Humanitarianism - moral dilemmas of action

[Mr BoShambles]

Most humanitarian organizations are indeed keenly aware of the moral dilemmas of their operations and the pitfalls of the “humanitarian imperative”. Mary Anderson warns, however, that “it is a moral and logical fallacy to conclude that because aid can do harm, the decision not to give aid would do no harm. In reality, a decision to withhold aid from people in need would have unconscionable negative ramifications.” Fiona Terry, armed with a lot of practical experience, sees the problem pragmatically: “We can never construct the best world in which our compassion can immediately translate into an end of suffering, but we can try to build a second-best world based on hard-headed assessments of the needs and options.”​

[whole article here]

Practical dilemmas:

1. Within a country at war humanitarian operations can unintentionally bestow local and international legitimacy on rebel movements, local warlords or other powerful individuals. They need to negotiate access with the groups in charge of a certain area, thus implicitly recognizing their authority and legitimacy.

2. Humanitarian operations such as aid distributions and the provision of health services may assist those groups in controlling the population in their area, or even attract an influx of people from other areas.

3. Local power groups might derive considerable financial benefits from humanitarian operations by imposing charges on transports, levying taxes on imports and employees’ salaries, and collecting rent for warehouses, offices and residences.

4. Humanitarian aid has also been accused of fuelling war economies and prolonging conflict by providing assistance, directly or indirectly, to combatants and their military operations.

Broader philosophical/ideological dilemma:

Can humanitarianism be seen as a component of a broader "liberal project" which aims to transform "dysfunctional" and war ravaged societies into cooperative, respresentative and, especially, stable entities?
-- i.e. emphasis on / imposition of: market based reforms, "civil society" capacity building, democratisation processes etc.

[sure there are many more elements to consider - like for example the cooption of humanitarian operations by military forces -- i.e. in Afghanistan and Iraq]

 

[vimothy]

We need case studies!

 

[scottdisco]

what Fiona Terry said.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

We need case studies!

No worries there are many. For a start from the same article i linked to above:

The dilemmas of humanitarian action were, for example, agonizingly exposed in the huge assistance operation for the Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire in 1994. Not only had many — if not most — of the refugees taken active part themselves in the Rwandan genocide, but their camps also served as sanctuaries and recruitment centres for extremist Hutu militias who continued to murder and plunder inside Rwanda. The responsibility to intervene and impose at least a demilitarization of the camps would clearly have belonged to the government of Zaire or possibly the UN, and humanitarian workers did not fail to point that out. On the other hand, the camps could not have existed without the international humanitarian assistance, and at least some organizations felt that moral responsibility heavily. Some, such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), decided to withdraw, but many others stayed and continued their operations. The Rwandan army ultimately attacked the camps in October 1996, leading to even more bloodshed.​

 

[vimothy]

Meta-Dissensus Uber-Thread

Cool.

On the philosophical side, I'm interested in trying to tie this into our discussions in the Klein/Mexico/Violence Must End threads about violence and the state, maybe with an idea to exploring the differences and similarities between imperial conquest and humanitarian intervention.

Also, you must check out this recent paper by Jason Lyall -- Rage Against the Machines: Explaining Outcomes in Counterinsurgency Wars.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

Broader philosophical/ideological dilemma:

Can humanitarianism be seen as a component of a broader "liberal project" which aims to transform "dysfunctional" and war ravaged societies into cooperative, respresentative and, especially, stable entities?
-- i.e. emphasis on / imposition of: market based reforms, "civil society" capacity building, democratisation processes etc.

Just want to be clear about why this is a "dilemma" - fucked my original post up so hopefully this should be a corrective.

Basically, humanitarianism can be seen as part of a globalization process with a liberal agenda and therefore can be argued to contribute significantly to generating global and local structures of economic marginalization and inequality that may partly be responded to with resistance and violence. A form of structural violence - for some an inherent part of the asymmetric power relations which underpin the capitalist world system.

In addition we can perhaps perceive humanitarianism as a form of cultural violence. Violation of cultures can be argued to take place when humanitarian organizations today stress universal goals and concepts and favour organizations and organizational practices that reflect their own worldview and interests more than they reflect local political cultures, social structures and visions for development.

 

[vimothy]

What was the name of that paper (lit review) on violence that (I think) I gave you at some point (from Dani Rodrik's reading list from his course on development)? Some very relevant stuff in there, IIRC.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

On the philosophical side, I'm interested in trying to tie this into our discussions in the Klein/Mexico/Violence Must End threads about violence and the state, maybe with an idea to exploring the differences and similarities between imperial conquest and humanitarian intervention.

Ok i'm in. Post some initial thoughts somewhere (a new thread maybe?) and see where we go from there.

Something that springs to mind straight away though is this quote from Mark Duffield's book Global Governance and the New Wars:

The current concern of global governance is to establish a liberal peace on its troubled borders: to resolve conflicts, reconstruct societies and establish functioning market economies as a way to avoid future wars. The ultimate goal of liberal peace is stability. In achieving this aim, liberal peace is different from imperial peace. The latter was based on, or at least aspired to, direct territorial control where populations were ruled through juridicial and bureaucratic means of authority. The imperial power dealt with opposition using physical and juridicial forms of pacification, somethimes in an extreme and violent manner. Liberal peace is different; it is a non-territorial, mutable and networked relation of governance. The aim of the strategic state-non-state complexes that embody global governance is not the direct control of territory. Ideally liberal power is based on the management and regulation of economic, political and social processes. It is power through the control and management of non-territorial systems and networks. [p. 34]​

 

[vimothy]

Meta-thread

On Dissensus, there is only one thread. Therefore, there's no point instarting a new one. It's impossible. We might as well just have it out here and be done with it.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

What was the name of that paper (lit review) on violence that (I think) I gave you at some point (from Dani Rodrik's reading list from his course on development)? Some very relevant stuff in there, IIRC.

Oh -- you mean the one with the imaginative title: 'Economics and Violent Conflict'? By Macartan Humphreys at Harvard.

On Dissensus, there is only one thread. Therefore, there's no point instarting a new one. It's impossible. We might as well just have it out here and be done with it.

Alright but i don't want any pretentious crap infiltrating here

 

[scottdisco]

Basically, humanitarianism can be seen as part of a globalization process with a liberal agenda and therefore can be argued to contribute significantly to generating global and local structures of economic marginalization and inequality that may partly be responded to with resistance and violence. A form of structural violence - for some an inherent part of the asymmetric power relations which underpin the capitalist world system.

In addition we can perhaps perceive humanitarianism as a form of cultural violence. Violation of cultures can be argued to take place when humanitarian organizations today stress universal goals and concepts and favour organizations and organizational practices that reflect their own worldview and interests more than they reflect local political cultures, social structures and visions for development.

maybe it's the circles i move in, but, yes, i know these view-points can be pretty popular.

hmm.

someone like, say, Justice Africa should be exempt from the above anyway.

nice Duffield quote!

i think the Zizek thread had quite a bit about structural violence (might be mis-remembering that).

Zizek thread = fascism!!! off the back of that poor TNR piece.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

maybe it's the circles i move in, but, yes, i know these view-points can be pretty popular.

hmm.

so how do you feel about this kind of position scott?

nice Duffield quote!

have you read his work? if not i thoroughly recommend it and can e-mail you some pdf docs if you're interested.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

More dilemmas...

Despite the routine humanitarian claims to neutrality/impartiality/apoliticism, most humanitarian organizations, UN agencies as well as NGOs, depend to a large extent on funds from Western donor governments, whose priorities are — quite legitimately — not influenced by humanitarian concerns alone. As Schweizer remarks in that ICRC report cited in my original post:

The more recent trend of “humanitarian” military interventions and the substantial involvement of humanitarian organizations in the subsequent peace-building operations have revitalized the discussion on whether it is morally legitimate to use humanitarian assistance as political leverage to promote conflict resolution, political reconciliation and nation-building.​

 

[vimothy]

Already too late

Alright but i don't want any pretentious crap infiltrating here

Meta-Dissensus: It's under ur wheels, derailing ur threads.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

Meta-Dissensus: It's under ur wheels, derailing ur threads.

Fuck y'all then... switching to tangent proof jet-packs. Ha!

 

[vimothy]

Thought this was interesting:

This fundamental moral dilemma was already raised by Florence Nightingale, who disagreed with Henry Dunant’s idea of humanitarian volunteers, arguing that it would relieve States from a part of the burden of going to war. Transposed to today’s discussion on “humanitarian” military interventions, it can indeed be asked whether these would be possible without the flotilla of UN agencies and NGOs standing ready to repair the damage and rebuild shattered civil societies after the military operations.

And reminded me of Weizman's suggestion that Naveh's use of theory to help the IDF "walk through walls" in Gaza, by reducing the cost of military operations, is increasing their occurrence. And thus theory should shoulder some of the blame.

But is it? I mean, humanitarianism -- is there any correlation between more "humanitarianism" (latent variable -- of course we would need a manifest variable to measure this, such as number of NGOs) and "more war" (number of wars, number of fatalities, etc)? Speaking as a mother, I'm not sure that there is...

 

[vimothy]

On the moral/philosophical dimension, if the state is organised crime (Tilly), does it make a difference?

 

[Mr BoShambles]

On the moral/philosophical dimension, if the state is organised crime (Tilly), does it make a difference?

In what sense?

 

[vimothy]

What right do states have to go round the world intervening in other regions? Well, what right do they have to intervene in their own territory?

 

[Mr BoShambles]

What right do states have to go round the world intervening in other regions? Well, what right do they have to intervene in their own territory?

Rights and duties are socially constructed -- there is nothing innate about them IMO. So part of the state-building process is the construction of legitimacy whereby elites seek to generate support for their activites. In Gramscian terms, hegemony (of elites over societies) is not just based on coercion but also (more importantly) on the generation of consent through provision of public goods. A states "right" to intervene is operational because it has widespread support. A state without widespread support can still intervene through coercive action but the foundations for this are both practically and morally suspect.

At the international level things are more tricky. Sovereignty is constructed - an institution to regulate inter-national affairs. Interventions are (in theory) subject to the norms and conventions drawn up at the UN by states - although in a highly asymmetric fashion. UN approval confers legitimacy (at least in the eyes of the dominant actors in the "international community"). Legitimacy is also in some sense generated though appeals to the domestic population of the intervening state(s). Legitimacy in the eyes of the local population subject to outside intervention needs to be constructed and can be highly problematic as we are all aware.

Apols if this is just waffle