The global response to the devastation caused by the tsunami of
December 26, 2004, was an extraordinary display of humanitarian action.
Within hours of the disaster scores of nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) were providing life-saving medical attention, shelter, and water.
Soon thereafter, though, compassion became a status category. Bristling
from accusations that they were not doing enough, states began to outbid
one another in order to avoid censure and gain stature. In addition to an
unprecedented outpouring of financial support, states temporarily gave
their militaries humanitarian assignments. The United States dispatched
the U.S.S. Lincoln to the coast of the Indonesian province of Aceh to
perform search-and-rescue missions and deliver relief. Businesses gave
in-kind and financial contributions, and established links on their Web
sites where customers could, with a click of a button, join the relief
effort.
This global mobilization was made possible by the great expansion of
the humanitarian system since the end of the cold war.1
Many states have developed humanitarian units
within their foreign and defense ministries and have increasingly accepted
the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. Official assistance
skyrocketed from $2 billion in 1990 to $6 billion in 2000. A growing
number of international organizations, including the World Bank, provide
some form of assistance. There has been an explosion of nongovernmental
organizations dedicated to some aspect of humanitarian action. Perhaps
more impressive than their proliferation is their growing sophistication.
NGOs once operated with a relatively slow-moving machinery and were
staffed by individuals who were expected to learn on the job. Now,
however, most prominent agencies have a system of global positioning and
delivery that allows trained professionals to get assistance quickly where
it is needed. Médecins sans frontières (MSF), for example,
grew from a two-room office in the 1970s into an international network of
19 semi-independent branches, with a combined annual budget of $500
million, running programs in over 70 countries, with 2,000 international
and 15,000 national staff. Finally, the very meaning of humanitarianism
has expanded. Humanitarian action was formerly recognized as a separate
sphere of activity, defined by the impartial relief to victims of manmade
and natural disasters; now the term, according to many, includes human
rights, access to medicine, economic development, democracy promotion, and
even building responsible states.
This article reflects on two defining features of this transformation
of humanitarianism: the purpose of humanitarianism is becoming
politicized, and the organization of humanitarianism is becoming
institutionalized. Once upon a time humanitarian agencies used to define
themselves largely in opposition to “politics.”2
In this way, humanitarianism is a logocentric,
which Jacques Derrida observes is in play whenever “one privileged
term (logos) provides the orientation for interpreting the meaning of the
subordinate term” (Nyers 1999, 21). See
also Cutts 1998, 3; Malkki
1995; Warner 1999; Minear 2002, 76
Certainly they recognized
that humanitarianism was the offspring of politics, that their activities
had political consequences, and that they were inextricably part of the
political world. Yet the widely accepted definition of
humanitarianism—the impartial, independent, and neutral provision of
relief to those in immediate danger of harm—emerged in opposition to
a particular meaning of politics and helped to depoliticize
relief-oriented activities.
3
Many activities might alleviate suffering and improve life
circumstances, including protection of human rights and economic
development; but any actions that aspire to restructure underlying social
relations are inherently political. Humanitarianism provides relief; it
offers to save individuals, but not to eliminate the underlying causes
that placed them at risk. Viewed in this way, humanitarianism plays a
distinctive role in the international sacrificial order.4
All
international orders have winners and losers and thus require their quota
of victims. Humanitarianism interrupts this selection process by saving
lives, thus reducing the number of sacrifices. However, it does not aspire
to alter that order; that is the job of politics.
Humanitarianism's original principles were also a reaction to
politics and designed to obstruct this “moral pollutant.”5
The principle of humanity commands attention to all humankind and inspires
cosmopolitanism. The principle of impartiality demands that assistance be
based on need and not discriminate on the basis of nationality, race,
religious belief, gender, political opinions, or other considerations.
6
The principles of neutrality and independence also inoculate
humanitarianism from politics. Relief agencies are best able to perform
their life-saving activities only if they are untouched by state interests
and partisan agendas.
7 Neutrality involves refraining from taking part in
hostilities or from any action that benefits or disadvantages either party
to a conflict. Neutrality is both an end and a means to an end because it
helps relief agencies gain access to populations at risk. Independence
demands that assistance should not be connected to any of the parties
directly involved in the conflict or who have a stake in the outcome.
Accordingly, many agencies either refused or limited their reliance on
government funding if the donors had a stake in the outcome. The
principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence thus
served to depoliticize humanitarian action and create a
“humanitarian space” insulated from politics.
Yet these Maginot line principles defending humanitarianism from
politics crumbled during the 1990s as humanitarianism's agenda
ventured beyond relief and into the political world, and agencies began
working alongside, and with, states. During the 1990s humanitarian
agencies began to accept the idea that they might try to eliminate the
root causes of conflicts that place individuals at risk; this vision swept
them up into a process of transformation and into the world of politics.
Humanitarian agencies and states began to share agendas. States became
more willing to act in the name of humanitarianism, fund relief
operations, use their diplomatic and political power to advance
humanitarian causes, authorize military troops to deliver relief, and
consider the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention and the protection of
civilian populations. Humanitarian organizations were torn by the growing
presence of states, acknowledging their potential contribution but
worrying about the costs to their principles. Because, in their view,
there are no humanitarian solutions to humanitarian emergencies, many
lobbied states to apply military and political muscle to stop the
bloodletting. Relief agencies working in war zones had to confront
warlords and militias that demanded a king's ransom for the
assistance that was made necessary by their conflict and their intentional
targeting of civilians; agencies occasionally sought outside intervention
to provide armed protection and to help deliver relief. Yet the growing
willingness of humanitarian organizations to work alongside states
potentially undermined their neutrality and independence. Humanitarian
principles were completely shattered in places like Kosovo, Afghanistan,
and Iraq, where many agencies were funded by the very governments that
were combatants and thus partly responsible for the emergency. The
ever-present fear that fraternizing between politics and humanitarianism
would corrupt this sacred idea and undermine agencies' ability to
provide relief was becoming a daily reality. Reflecting the anxieties
unleashed by this mixing of politics and principle, commentators spoke of
humanitarianism in “crisis” and warned of the dangers of
“supping with the devil,” “drinking from the poisoned
chalice,” and “sleeping with the enemy.”8
Institutionalization represents another aspect of the transformation
of humanitarianism. Before the 1990s there were relatively few agencies
that provided relief; they had few sustained interactions; and they hardly
considered establishing, revising, or maintaining principles of action,
codes of conduct, or professional standards that would define the
boundaries of the field. In the field they operated according to very few
standard procedures and drew very little from scientific knowledge as they
set up, often quite literally, soup kitchens. Their operations were
frequently staffed by individuals with little or no experience, who jumped
into the fray believing that all they needed was a can-do attitude and
good intentions.
Over the 1990s humanitarianism became more recognized as a field, with
more donors, deliverers, and regulators of a growing sphere of action.
Various developments and pressures propelled this institutionalization.
The influx of new agencies, marching to their own drums, created confusion
on the ground. Donors, who were providing more funds, expected recipients
to be accountable and demonstrate effectiveness. Rwanda was a turning
point.9
A flood of agencies—many there simply to fly
the flag and impress prospective donors—were feeding the architects
of the genocide in camps in Zaire, fueling their rearmament, and
potentially causing more harm than good. The Rwandan tragedy and other
events caused the entire community to undergo painful introspection that
raised troubling questions regarding the legitimacy and effectiveness of
humanitarian action. States raised similar questions, leaving aid
organizations worried about their funding base. In response, the field
began to institutionalize. It became increasingly rationalized,
standardizing basic codes of conduct for intervention, developing
accountability mechanisms, and calculating the consequences of actions. It
became bureaucratized, developing precise rules that ideally could be
applied across different situations. It became professionalized,
developing doctrines, specialized areas of training, and career paths.
The humanitarian sector welcomed elements of this institutionalization
because they helped to standardize expectations, ease coordination in the
field, enhance efficiency, and improve the quality of care to more
populations. Yet other features were distressing, potentially changing not
simply the organization of humanitarian action, but its very character.
Many organizations were now demonstrating commonplace interests in
self-preservation and survival, at times allowing these interests to
overshadow their principled commitments. The development of standardized
templates and guidelines made them less able to recognize and respond to
local needs. Rising concerns with efficiency in getting
“deliverables” to “clients” hinted of a growing
corporate culture; participants increasingly worried about protecting
their “brand” and referring to the field as an
“industry,” a “business,” a “sector,”
and an “enterprise.” There were palpable fears that material
and discursive borders that distinguished humanitarian agencies from
commercial firms and even military units were disintegrating. If
commercial firms were really more efficient at saving lives, and if
nonprofits were acting like corporate entities, then exactly what
distinguished the two? Politicization and institutionalization, each in
its own way, called into question the very marks of distinction of
humanitarian action.
Drawing from various strands of organizational theory, I consider the
causes behind the expansion and politicization of the purpose of
humanitarianism and the institutionalization of the field. Various global
forces created new opportunity structures for humanitarian action: states
gave more generously because it furthered their foreign policy interests;
there was a surge of emergencies in the early 1990s; and a change in the
sovereignty regime reduced the barriers to intervention. Although the
general trend was toward expansion and politicization, humanitarian
organizations did not respond uniformly to these opportunities. To
understand this variation in response requires a consideration of, first,
the organization's identity and its initial understanding of the
relationship between humanitarianism and politics, and, second, its
dependence on others for symbolic and material resources. Although there
were pockets of resistance to this politicization, arguably most existing
and newly established organizations accepted these changes because they
operated with a definition of humanitarian action that interfaced easily
with politics and were dependent on states for their financing. The
field's institutionalization was largely triggered by challenges to
its legitimacy and effectiveness, challenges from donors and participants,
challenges that threatened its bottom line, and challenges that were
addressed by making the field more rational, bureaucratic, and
professional.
I then examine some of the effects of this transformation on
humanitarian action. Much of the discussion of the effects focuses on
politicization, that is, how the growing involvement by states is
potentially compromising or distorting the essence of humanitarian action,
whether these changes have been generally desirable, pragmatic, or
self-destructive, and whether it is possible or even desirable to put the
political genie back in the bottle.10
But the possible effects extend beyond what
humanitarian agencies do to include what they are. Any discussion of
effects, of course, turns on some baseline understanding of humanitarian
action. Such an analysis does not need to essentialize humanitarianism, to
suggest that there was a settled or fixed meaning that existed for decades
until disrupted by the post–cold war period. Nor does such an
analysis provide an evaluative judgment as to whether these changes are
necessarily good, reasonable under the circumstances, or reckless.
Instead, such an analysis merely needs to ask what was the general
understanding of humanitarian action prior to the 1990s, consider how
politicization and institutionalization has shaken that understanding,
and, most importantly, explore whether such changes have potentially
undermined the cornerstone principle of impartial relief.
Although humanitarianism is now firmly on the global agenda, the same
cannot be said for academic research. Most research directly related to
humanitarian action is produced by specialized agencies such as the
Overseas Development Institute's Humanitarian Policy Group; it is
almost always directed at the policy community. Some social science
research is related to humanitarian action, including the literatures on
humanitarian intervention, civil wars, democracy building, refugee
studies, and peacekeeping. However, there has been remarkably little
consideration of humanitarianism as an object of research. The body of the
essay points to various lines of inquiry, and in the conclusion I link my
account of the transformation of humanitarianism to a broader research
agenda that concerns the relationship between international
nongovernmental organizations and world order, including the purpose of
humanitarian action and its functions in global politics.
Causes of Transformation
Environmental forces played a central role in transforming
humanitarianism. Several important developments encouraged humanitarian
agencies to move away from relief alone and toward the transformation of
local structures, and to become more willing to work alongside and with
states. Such developments led to its politicization. Yet not all agencies
responded uniformly to these opportunities; consequently, I examine
features of the organization and its relationship to the environment to
help to explain this variation. Environmental developments also played an
important role in shaping the institutionalization of humanitarianism.
Similarly, although those in the sector had their own reasons for
rationalizing, bureaucratizing, and professionalizing their organizations,
pressures from donors and new international standards of legitimacy also
played a critical role in institutionalizing humanitarianism. Yet not all
agencies responded uniformly, and we need to understand why.
Expansion and politicization
Four global processes created new opportunity structures that
foregrounded the “civilian” as an object of concern.11
Geopolitical shifts associated with the end of the cold war and the demise
of the Soviet Union increased the demand for humanitarian action in
several ways.
12 There appeared to be more humanitarian
crises than ever before.
13 Whether in fact there were
more crises or whether great powers were now willing to recognize
populations at risk because their policies were no longer the immediate
cause, the emergencies were on the international agenda.
14 As states paid more attention to them, they linked
these populations at risk to an expanding discourse of security. During
the cold war the UN Security Council defined threats to peace and security
as disputes between states that had become or might become militarized,
conflicts involving the great powers, and general threats to global
stability.
15 After the cold war, and in reaction to the growing
perception that domestic conflict and civil wars were leaving hundreds of
thousands of people at risk, creating mass flight, and destabilizing
entire regions, the Security Council authorized interventions on the
grounds that these conflicts challenged regional and international
security. Responding to both the post–cold war humanitarian
emergencies and the growing prominence of the Security Council in this
domain, the General Assembly passed a watershed resolution in 1992 that
made the UN the new coordinating body for humanitarian action.
16 General Assembly Resolution
A/RES/46/182, 19 December 1991, Strengthening of the
Coordination of Humanitarian Emergency Assistance of the United
Nations.
States also warmed to the idea of humanitarian action. They were
increasingly generous. Even more impressive was their increasing
willingness to support operations whose stated function was to protect
civilians at risk, and even to consider the legitimacy of humanitarian
intervention.17
States also began to treat
humanitarian action as an instrument of their strategic and foreign policy
goals. Since 9/11 many states, including the United States, have
viewed counterterrorism and humanitarianism as crime-fighting partners. In
2001 former Secretary of State Colin Powell told a gathering of NGOs that
“just as surely as our diplomats and military, American NGOs are out
there [in Afghanistan] serving and sacrificing on the frontlines
of freedom. NGOs are such a force multiplier for us, such an important
part of our combat team.”
18 Secretary
of State Colin Powell, remarks to the National Foreign Policy Conference
for Leaders of Nongovernmental Organizations, October 26, 2001.
States also discovered that humanitarian action could help them avoid more
costly interventions. For instance, the major powers authorized the United
Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) to deliver humanitarian
relief in Bosnia in part because they wanted to relieve the growing
pressure for a military intervention. Regardless of their motives, states
were providing new opportunities for humanitarian action.
The second development that propelled the encounter between politics
and humanitarianism was the emergence of “complex humanitarian
emergencies,” that is, a “conflict-related humanitarian
disaster involving a high degree of breakdown and social dislocation and,
reflecting this condition, requiring a system-wide aid response from the
international community.”19
These emergencies, which seemed
to be proliferating around the world, are characterized by a combustible
mixture of state failure, refugee flight, militias, warrior refugees, and
populations at risk from violence, disease, and hunger. Such situations
created a demand for new sorts of interventions and conflict management
tools. Relief agencies were attempting to distribute food, water, and
medicine in war zones and were frequently forced to bargain with militias,
warlords, and hoodlums for access to populations in need. In situations of
extreme violence and lawlessness they lobbied foreign governments and the
United Nations to consider authorizing a protection force that could
double as bodyguard and relief distributor. These emergencies also
attracted a range of NGOs.
20 Relief agencies
that were delivering emergency assistance, human rights organizations
aspiring to protect rights and create a rule of law, and development
organizations keen to sponsor sustainable growth began to interact and to
take responsibility for the same populations. The growing interaction
between different kinds of agencies that hailed from different sectors
encouraged a relief-rights-development linkage within a humanitarian
discourse that became tied to the construction of modern, legitimate,
democratic states.
21 As international actors began
to think about the causes of and solutions to these emergencies,
“humanitarian” came to include a wider range of practices and
goals.
A third factor contributing to politicization was the political
economy of funding. Although private contributions increased, they paled
in comparison to official assistance. Between 1990 and 2000, aid levels
rose from 2.1 to $5.9 billion. Moreover, as a percentage of official
development assistance, humanitarian aid rose from an average of 5.8
percent between 1989 and 1993 to 10.5 percent in 2000.22
A
few donors were responsible for much of this increase, and they also now
comprise an oligopoly. The United States is the lead donor by a factor of
three. In 1999, for instance, its outlays exceeded the total assistance of
twelve large Western donors. Between 1995 and 1997 it provided 20 percent
of total assistance; in the following three years its contribution rose to
30 percent. The second largest donor is the European Community
Humanitarian Organization (ECHO), followed by the United Kingdom, several
European countries, Canada, and Japan. Although various motives fueled
this increase in giving, many states expected either something in return
or evidence that their money was being well spent.
Finally, a change in the normative and legal environment also coaxed
humanitarianism into the political world. State sovereignty was no longer
sacrosanct; rather, it was becoming conditional on states behaving
according to particular codes of conduct, honoring a “responsibility
to protect” their societies, and having attributes such as the rule
of law, markets, and democratic principles.23
Their legitimacy became tied
to their having the rule of law, markets, and democratic principles. These
developments created a normative space for external intervention and
encouraged a growing range of actors to expand their assistance
activities. In some cases aid agencies were supposed to provide immediate
relief during conflict situations, while in others, to eliminate the root
causes of conflict and create legitimate states. Regardless of the
pretext, the new normative environment greased the tracks for more
wide-ranging interventions.
24 A flourishing human rights agenda also left its mark. The logic of
relief and the logic of rights share important elements: they place the
human citizen and humanity at the fore; they use the language of
empowerment in attempting to help the weak; and they reject power.25
That said, they also demonstrate divisions; the relief
community will nearly always privilege survival over freedom, while the
rights community is sometimes willing to use relief as an instrument of
rights, that is, make relief conditional on the observance of human
rights—a move many relief agencies view as nearly
incomprehensible.
26 In
any event, the fast-growing human rights movement pulled humanitarianism
from the margins toward the center of the international policy agenda, and
many relief agencies, increasingly adopting the language of rights, were
glad to ride its coattails.
27 Growing cosmopolitanism was also a transformative factor, for it
underpins humanitarianism. Cosmopolitanism maintains that each person is
of equal moral worth and that in the “justification of choices
one's choices one must take the prospects of everyone affected
equally into account.”28
The principle of impartiality presumes that
all those at risk, regardless of their identity, deserve equal attention
and consideration. The desire to help those who are suffering regardless
of place means that borders do not define the limits of obligations. This
cosmopolitan ethos, however, leads to different schools of thought in
humanitarianism, schools that can be in tension.
29 Some
humanitarians believe aid should be restricted to the victims of man-made
and natural disasters; this branch emerged in the mid-nineteenth century
and is most closely associated with the International Committee for the
Red Cross (ICRC). Another branch of humanitarianism extends assistance to
all those at risk and imagines eliminating the conditions that are
hypothesized to render populations vulnerable.
30 Cosmopolitanism and the discourse of humanity have not always
led to impartiality as understood today, because those who claimed to be
“humanitarian” and act in the name of humanity also could
reflect a discourse in which some peoples were more human than others and
thus more deserving of assistance. See Finnemore
1996.
As one aid worker wrote, “[I]n terms
of the destruction of human life, what difference is there between the
wartime bombing of a civilian population and the distribution of
ineffective medicines during a pandemic that is killing millions of
people?”
31 If individuals are at risk because of
authoritarian and repressive policies, then humanitarian organizations
must be prepared to fight for human rights and democratic reforms. If
individuals are at risk because of poverty and deprivation, then they must
be prepared to promote development. If regional and domestic conflicts are
the source of violence against individuals, then they must try their hand
at conflict resolution and attempt to eliminate the underlying causes of
conflict.
Variation in response
Although these changes in global politics created new openings for an
expanded meaning of humanitarianism, aid agencies were not uniformly
receptive. Many, including the IRC and Oxfam, were ready, willing, and
able to capitalize on new openings. They saw virtue in expanding their
operations to help the powerless, and instead of being satisfied to help
the “well-fed dead,” they could eliminate the root causes of
conflict. Other organizations made a pragmatic decision to become more
political, though they were cautious about every step and mindful of
possible consequences. Still others clung to their principles and resisted
what they viewed as the siren of politics. The ICRC and MSF fought the
international currents and stuck to their “first
principles.”32
Two factors account for much of this variance. One was the congruence
between the organizational culture and these new openings. Humanitarian
organizations can be sorted into two types—Dunantist and
Wilsonian—according to their understanding of the relationship
between politics and humanitarianism.33
This
classification derives from other taxonomies, including Minear 2002, 78; Stoddard
2002; Weiss 1999; Donini 2005. Feinstein
International Famine Center 2004, 54, argues that how agencies
position themselves around these categories is determined by various
factors, such as management and leadership, institutional culture,
networks, and geographical and programmatic scope. Solidarist
organizations are another branch; they openly identify with one party to a
conflict and thus do not care about neutrality. Although I (and others)
focus largely on international nongovernmental organizations, there are
various international organizations whose principal mandate is
humanitarian (and ICRC, the patriarch of the humanitarian community, is
neither a nongovernmental or a international organization). Beginning
after World War I and then increasing after World War Two, states
established various international organizations, including the UNHCR and
the World Food Program, to help them carry out their humanitarian
obligations. State sovereignty, though, significantly shaped their working
definition of humanitarianism and its relationship to politics. At the
beginning of the last century states cautiously evoked the language of
humanitarianism for fear that such transcendental concerns might swamp
their core interests and undermine their sovereignty; consequently, they
used sovereignty to fence in what these international organizations could
do and these organizations, in turn, cleaved to the principles of consent,
neutrality, and impartiality in order to signal to states that they knew
their place. The changing meaning of sovereignty, particularly noticeable
after the Cold War, though, opened up space for many international
organizations to use a more expansive understanding of humanitarianism as
they became more deeply involved in domestic space. See Barnett 2001 for a discussion.
Named after Henry Dunant, the patriarch of modern humanitarianism,34
Appalled by the carnage wrought by a fierce
battle between French and Austrian forces in Solferino, Italy, in June
1859, Dunant, a Swiss citizen, appealed to the local population to tend to
the thousands of suffering soldiers. Based on his personal experiences,
Dunant wrote an account that became a bestseller in Europe and stirred
European elites to consider his proposals for regulating war and
administering to the wounded. These discussions produced both the Geneva
Conventions, which established international humanitarian law, and the
ICRC, which was to be an impartial, neutral and independent organization
whose exclusive humanitarian mission is to protect the lives and dignity
of victims of war.
Dunantist organizations define humanitarianism
as the neutral, independent, and impartial provision of relief to victims
of conflict and believe that humanitarianism and politics must be
segregated. In general, Dunantist organizations, which are often accused
of seeing themselves as the “high priests” of humanitarianism,
fear that the relaxation of their founding principles or expansion of
their mandate will open the floodgates to politics and endanger
humanitarianism.
Wilsonian organizations, so named because they follow in the footsteps
of Woodrow Wilson's belief that is was possible and desirable to
transform political, economic, and cultural structures so that they
liberated individuals and produced peace and progress, desire to attack
the root causes that leave populations at risk. Although many of the most
famous members of this camp, including Save the Children, Oxfam, and Word
Vision International, originated in wartime and thus concentrated on
rescuing populations at risk, they expanded into development and other
activities designed to assist marginalized populations. Over time they
also undertook advocacy—like a growing number of human rights
organizations that also belong to this camp. Agencies involved in
restoring and fostering economic livelihoods also express a Wilsonian
orientation. Wilsonian organizations are certainly political, at least
according to the Dunantist perspective; however, even those who have
subscribed to a transformational agenda present themselves as apolitical
to the extent that they claim to act according to universal values and
avoid partisan politics.
Organizations' understandings of the relationship between
humanitarianism and politics help to explain their response to the
transformations of the 1990s. The greater the discrepancy between
organizational culture and environmental pressures, the more an
organization will resist change for fear of political contamination; the
greater the congruence, the more it will conform because such conformity
will not threaten the organization's identity. MSF and ICRC, the two
best known Dunantist organizations, spent much of the 1990s unsuccessfully
attempting to police the borders between humanitarianism and politics.
Wilsonian organizations not only capitalized on these openings, they
frequently lobbied for them. Many humanitarian international organizations
such as United Nations High Committee for Reform (UNHCR) exploited these
changes in sovereignty to venture carefully into domestic space while
claiming that they were not being political because they shunned any
involvement in partisan politics. In fact, UNHCR actively lobbied for
these changes by encouraging states to embrace the humanitarian agenda on
the grounds that this principled position would further international
peace and security.35
The gap between the moral and organizational mandate also may have
contributed to the expanding purpose of humanitarian action. Organizations
may have felt the need to expand in order to resolve the contradiction
between their broad aspirational goals and the more narrowly circumscribed
rules that limit their action.36
Humanitarian organizations are empowered by moral claims or aspirations.
Limited organizational structures make it impossible to fulfill these
mandates, creating a reason for expansion into new areas. In attempting to
relieve suffering, it is natural to aim for more than temporary relief,
that is, for eliminating the conditions that produce a demand for
humanitarian services.
37 Another factor
potentially influencing this expansion is psychological, deriving from
personal strain of relief work. Relief workers migrate from one nightmare
to another, comforted only by the fact that, at best, they provide
temporary relief. This sort of existence takes a very high emotional toll.
Wanting to believe that they are helping to build a better world, relief
workers began to treat human rights, conflict resolution, and nation
building as extensions of humanitarianism. See Rieff
2002.
For instance, before the 1980s UNHCR leaped into
action only after populations crossed an international border. Yet many
UNHCR staff bristled at these restrictions, wanting to take on a
preventive role. In the 1980s UNHCR began trying to prevent refugee
flows—to get at their “root causes”—and to lobby
for “state responsibility.”
38 From there it was a small
step for UNHCR to become involved in eliminating the causes of flight and
ensuring that repatriated refugees stayed at home; toward that end, it
began promoting human rights, the rule of law, and economic
development.
Finally, resource dependence helps to explain organizations'
different responses to a broader definition of humanitarian action.39
The heart of the resource dependence approach
is that “organizations survive to the extent that they are
effective. Their effectiveness derives from the management of demands,
particularly demands of interest groups upon which the organizations
depend for resources and support…. There are a variety of ways of
managing demands, including the obvious one of giving in to them”
(Pfeffer and Salancik 2003, 2).
Humanitarian organizations do not survive by good intentions alone. They
also need resources to fund their staff and programs; these resources are
controlled by others. The willingness of others to fund
organizations' humanitarian activities is contingent, in part, on
their perceived legitimacy and whether they are viewed as acting according
to the supporting community's values.
40
Existing organizations, especially those that were culturally inclined to
expand, thus had every incentive to move in directions that were directly
rewarded by states. Development organizations are exemplary here. By the
end of the 1980s, development as a project had become increasingly
discredited. Humanitarianism handed these agencies a new function and
sense of purpose; they became necessary for post-conflict reconstruction
and structural prevention—central to humanitarian action and
international and human security.
41
Newly established organizations, some humanitarian and some less so, found
it advantageous to present themselves and their activities as
quintessentially humanitarian. Existing agencies also were rewarded by
expanding their activities. For instance, by becoming the lead
humanitarian agency, UNHCR was in a position not only to expand its
responsibilities, but also to demonstrate its relevance to the very states
who paid the bills.
42Expansion and institutionalization
Until the 1990s, humanitarianism barely existed as a field. There were
only a handful of major relief agencies, including the ICRC, International
Federation of the Red Cross, MSF, and various organizations such as Save
the Children and Oxfam that began as relief agencies, moved into
development, and then developed an emergency response capacity (though
generally not adopting the discourse of humanitarianism). Although these
agencies shared broad principles, such as humanity, impartiality,
neutrality, and independence, there was no concerted effort to establish
codes of conduct and standards of behavior to regulate the field and
define membership. Those who participated in relief work treated it more
as a craft than as a profession because, in the main, they did not claim
that their qualifications derived from specialized knowledge, doctrine, or
training, and did not see this as their life's work.
Yet in the 1990s humanitarianism became a field, with regular
interactions among the members, an increase in the information and
knowledge that members had to consider, a greater reliance on specialized
knowledge, and a collective awareness that they were involved in a common
enterprise. The field was becoming rationalized, aspiring to develop:
methodologies for calculating results, abstract rules to guide
standardized responses, and procedures to improve efficiency and identify
the best means to achieve specified ends. Humanitarian organizations were
also becoming bureaucratized, developing spheres of competence, and rules
to standardize responses and to drive means-ends calculations.
Professionalism followed, with demands for actors who had specific
knowledge, vocational qualifications that derived from specialized
training, and the ability to follow fixed doctrine.43
Sociological institutionalism helps to explain why humanitarianism
developed in this manner. This branch of organizational theory emphasizes
the “socially constructed normative worlds in which organizations
exist and how the social rules, standards of appropriateness, and models
of legitimacy will constitute the organization.”44
The
environment in which an organization is embedded is defined by a culture
that contains acceptable models, standards of action, goals, and logics of
appropriateness. Organizations are constituted by, and will be compelled
to adopt, this culture for a variety of reasons—though resource
requirements figure centrally. As Scott and Meyer observe, this normative
environment contains the “rules and requirements to which individual
organizations must conform if they are to receive support and legitimacy
from the environment.”
45 In short,
because organizations are rewarded for conforming to rules and
legitimization principles, and punished if they do not, they tend to model
themselves after organizational forms that have legitimacy.
The environment also helps to explain institutional isomorphism, that
is, why particular models spread.46
There are three
mechanisms: coercive, mimetic, and normative. The first two are most
relevant here. Coercive isomorphism occurs when powerful organizations,
such as states, impose rules and standards on other organizations. Mimetic
isomorphism largely occurs in situations of uncertainty, encouraging
organizations to model themselves after others that they believe are
successful. Normative isomorphism largely originates from
professionalization—the attempt by members of an occupation
“to define the conditions and methods of their work, to control the
production of producers,”
47 and to
establish the epistemic basis for their authority and the claim to
occupational autonomy. In general, sociological institutionalism
emphasizes how organizations, desirous of symbolic and material resources
and exposed to the same environment, will tend to adopt the same
organizational forms.
The institutionalization of humanitarianism was largely driven by
challenges to the emerging field's legitimacy and
effectiveness—challenges that emanated from donors that paid the
bills and members who were experiencing a crisis of confidence in reaction
to new circumstances and shortcomings. These challenges were answered by
rationalizing, bureaucratizing, and professionalizing.
A major feature of the field's rationalization was the attempt to
standardize relief activities.48
In response to the influx of
relief agencies that were operating according to varying standards—a
situation made doubly dangerous for agencies in the context of providing
relief during conflict—and the growing evidence that different
populations were being differentially treated, humanitarian organizations
attempted to establish professional standards and codes of conduct.
Several such initiatives stand out. In 1992 the ICRC, the International
Federation of the Red Cross, and the Red Crescent Society (in consultation
with the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response) began work on a
ten-point code of conduct. Originally conceived as providing guidance
during natural disasters, it was extended to cover conflict situations as
well. The first four articles reaffirm the basic principles of the ICRC,
and the last six identify “good practices” and methodology for
relief operations. This document is used by various agencies guide their
actions in war zones.
49 International
Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent 1995.
Various NGOs
also assembled what came to be known as the Providence Principles, which
also aimed to introduce standardized rules for delivering relief. The same
desire led various NGOs to launch the SPHERE project to establish minimal
standards in the areas of water, sanitation, nutrition, shelter, site
planning, and health.
50 This development, in turn, led
to the Humanitarian Charter, which endeavors to “achieve defined
levels of service for people affected by calamity or armed conflict, and
to promote the observance of Dunantist humanitarian principles.” The
sheer proliferation of principles and exercises to establish codes of
conduct represented an attempt to standardize the rules governing
humanitarian action.
51 Another innovation
was the Consolidated Appeals Process, established in 1991 by the UN
General Assembly in response to the growing perception that there were too
many agencies appealing to too many donors for too many different sectors
in too many situations. In order to improve joint planning and quickly
mobilize funds and target them for high priority areas, the UN decided to
act as a coordinating mechanism. By 2002 there had been 165 different
appeals. See Porter 2002 for a
review.
Another feature of rationalization was the introduction of systems of
accountability.52
This
development was pushed by donors, who began to apply “new public
management” principles as they expected humanitarian organizations
to provide evidence that their money was being well spent. These
principles originated with the neoliberal orthodoxy of the 1980s. One of
neoliberalism's goals was to reduce the state's role in the
delivery of public services and, instead, to rely on commercial and
voluntary organizations, which were viewed as more efficient. Because
government agencies justified the shift from the public to the private and
voluntary sectors on the grounds that the latter were more efficient, they
introduced monitoring mechanisms to reduce the possibility of either slack
or shirking.
53 Until the 1990s, humanitarian
organizations largely escaped this public management ideology. Because
humanitarian assistance was a minor part of the foreign aid budget, states
did not view humanitarianism as central to their foreign policy goals, and
states trusted that humanitarian agencies were efficient and effective;
there was little reason for states to absorb the monitoring costs.
However, once funding increased, humanitarianism became more central to
security goals, and states began to question the effectiveness of
humanitarian organizations, they were willing to do so.
54
Toward that end, states introduced new reporting requirements, developed
new kinds of contracts, and demanded greater evidence of results.
The drive toward accountability was not completely donor-driven, for
those within the sector increasingly sought greater
accountability—to recipients. It was not enough to be accountable to
donors for how their money was spent; it shows it also was important to be
accountable to the supposed beneficiaries of their activities.
Accountability, therefore, increasingly meant identifying ways to improve
agencies' policies. These developments led to various system-wide
initiatives, including the Active Learning Network for Accountability and
Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP).55
In addition,
in 1999 various NGOs initiated the Ombudsman for Humanitarian Assistance
to address their accountability to “clients.”
Emblematic of bureaucratization was the effort by humanitarian
organizations to develop technologies and methodologies to calculate the
effects of their policies in order to demonstrate effectiveness and
identify optimal strategies. Prior to the 1990s few humanitarian
organizations even thought to measure the consequences of their actions,
assuming that the mere provision of assistance was evidence of their good
results. Two developments shattered this blissful assumption. The first
was mounting evidence that some humanitarian interventions might be
causing more harm than good. Rwanda, in particular, burst the confidence
of the humanitarian community.56
In addition, donors began demanding results-based
evaluations.
Measuring impact and demonstrating that humanitarian organizations are
responsible for success (or failure) is a demanding methodological task.
Humanitarian organizations must define “impact,” specify their
goals and translate them into measurable indicators, gather data in highly
fluid emergency settings, establish baseline data in order to generate a
“before and after” snapshot, control for alternative
explanations and variables, and construct reasonable counterfactual
scenarios.57
Nevertheless, they made
considerable headway. Humanitarian organizations began to draw on
epidemiological models in the health sciences and program evaluation tools
of the development field. The United States pushed for creation of the
Standardized Monitoring and Assessment of Relief and Nutrition (SMART).
Care International's Benefits-Harms analysis, which borrows
methodologies developed in the human rights field, helps relief and
development organizations measure the impact of their programs on
people's human rights.
58 Humanitarian organizations also moved to professionalize. Although
relief workers still learn on the job, organizations increasingly draw on
the health sciences and engineering, extant manuals, and specialized
training programs run by private firms, NGOs, states, and academic
institutions. Agencies increasingly recruit relief workers who have
training in specialized fields. Although relief workers still have a high
burnout rate, and most organizations have an impressive degree of staff
turnover, many agencies now have full-time staff, who draw salaries with
benefits packages and treat the field as a career. In addition, many
premier agencies underwent a major change in their bureaucratic structure.
Although operational divisions still carry tremendous prestige and
influence, they increasingly compete with newly established offices
dedicated to fund-raising and donor relations, staffed by those whose
primary field experience derives not from refugee camps, but from
marketing campaigns and pledge drives.
Consequences of Transformation
The transformation of humanitarianism has left its mark, and
humanitarian organizations hotly debate whether it is a mark of Cain. At
times this debate appears to devolve into two equally stylized camps: one
waxing sentimental about some quasi-mythical golden age of humanitarian
action in which relief agencies enjoyed a space of infinite expanse, and
another suggesting that the golden age is around the corner because
humanitarian agencies have never been better funded or better positioned
to help more people at risk. Without getting pulled into this debate, I
want to explore how the politicization and institutionalization of
humanitarianism has left organizations more vulnerable to external
control. States are now able to use direct and indirect means to constrain
and guide the actions of humanitarian agencies in ways that agencies
believe potentially violate their principles. The external environment
more generally affects the organizational culture of humanitarian
agencies—their identity, internal organization, practices,
principles, and calculations. The discussion of the transformation of
humanitarianism, in other words, forces us to consider the effects of
power in terms of what humanitarian organizations do and what they
are.
Power over humanitarian action
States and international institutions can now compel humanitarian
agencies to act in ways counter to their interests and principles.
Although states have historically vacillated in their desire to use
humanitarian action to serve their interests, the 1990s were unprecedented
to the extent that states attempted to impose their agendas on
agencies.59
Toward that end, states
began introducing mechanisms that were intended to control their
“implementing partners.” Although such control mechanisms did
not necessarily compel agencies to act in ways that they believed were
antagonistic to their interests or principles, frequently they did.
The most important control mechanism came from the power of the purse.
Sometimes donors make transparent threats. In 2003 U.S. AID administrator
Andrew Natsios told humanitarian organizations operating in Iraq that they
were obliged to show the American flag if they took U.S. funding. If not,
he warned, they could be replaced.60
One NGO official captured the
U.S. message in the following terms: “play the tune or
‘they'll take you out of the band.’”
61 Sometimes donors use more subtle, indirect, methods, for example, by
insisting that agencies submit to coordination mechanisms. Coordination
can appear to be a technical exercise whose function is to improve the
division of labor, increase specialization, and heighten efficiencies. Yet
this coordination, like all governance activities, is a highly political
exercise, defined by power. The power behind coordination has not been
lost on humanitarian organizations, especially when the donors are parties
to the conflict or have a vested interest in the outcome.62
Most famously, NATO in Kosovo
and the United States in Afghanistan insisted on coordinating humanitarian
action.
63 Although they justified their role on the
grounds that it would improve the relief effort, they had more
self-interested reasons: in order to sell the war at home, the combatants
wanted the favorable publicity that came with being televised delivering
food to, and building shelters for, displaced populations. It also would
help them win the “hearts and minds” campaign, integral to the
war effort.
64 States also wanted to see for
themselves what was occurring in the field. Toward that end, they began
sending representatives to relay firsthand accounts of assistance
activities and began developing the capacity for independent needs
assessments and strategic analyses. An immediate consequence was that
humanitarian organizations no longer benefited from having privileged and
highly authoritative information. Because the authority of NGOs comes from
their practical experience from “the field” (Slim 2002b, 4), this development might undermine their
discretion.
Humanitarian organizations, though, were now being
coordinated by one of the parties to the conflict, compromising their
neutrality and independence.
65 A major
controversy in this regard concerns whether the willingness of aid
agencies to align themselves with the United States in Afghanistan and
Iraq is one cause behind the growing perception that aid workers are no
longer given immunity during war.
The bilateralization of aid and the earmarking of funds also
potentially steers individual agencies, and has produced disturbing trends
in the allocation of aid. Multilateral aid is technically defined as aid
given to multilateral organizations and not earmarked; these
organizations, therefore, have complete discretion over how the money is
spent. Bilateral aid can mean the state either dictates to the
multilateral organization how the money is spent or gives the money to a
nonmultilateral organization such as an NGO. Earmarking means that the
donor dictates where and how the assistance will be used, frequently
identifying regions, countries, operations, or even projects; this is
especially useful if governments have geopolitical interests or pet
projects. Since the 1980s there has been a dramatic shift away from
multilateral aid and toward bilateral aid and earmarking. In 1988 states
directed roughly 45 percent of humanitarian assistance to UN agencies in
the form of multilateral assistance. After 1994, however, the average
dropped to 25 percent (and even lower in 1999 because of Kosovo).66
Accordingly, state interests, rather than the
humanitarian principle of relief based on need, increasingly drives
funding decisions. For instance, of the top 50 recipients of bilateral
assistance between 1996 and 1999, the states of the former Yugoslavia,
Israel/Palestine, and Iraq received 50 percent of the available
assistance.
67 In 2002 nearly half of all funds given
by donor governments to the UN's 25 appeals for assistance went to
Afghanistan.
68 If funding decisions were based
solely on need, then places like Sudan, Congo, northern Uganda, and Angola
would leapfrog to the top of the list.
69 Many in the humanitarian sector agree that while the global
response to the tsunami was impressive, it was disproportionate in
relationship to need. In fact, because MSF believed that it had more than
enough, it asked donors to unrestrict the funds so that they could be
channeled to another region in greater need; if they refused, MSF
attempted to return the donations.
In general, while there is
more aid than ever before, it is controlled by fewer donors, who are more
inclined to impose conditions and direct aid toward their priorities,
undermining the principle of impartiality. Funding is now a several-tiered
system, with the least fortunate getting the least attention.
70 In response to the politicization of
priorities, humanitarian organizations entered into a dialogue with the
principal donors to try to establish more impartial standards. The result
was the Good Donorship Initiative. See Harmer,
Cotterrell, and Stoddard 2004.
Humanitarian organizations bristled at these control mechanisms. Any
organization will object to encroachments on its autonomy. Yet
humanitarian organizations feared not only less autonomy, but also having
to compromise their humanitarian principles. The language of
principal-agent theory helps explain why. States see themselves as
principals that provide a temporary transfer of authority to their agents,
humanitarian organizations. Yet humanitarian organizations do not see
themselves as agents of states or operating with delegated authority; they
see themselves as agents of humanity that operate with moral authority.
The very association with states and its presumption of delegated
authority, then, potentially undermines the moral authority cherished by
most humanitarian organization. Indeed, if states fund humanitarian
organizations in order to further their foreign policy goals, then
humanitarian organizations are justifiably concerned. States' attempt
to monitor and regulate humanitarian organizations almost by definition
compromises their guiding principles.
Humanitarian action redefined
The new environment and the transformation of humanitarianism is also
leaving its imprint on the organizational culture of humanitarian
agencies, producing changes that potentially undermine the core principle
of impartial relief. The transformation of humanitarianism, as already
noted, includes an expansion of the practices and goals associated with
humanitarian action. This logically means that many humanitarian
organizations are, in other words, articulating an expanding set of goals.
Goal expansion has several possible consequences. It can lead to
traditional goals being displaced. Relief was formerly an end in itself,
but agencies are increasingly considering its relationship to other goals.
For instance, rights-based agencies have demonstrated a greater
willingness to use relief in order to promote basic human rights. Not only
does need cease to be unconditional, but aid organizations might now also
be attempting to determine who is worthy of aid, thus acting much like the
nineteenth-century relief workers interested in helping the
“deserving poor.”71
There is growing anecdotal
evidence, moreover, that as many agencies have increasingly emphasized
advocacy, rights, and peace building, they have not maintained their
capacity for emergency relief, harming their response capacity to
situations like Darfur.
72 Interview with
official from the UN Office for the Coordinator of Humanitarian
Assistance, New York, March 8, 2005.
Bureaucratization is associated with the growing priority of base
organizational interests such as survival and funding.73
Reflecting on the
emergence of the “Humanitarian International,” Alex de Waal
argues that in the competition between “soft interests” such
as performing relief well and “hard interests” such as
organizational survival and prosperity, noble ideals increasingly
lose.
74 Ideals are particularly threatened when
agencies need to interact with new donor environments to fund their
activities. States' new contract mechanisms, including short-term
contracts, competitive bidding, and reporting rules, have introduced
perverse incentives for agencies that care about funding as much as they
do about protecting populations at risk. Humanitarian organizations might
doctor their performance indicators in order to transform failure into
success, compete in areas in which they do not have a comparative
advantage in order to secure funding, or fail to report shortcomings or
the misuse of funds by subcontractors in order to avoid jeopardizing their
contracts.
75 Furthermore, because visibility can be a prerequisite for getting
funding, many organizations prefer publicity to critical but very
unglamourous work.76
In the camps in
Zaire following the Rwandan genocide, humanitarian groups rushed to the
scene in order to show the flag and impress funders back home. Working in
an orphanage photographs well and brings in revenue, but building clean
latrines and sanitation systems does not—even though it is equally
if not more essential for saving lives. Such a set of incentives might
create market failures. De Waal posits a Gresham's Law for
humanitarianism: bad humanitarian action can crowd out good action because
humanitarian organizations are rewarded for being seen rather than for
saving lives.
77 Evidence also points to agencies' shifting what they consider to
be appropriate action, thus redefining their principles and practices.
Relaxation or redefinition of neutrality and independence can introduce
new rule-governed behavior that can compromise impartiality. For example,
one former Oxfam official reflected that his organization had become so
supportive of NATO intervention in Kosovo that it forgot that genuine
impartiality demanded that Oxfam and other relief organizations should
have been on both sides of the border—helping Kosovar refugees
and Serbian victims of NATO bombing.78
Humanitarian
organizations also might develop new rules that potentially undermine the
safety of populations. As it attempted to navigate state pressures, UNHCR
altered its underlying rules and principles of action in a way that
increased its propensity to put the lives of refugees at risk.
79 This transformation also can subtly alter the ethical principles and
calculations used by agencies to guide their policies. Humanitarian
agencies are demonstrating a shift from deontological, or duty-based,
ethics to consequentialist ethics. This development is driven partly by a
growing concern with the negative consequences of humanitarian action and
the related desire to measure effectiveness and impact.80
There also were growing calls to measure
“need”—to replace subjective and emotional assessments
with more objective criteria as a way to reinforce the impartiality
principle and bring more attention to forgotten emergencies. In short,
objective indicators are the best way to reestablish values and
principles. See Oxley 2001.
Previously
humanitarian organizations were instinctively guided by deontological
ethics: some actions are simply good in and of themselves regardless of
their consequences. Ethical action consists of identifying these
intrinsically good actions and then performing one's moral duty. The
growing concern with unintended consequences, however, has contributed to
an ethic of consequentialism: whether or not an action is ethical depends
on the outcome. The issue for humanitarian organizations is becoming not
whether aid has negative and unintended consequences—for it almost
always does—but whether, on balance, it does more harm than
good.
81 Slim 1997;
Duffield 2001a, 90–95; Gasper 1999. Because it is nearly impossible, if not
slightly macabre, to try to calculate whether aid saves more lives than it
takes, some organizations have reasserted the importance of the principles
of independence, neutrality, and impartiality for determining whether they
should provide aid. See Weissman 2004.
Consequentialist reasoning requires agencies to identify the outcomes of
concern—and as their goals expand, the outcome variables that must
be considered expand, too. Accordingly, agencies have an incentive to
consider how relief might affect development, human rights, and peace
building—potentially eroding the idea that agencies should give on
the basis of need and not on the basis of other goals.
The desire to measure impact and effectiveness also can abrade a
central element of the humanitarian ethic: a desire to demonstrate
solidarity with victims and to restore their dignity. Relief workers, in
Rony Brauman's words, aspire to “remain close to people in
distress and to try and relieve their suffering.”82
They do
so by providing not only relief, but also compassion and caring. The ethic
of humanitarianism, in this respect, includes both consequentialist and
duty-based ethics—it seeks to provide life-saving relief and holds
that the motives matter for assuring benevolence. Yet can such
nonquantifiable values as compassion be operationalized when attempting to
determine the effectiveness of humanitarian action? Is it possible to
quantify, for instance, the reuniting of families, the provision of burial
shrouds, or the reduction of fear and anxiety among people in desperate
situations?
83 If they are omitted from the model, the model
might redefine how humanitarian agencies think about impact, downgrading
basic ethical motives in favor of measurable outcomes. If the measurable
variables are no longer dependent on the subjective needs of the
“beneficiaries,” will they even be consulted?
Measures of effectiveness, then, and the growing reliance of agencies
on rational-legal principles to generate their legitimacy, might undermine
the moral authority of humanitarian organizations. If the legitimacy and
value of humanitarian action is based strictly on deliverables and
producing measurable outcomes—saving lives at the cheapest
price—then why not hire a private agency, if available?84
After all, the
victim probably does not care if the blankets are delivered by a
commercial firm or a nonprofit agency. If aid agencies are increasingly
drifting toward rational-legal principles as a way of defending their
legitimacy, they might not only have difficulty competing with commercial
firms but also might undermine their moral authority. The presumed
difference between the Wal-Marts and the World Visions is that the former
does not have moral authority while the latter does. What happens, though,
when humanitarian agencies increasingly base their legitimacy on their
ability to measure up to standards set by modern, commercial firms? Such a
development might very well undermine what makes humanitarian action
distinctive.
Conclusion: Humanitarianism and World
Order
Humanitarianism can only be understood in relationship to the world
order that constitutes it. Although much scholarship has focused on how
principled actors have changed world politics by pressuring states to take
the high road and redefine their interests, I have inverted this claim in
examining how global politics has reshaped the nature of humanitarian
action.85
The environment that surrounded humanitarianism
changed in profound ways during the 1990s. The expanding scope and scale
of humanitarian action created new opportunities for agencies to help more
people than ever before. A practice that was once restricted to relief and
emergency assistance has become—like communism, nationalism,
liberalism—an
ism, not part of this world but a project
designed to transform it.
These changes in humanitarian action suggest that it has a new
function in international politics. Originally its distinctive function in
the international sacrificial order was to interrupt the selection process
by saving those at immediate risk. It did not pretend to be anything but
palliative. Yet this temperance movement also served an ideological
function, helping to reproduce the geopolitical order because it reduced
pressures that might have demanded its transformation. Consider modern
humanitarianism's origins. By the mid-nineteenth century, changes in
military technology were making war more brutal; there was little
tradition of medical relief; and the emerging profession of war reporting
was transmitting gruesome pictures and accounts of soldiers left to
languish and die on the battlefield. Publics were beginning to rebel at
these sights and to express pacifist sentiments. In response, state and
military elites co-opted Dunant's platform, removed its more radical
proposals, accepted new rules governing how to tend wounded soldiers on
the battlefield, and thus demonstrated to their publics their commitment
to humanize war. Humanitarianism, in other words, helped to rescue those
on the battlefield—and the system of war. In fact, decades after
founding the ICRC, Dunant concluded that humanitarianism had been co-opted
by the states-system; he walked away from reformism and embraced
pacifism.86
Recent developments in international humanitarian
law can be interpreted as serving a similar function for the war machine
as they lessen the demand for more radical change in the global-military
order.
The drift of humanitarian action from relief to root causes indicates
a shift in its role in the international sacrificial order. No longer
satisfied with saving individuals today so that they can be at risk
tomorrow, humanitarianism now aspires to transform the structural
conditions that make populations vulnerable. Toward that end, aid agencies
desire to spread development, democracy, and human rights, and to join a
peace-building agenda that aspires to create stable, effective, and
legitimate states. They are carriers of liberal values as they help spin
into existence a global liberal order.87
Although their transcendental, universal, and cosmopolitan commitments
might appear to threaten an international society organized around the
nation-state, in fact most of their activities do not challenge the
states-system, but instead are designed to create a more stable,
legitimate state organized around these supposedly universal
principles.
88
Humanitarian organizations may or may not be part of a neoliberal agenda,
and they may or may not resemble the missionaries of the nineteenth
century. But by their own admission, they view their social purpose as
promoting liberal values in order to make the world safer, more humane,
and more just.
Humanitarianism is now more firmly part of politics. Certainly it
always was part of politics to the extent that its actions had political
effects and relief workers saw themselves as standing with the weak and
against the mighty. Yet humanitarian agencies restricted their ambition to
saving lives at immediate risk in part to keep states at bay and preserve
their goal for relief. They are now firmly, and in many ways
self-consciously, part of politics. Humanitarianism no longer clings to
principles of neutrality, independence, and impartiality as method of
depoliticization, but increasingly views the former two principles as a
(unnecessary) luxury. Humanitarianism and politics are no longer
discursively constructed in binary, oppositional terms; instead, their
points of intersection are many, and humanitarianism's meanings
increasingly are defined by the sort of politics once viewed as its
bête noire. Humanitarianism, in short, is self-consciously part of
politics. It is increasingly an ism that is no longer satisfied
with reforming the world, but now has ambitions about its very
transformation.
This transformation is forcing humanitarian organizations to
critically reexamine two defining self-images. One is the belief that they
operate strictly on behalf of others, are devoid of power,89
and are as weak as the individuals they were trying
to save. Many humanitarian organizations now have annual budgets that
rival those of the states that are the objects of their intervention, and
they are no longer content to stand outside of politics but are
increasingly part of governance structures that are intended to transform
states and societies. Humanitarian organizations can no longer pretend
that they lack power—including power over those with whom they stand
in solidarity.
90 These developments also challenge their self-image as representatives
of humanity. As a recent report regarding the current and future
challenges to humanitarianism puts it, “Many in the South do not
recognize what the international community calls the universality of
humanitarian values as such…. Humanitarian action is viewed as the
latest in a series of imposition of alien values, practices, and
lifestyles. Northern incursions into the South—from the Crusades to
colonialism and beyond—have historically been perceived very
differently depending on the vantage point.”91
Indeed, if humanitarianism increasingly reflects
globalization and Westernization, then there are good reasons why those in
the Southern hemisphere view these agencies as the “mendicant orders
of Empire.”
92 Although such
observations are nearly as speculative as the claims to universality they
are meant to replace, there has been little research into how the
recipients view Western alms and whether other traditions of relief and
charity also share values associated with the Western tradition of
humanitarian action.
Humanitarianism is now balanced on the knife's edge of various
tensions, tensions that have become more pronounced as it has become (more
self-consciously) part of politics. Humanitarianism is now precariously
situated between the politics of solidarity and the politics of
governance. Humanitarian workers traditionally saw themselves as
apolitical as they defied systems of power and were in solidarity with the
victims of a sacrificial order. As they become increasingly implicated in
governance structures, they find themselves in growing collaboration with
those whom they once resisted. Whether they will be successful at this
more ambitious agenda remains to be seen. Whether they are or not, though,
humanitarian action might very well be an effect of the very circuits of
power that they once viewed as part of the international sacrificial
order.
