UN Chronicle | 'Distinguishing Help From Harm': Experts Debate Humanitarian Intervention

'Distinguishing Help From Harm'
Experts Debate Humanitarian Intervention
By Vikram Sura for the Chronicle

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Four panelists, experienced in their areas of work, offered differing views as to how—not whether—humanitarianism was in crisis at the first of a planned series of debates sponsored by the United Nations Department of Public Information.

Carolyn McAskie, UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator; David Rieff, author and journalist; William Schulz, Executive Director, Amnesty International, USA; and Sir Brian Urquhart, author and former UN Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs debated and rebutted one another. Shashi Tharoor, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, moderated the event. The occasion was the publication by David Rieff of his book, "A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis".

The four speakers accepted that humanitarianism was in crisis, but clashed as to why and who was responsible, diverging from Rieff's thesis that the marriage between humanitarianism and human rights had been a historic mistake. "It's not an attack on humanitarianism", Mr. Rieff said. "It is, however, a claim that the marriage of human action and human rights, perhaps very good for the human rights movement, and perhaps very convenient to western governments, is a historic mistake." He said if humanitarianism became a part of a more vast project, it betrayed its own specific moral gravity.

Ms. McAskie and Mr. Schulz, notably, took issue with the criticism in the book that they felt was neither very helpful nor clear on the issues surrounding humanitarianism. "Criticism must be savage, unhelpful", Mr. Rieff said. Ms. McAskie said that Rieff's argument had its merits, but added: "I'm not sure he can put this on the table without a more substantive alternative to propose. Where I part company with his thesis is that I would not chastise humanitarians who seek to work closely with those who seek solutions."

She had always believed, she said, that the humanitarian and development communities she worked with could be divided into reformers and radicals. "The radical is the one who creates the environment in which the reformer can change society", she said, complimenting Rieff as a radical. There were "lot of things" in his book with which all must agree. However, Ms. McAskie noted, "realism dictates that his cry for a return to pure, unquestioning humanitarianism, devoid of political contamination, is neither realistic nor helpful". She said that the link between the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Security Council meant the Council was engaged in the humanitarian consequence of its actions.

"That would not be true if the humanitarians weren't part of an integrated response. We cannot do more without advocating for solutions, and UN humanitarians must call for political action to go in parallel with humanitarian action."

Mr. Rieff, in response, concluded that an "alliance with the human rights movement, done with all the best ethical motives in the world, is but doomed to failure". He argued that it was "delusional" to think of a body of international law in the absence of any real international community—a community of shared values—as he defined it.

"International human rights are predicated on the notion of an international community and widely shared, if not, universal values", Mr. Schulz said, adding that in the past fifty to sixty years, a shared set of identity and values was emerging globally. He noted that the United States and China, two different polities, did have something in common, namely, a statutory aversion to torture; Denmark and Indonesia shared a commitment to the convention on the child; while Japan and Angola shared an aversion to executing criminal offenders under 18 years.

Even so, Mr. Rieff replied that his "illusory international community", and Schulz's definition of a community as individuals with a shared set of values and norms, were like comparing apples and oranges. "I write about the most unsuccessful, fragmented societies in the world", while Schulz was talking about the "most successful communities", he said.

If the speakers, as observed by Mr. Tharoor, had "sat upon [Rieff] a bit", Sir Brian proved himself the least heavy. He pointed a telescope to history and said that in the UN Secretariat during the Cold War, one had to figure ways to creeping round the "ludicrous" obstacles the war had created. "Certainly in the cold war", Sir Brian said, "humanitarianism, if it was going to be international, had to be neutral, and I must say there wasn't much of it." He added that it was "a great mistake to throw out the international system, or even the international community".

Complimenting Rieff on his book, Sir Brian said that the international community was still at the beginning of a process of humanitarianism, just as it took 500 or 600 years to build the concept of democracy in any practical way, which still wasn't perfect either. "I am puzzled that the linkage of humanitarianism with human rights, peace-keeping, peace-building, government policies, etc. is necessarily a terrible disaster", he said. "I'm not sure if humanitarians shunned all these things they would be very effective at all."

"My argument is not that human rights is a bad thing", Mr. Rieff said. He was in favour of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which saw itself as working within the status quo. He maintained that the larger part which the other three panelists made was "that we may be at the beginning of a long process in international institutions, and in a couple of hundred years, in some kind of world order based on genuine international values and international community, it may well be true. I'm not arguing that that's false. My argument is … in this moment … getting involved in norm selling, in human rights activism, in politics, seems to me a mistake", Mr. Rieff said. "I'm making a case that more NGOs should go the way of the ICRC and very precisely limit what they do, and see what they do, as deeply constrained."

When the debate was opened to the audience, Sadako Ogata, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said: "Humanitarian work should be judged more on what they did rather than what they talked about. You cannot be a humanitarian if you are far from the victims." In reference to Rieff's criticism of a UN-centred version of humanitarianism, she said that the UNHCR cannot purely be humanitarian because its mandate included protection and assistance to refugees. "This takes us a little bit away from the ICRC which worked in phases", Ms. Ogata said. "But the UNHCR could not do the same things for 10 or 20 years as the ICRC does." She had to approach the Pentagon and the Security Council in order to get out of the situation that the UN humanitarians were put in—and that was the struggle they would understand, she concluded.

The debate took place prior to the launching by the United Nations in late November of the Consolidated Appeals Process for nearly $3 billion, to help some 50 million people with humanitarian needs. The UN General Assembly created the tool of the Appeals Process a decade ago to plan a common humanitarian strategy and maximize resources, namely, food to the hungry, medical assistance to the sick and shelter to the displaced.

2003 Consolidated Appeals Requirements by Affected Country
(in US$ Millions)

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