanitarian relief.

  In doing so, I try to explore tensions and dilemmas caused by conflicting relationships between humanitarian relief and politicization. The mass influx of Syrian refugees has had enormous impacts on host countries and communities. However, because the refugee crisis has already been widely discussed, I will not explore refugee issues in this chapter.

  My study is based on literature research in related fields, plus field research in Lebanon and Jordan in September 2015 and in Turkey in March 2016. During my field research, I conducted 43 semi-structured interviews with officials from UN agencies, government departments, and bilateral agencies, staff of international NGOs, and academics. Corresponding to the time of my field research, this chapter mainly covers the situation until 2016.

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  International Assistance to the Palestinians after Oslo

  Political guilt, wasted money

  • Anne Le More(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  13 In the process, however, the distinctions between conflict prevention and conflict resolution, and between development and Humanitarian Aid, became increasingly blurred.

  Aid in support of politics

  As the role of aid in conflict areas expanded in the 1990s to be incorporated into a wider peace and security agenda, and greater emphasis was placed on the linkage between relief and development, a growing appreciation of the political impact of developmental aid also emerged. Concern that intervention by development agencies might also aggravate inequities and exacerbate conflict became widespread.14 Agencies involved in development activities in a peacebuilding context faced the same ‘politicization’ dilemma as their humanitarian counter-parts, although perhaps less acutely given the different terms of engagement of humanitarian and development actors with donors and Member States. This was nonetheless clearly the case for the Bretton Woods Institutions.15

  With the World Bank and the IMF becoming prominent actors in multilateral reconstruction efforts, the issue of coordinating their development and financial strategies with the peace agenda of political and military actors came to the fore. Since its inception, the Bank had been directly concerned with conflict situations: it was established during the Second World War as the ‘International Bank for Reconstruction and Development’ and was active in post-conflict reconstruction during the Cold War. Nonetheless, it initially adopted a very cautious attitude vis-à-vis the 1990s debate on the role of external assistance in crisis prevention, peacebuilding and conflict management. This reticence stemmed mainly from the fact that the Bank does not like to see itself as a ‘political’ agency, although as an institution made up of Member States it is obviously affected by its member countries’ political agendas, influence and voting majorities in the supervisory bodies. Still, its mandate is based on the doctrine of ‘economic neutrality’, with poverty reduction, economic stabilization and sustainable development being its central objectives.16

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  Humanitarian Intervention and Conflict Resolution in West Africa

  From ECOMOG to ECOMIL

  • John M. Kabia(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  With the proliferation of violent conflicts, the breakdown of state authority and the emergence of militia groups that have no regard for international norms and human rights in Africa and elsewhere, post-Cold War conceptualisation of humanitarian intervention has expanded from its nascent task of protecting victims of human rights abuses by repressive regimes in foreign countries to providing security to threatened populations caught up in the complex political emergencies (CPEs) that have come to characterise the end of the Cold War. It has also expanded to include non-forcible tasks such as the distribution of emergency relief to ameliorate the suffering of victims, securing the humanitarian space necessary for effective operations of aid agencies, and facilitating conflict resolution and post-war peacebuilding to prevent a relapse into conflict. These expanded roles and expectations have however placed serious difficulties on the part of interveners as the cases of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia demonstrate.

  This chapter seeks to conceptualise humanitarian intervention in the post-Cold War era and examine the challenges it faces in today’s complex political emergencies and post 9/11 era. It argues in favour of the solidarist approach to humanitarian intervention and posits that the challenges posed by CPEs warrants the broadening of its remits to include both forcible and non-forcible strategies aimed at safeguarding civilians in the short term and building sustainable peace in the medium to long term. Starting with a working definition of the concept, we then trace the origin and evolution of humanitarian intervention. Next, a detailed analysis of complex political emergencies will be used to understand the challenges and difficulties facing interveners and form the basis for a reframing of the debate on humanitarian intervention in light of current realities. The next section will develop a framework for analysis in the entire book which will be followed by definition of terms and concepts.

  Humanitarian Intervention: A Working Definition

  Wil Verwey (1992, 114) provided what is now considered a classic definition of humanitarian intervention,

  the threat or use of force by a state or states abroad, for the sole purpose of preventing or putting a halt to a serious violation of fundamental human rights, in particular the right to life of persons, regardless of their nationality, such protection taking place neither upon authorisation by relevant organs of United Nations nor with permission by the legitimate government of the target state.

  Like other restrictionists’ view of the term, Verwey stressed that the motive of humanitarian intervention should be ‘solely’ humanitarian. This strict stipulation disqualifies any intervention as ‘humanitarian’ considering the political interests and processes that are also certain to be involved in practice. Solidarists like Wheeler (2000) and Teson (2003) object to this strict emphasis on motive as they argue that this approach ‘takes the intervening state as referent object for analysis rather than the victims who are rescued as a consequence of the use of force’ (Wheeler, 2000, 38). This however leads us to two very controversial debates within humanitarianism: what counts as humanitarian and the question of the universality of human rights. Despite the frequent use of the term, ‘a consistent and working definition of humanitarianism has evaded public and private authorities’ (Nicholls, 1987, 193). This has prompted Adam Roberts to ask ‘What on earth does humanitarian mean?’ (Roberts, 1993, 13). Ephraim Isaac defines humanitarianism as ‘a feeling of concern for and benevolence toward fellow human beings. It is a universal phenomenon manifested globally and through out the ages’ (Isaac, 1993, 13). Ramsbotham and Woodhouse (1996) link humanitarianism with international humanitarian law of armed conflict, international human rights law and emergency aid. But what level of humanitarian suffering requires outside intervention? Solidarists like Wheeler refer to a ‘supreme humanitarian emergency’ to describe a situation of extreme human suffering wherein ‘the only hope of saving lives depends on outsiders coming to the rescue’ (Wheeler, 2000, 34). However he admits there are no objective criteria for determining what counts as a ‘supreme humanitarian emergency’. This work will define humanitarian emergency to mean a situation of excessive violation of human rights by a repressive government or cases of uncontrolled anarchy and mass murder caused by conflict and/or state collapse.

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  Humanitarian Challenges And Intervention

  Second Edition

  • Thomas G Weiss(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Government policies, Security Council mandates, agency mission statements, and military doctrine and rules of engagement are common foci of debates about what is wrong with humanitarian intervention. This chapter identifies the various policy debates in the humanitarian sphere and explores the main challenges of implementing existing policy in the midst of a complex emergency The next chapter explores similar concerns regarding policy formation and implementation challenges, but with specific reference to international peace and security

  The humanitarian sphere of the United Nations is responsible for providing emergency relief and long-term assistance through its operational agencies. As its Web site announces, " A central component of United Nations policy is to ensure that emergency relief contributes to recovery and longer-term development in the affected area. Economic and social development remains the best protection against disaster—whether natural or, as is increasingly the case, man-made."1 As innocuous as this policy statement appears, closer examination reveals a core debate in the humanitarian sphere between those who believe that emergency relief should be treated as an end in itself and those who wish to incorporate emergency relief into a more comprehensive intervention package. Mere descriptions of mission statements also conceal points of conflict, either in the conceptualization of what is required or in the difficulties inherent in implementing them.

  For example, UNHCR's mandate is to safeguard the rights and wellbeing of refugees, although it is called on frequently to aid IDPs, which now outnumber refugees by two to one. UNHCR is to protect refugees' right to asylum and voluntary return home, and to seek to reduce situations of forced displacement by working with states and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. An operational policy of UNHCR is its commitment to the principle of participation by consulting refugees on decisions that affect their lives. Problems encountered by UNHCR in fulfilling its mandate include, but are not limited to, difficulty in obtaining accurate data regarding refugees; states' refusal of entry to asylum-seekers; forced, involuntary repatriation; hierarchies of authority and violence in camps; and the dilemma between needing an abusive government to agree to an agency's presence and a population of suffering noncombatants who need the agency to publicize the government's human rights abuses.

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