Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
| ||||||||||||
Balance Can Be Found Between Military and Humanitarian - NGOs - Global policy Forum Balance Can Be Found Between Military and Humanitarian
By Hugo Slim
Alertnet
March 28, 2003Hugo Slim, reader in international humanitarianism at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, England, asks why NGOs want to keep the humanitarian domain exclusively to themselves. He questions whether their protectionism is a result of moral insight or humanitarian professionalism gone mad.
I have some real concerns about whether NGOs may be in danger of banning military forces from being humanitarian when, in fact, they should be encouraging them to be more so. I wonder if an analogy between humanitarianism and humour might help. Laughter is a universal good. What would the world be like if only clowns were allowed to be funny and make people laugh? This would be a terrible world that confined humour to a professional class and restricted a universal human desire and capacity. At times, it can sound as if NGO humanitarians are suggesting something similar about humanitarian action. It is something that they want everyone to value and enjoy but which only they are allowed to do. Often, by implying this, they can come across as smug and self-righteous. But is there moral method in their smugness?
In some situations it may be safe for a clown to crack a joke when the same joke would be very dangerous coming from someone else -- dangerous both for the teller and for those who laughed. Only the jester can ridicule the king in front of his subjects. The clown is a liminal figure speaking the truth in jokes at the very edge of what is politically acceptable. Others can be funny and witty at court but not on the same subjects and not to the same extreme without putting themselves and their audience in danger. The same might be said of humanitarian aid and protection. While humour is for all to practise and enjoy, we do also need professional humorists in certain situations and in front of certain powerful audiences. Also, humour is more complex than a simple good. Sometimes, it can function to be extremely cruel and be made at the expense of others for whom it is no laughing matter.
CRUEL AID
It is the same with humanitarian aid. Perhaps the most extreme example of cruel and wicked aid from belligerent forces has been captured forever on Leslie Woodhead's excellent film about the massacres at Srebrenica, "Cry from the Grave". This film shows footage of General Ratko Mladic personally distributing bread and chocolate to the terrified Bosnian Muslim population cowering in the Dutch peacekeepers' camp at Potucari. In this moment, Mladic was exploiting aid in an attempt to create goodwill so he could separate men from women and children to massacre the men. Here, the wrong person was giving aid with the wrong interests and for the wrong reasons. There is no way in which what Mladic did can be described as humanitarian. Like clowns, humanitarians have dangerous jobs. They both deal in an ambiguous commodity and seek to take their values into very difficult territory.
At his or her best, the humanitarian in war is also a liminal figure who can tread where others cannot tread. He or she must have no political interest so as to be beyond suspicion. The clown can only mock the king because he has no desire to be king. So it is with humanitarians who can introduce resources into a war because they have no desire to win it. So, humour is not just about the value of laughter -- something which we all agree is generally good. It is also about the interests of the joker and the kindness or cruelty of the joke itself -- its intention. In certain extreme situations and on certain dangerous subjects, people can only tolerate humour if it comes from a clown because they know that, although it may cut straight to the point, it bears no malice.
TOLERATING KINDNESS
Similarly, perhaps, in the extreme situations of war, enemies can only tolerate kindness if it comes from humanitarians with no immediate interest in their fight. In war, it may simply be too much to take the kindness of one's enemy because one cannot trust it for being without malice or because one is humiliated by it. Perhaps it needs someone else to do the kindness in such situations. The root of NGO resistance to military kindness is, therefore, not about the impossibility that soldiers can be kind but about the political and military interest behind such kindness.
It is the problem of belligerent interests and enemy perception of these interests that I assume to be at the heart of NGO anxiety about soldiers being humanitarian. NGOs do not, I hope, object to the idea of soldiers being kind but are suspicious of what makes them so. And -- as the Srebrenica example shows -- they can have good reason to be wary. Humanitarians have always known that aid can be exploited and that Marcus Aurelius once reminded his generals that "benevolence is a great weapon in war".
Soldiers may be doing things to be humanitarian and to win at the same time. Their humanitarian action may be an important aspect of conquest and met with deep suspicion or hostility. As a result, it may not reach the people who need it. Better, therefore, to have it carried by someone who poses no threat.
TECHNICAL REASONS
There is also perhaps a technical logic to justify the paradox. This is more akin to a second analogy -- with brain surgery. Brain surgery is a public good that we want for all people but it is also a very specific technical skill. It would be disastrous if everyone tried to do it.
This analogy suggests the more technical reason behind NGO resistance to belligerent humanitarian action. Simply put, this is the idea that NGO values and expertise make them better at humanitarian work than military forces. Their experience and skills mean their programmes and personnel are more appropriate. This idea of superior technical capability also makes a moral argument that humanitarian work should be limited to humanitarian agencies more often than not. The fact that they might do it better means that they might be the better people to do it in all but the most extreme circumstances.
STRIKING A BALANCE These two moral arguments -- the clown and the brain surgeon -- show that it is possible to claim, as NGOs are doing, that while the humanitarian ethic is universal, humanitarian action has firm borders and its practice should be professionally limited. But this basic position still strikes me as too simplistic and too intolerant of the potential humanitarian contribution of belligerent military forces and their genuine desire to be humanitarian.
Belligerents have serious humanitarian obligations under humanitarian law. They need to be encouraged to meet them. The world needs good armies and NGOs should be careful not to send a mixed message that "because you are soldiers, you can never be good like us".
At the same time, military forces should respect the gap between military and humanitarian work. They should be humanitarian when they need to be and hand over when agencies are around. And they should avoid the mixed message of their recent "cross-dressing" in Afghanistan where they have appeared half-soldier and half-humanitarian. Soldiers hate it when their enemies cross-dress as civilians, so they should understand NGO frustration. There is a balance to be struck in all this and NGOs are best advised to form their judgments on the ground rather than dogmatically from on high.
More Information on NGOs
More Information on NGOs in the Field
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
