Humanitarian action and political action – we cannot confuse the two

Currently, we’re witnessing a great divide within the humanitarian community regarding the situation in Darfur. Some organisations are calling for armed intervention based on humanitarian grounds, while others are setting themselves apart from this kind of position.

Dr. Jean-Hervé Bradol, president of the French section of Médecins Sans Frontières says that no one can claim a monopoly on the use of the word ‘humanitarian.’. But he stresses it is important to clarify the distinction between humanitarian action and political action. According to him, what is at issue in Darfur is the ability of humanitarian actors to provide aid to victims.

Is the Darfur issue dividing the humanitarian community?

There are two very different positions within this current Darfur debate. The U.S.-based Save Darfur and France-based Urgence Darfour are leading a campaign in support of military intervention in Darfur, to be imposed by force if the Sudanese government refuses to accept it.

Several humanitarian organisations providing aid in the field have publicly expressed their disagreement with the group’s position. Save Darfur is a broad coalition of religious and political advocacy organisations using humanitarian and human rights rhetoric to bring about a political and military intervention. Their arguments are based on ‘humanitarian’ grounds, but this is clearly a political matter.

Some aid actors are feeling uneasy about a call for intervention being associated with ‘humanitarianism.’ When humanitarian action is manipulated to serve political and religious interests, the resulting blurring of lines can cause aid in the field to fail. We have seen this many times before. We must remember that aid operations today are providing food, water and medical care to two million people who have been displaced within Darfur or have taken refuge in Chad.

What about the claim that humanitarianism has lost its sense of commitment to victims?

This is clearly the issue: what is the most effective way to aid victims? Two schools of thought have long existed within humanitarian organisations and human rights groups.

The first, an “interventionist” stance, holds that we are responsible for ensuring that certain values (including justice, democracy and human rights) are observed everywhere for preventing crises and for resolving them. According to this kind of thought, NGOs may legitimately impose “good,” which may include calling on major powers. The notion of the “right of humanitarian intervention" falls squarely within this school of thought. As I see it, this raises a moral question about the role that external actors can and should play in a crisis. It also raises a practical one: who has the political legitimacy today to create order in the world in the name of these values?

The other school of thought can be described as “pragmatic” and reflects Médecins Sans Frontières’ position. It is more modest and realistic in its aims, holding that the role of a humanitarian organisation is to provide the highest quality aid possible. To do that requires complete independence from governments. Our only goal is to provide aid to populations in crisis situations, irrespective of the political agendas of governments.

This does not mean that we have no social or political responsibility. When we sound an alarm about a crisis situation, we do not violate our role. However, our position in the field is placed in jeopardy when we venture to prescribe political – or even military – solutions. In 1994, Médecins Sans Frontières supported armed intervention during the Rwandan genocide, but this was an exception. Since the Kosovo crisis, political actors have continued to wage war in the name of humanitarianism, and humanitarian organisations themselves have called for war. This presents a problem of legitimacy and competence.

“Humanitarian action” as opposed to “solutions” – doesn’t this pose limitations for the scope of operations for humanitarian organisations?

It can be frustrating, but if we are to be effective, we must take this position. How can we maintain our legitimacy if we are not neutral? How can we remain neutral if we call for war? We are dealing with a very significant contradiction. Médecins Sans Frontières may use only peaceful methods, but that does not mean that we are necessarily pacifists and opposed to war on principle. However, by our very nature, we cannot call for combat – which would create new victims – in the name of humanitarian principles. Let’s keep the issue of competence in mind, too. Humanitarian actors know how to provide aid, but they are not diplomats or military strategists. We are not the best-suited to arbitrate among various political and military solutions.

That said, when various interests support a particular political solution based on a mistaken reading of the situation, we can warn the political actors involved using the knowledge from our experience in the field. In the case of Darfur, we are acting legitimately when we describe the reality in the field as we see it, which is very different than the one Save Darfur is promoting in the media. Save Darfur’s campaign is based on an imaginary Sudan, which has been reduced to an empty stretch of land where Arabs and Africans, or moderate and extremist Muslims, clash. The decision to launch a military intervention belongs to political actors. The role of humanitarian actors is to warn them about the realities in the field and about the impacts of an intervention on the ability to provide aid to victims.

It is evident that the blurring of the line between humanitarian and military action creates problems in the field. We have observed that even when the number of victims is high, it is much more difficult, and sometimes impossible, to provide aid when we are perceived as linked to a particular party in a conflict.

There is no hard and fast rule. Some military interventions have improved the situation for the population, as was the case in East Timor and Sierra Leone. But we only need to look at Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq today to see that military intervention can have severe impacts on the population. Such a decision deserves careful analysis of the reality in the field and should be made on that basis, without being draped in the humanitarian flag.

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