Following the outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa in 2014, Gayle Smith, a senior US official at the National Security Council, called Ebola a “threat to all humanity” and challenged the notion that it is an “African disease”.Footnote 1 She was referring to the need for action based on the idea that Ebola is a shared threat to all humans, and not only to a particular group of human beings. One hundred years before, on Christmas Eve 1914, soldiers on opposite sides of the battlefield engaged in an act of shared humanity, in what has become known as the Christmas Truce. After fighting, maiming and killing each other, German and Allied soldiers exchanged greetings and gifts, collected and buried their dead, and sang Christmas hymns, including “Silent Night”.Footnote 2 The latter story exemplifies what Cornelio Sommaruga, the former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), has called an “island of humanity in the midst of war”.Footnote 3
Both examples evoke an ideal conception of humanity, rejecting difference and appealing to a common sense of our identities as human beings. In humanitarian work, humanity is a core and widely accepted principle. Jean Pictet, the architect of the modern-day Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (the Movement), referred to humanity as the essential principle “from which all other principles are derived”, signalling its foundational nature for the humanitarian endeavour. However, he did not define it beyond claiming its “special place because it is the expression of the profound motivation of the Red Cross”.Footnote 4 Nevertheless, in his commentary, Pictet describes the purpose of the Red Cross, as the expression of humanity, as being to “prevent and alleviate human suffering wherever it may be found. Its purpose is to protect life and health and to ensure respect for the human being.”Footnote 5 Moreover, he writes, humanity is not simply about preventing and alleviating suffering; the manner by which humanitarians provide assistance and protection is significant. In his words, “the way in which that help is given is of great importance. When nursing a patient or giving help, one must show some humanity.”Footnote 6
As a principle, humanity implies an inherent worth and dignity of the person, and by extension, the right to life. It is thereby tied to the equality of individuals and the integral nature of protecting civilian populations to humanitarian assistance. It is one of four principles informing the modern humanitarian response, on the battlefield and beyond. It is fundamentally normative. The modern, institutional and system-oriented response is built on the classic principle of humanity as well as that of impartiality, referring to the provision of assistance according to need (proportionality) and without discrimination, and the operational principles of independence (autonomy of action) and neutrality (not taking sides).Footnote 7
On the surface, humanity is the least controversial of the four classic principles of humanitarian action and holds primacy as a space of common ground among a diverse community of aid actors. Indeed, the desire to help and protect civilians suffering the malevolent effects of violence is what motivates the choice of many humanitarians to help and to put themselves in harm's way. According to one analyst, “What unites the various facets of humanitarianism is a broad commitment to alleviating the suffering and protecting the lives of civilians caught up in conflict or crisis.”Footnote 8
Paradoxically, the broad acceptance of this commitment to humanity means it is often lost as an operational or orienting principle. On the one hand, humanity is a philosophical and emotive concept rooted in compassion, empathy and sameness: we are all part of the same human race, and as a result, we are all deserving of respect, dignity and rights. The endowed and inherent qualities of our common humanity are eloquently spelled out in the Preambles to the United Nations (UN) Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.Footnote 9 This is the universality of humanity.
On the other hand, humanity's meaning and application are not without controversy, nor is its compassionate essence always entirely laudable.Footnote 10 Critics of humanitarianism have pointed to the inherent inequality of exchange, a dual world of givers and receivers where some are elevated in status and a world in which the role of power is ignored.Footnote 11 Others have noted the exclusivity of “humanity”, in which some are included and others are inadvertently or deliberately excluded from our notions of humanity. This is particularly true in armed conflict. For instance, a recent Al-Jazeera editorial regarding its commemorative story of the fifth anniversary of the Syria conflict illustrated the limits and exclusivity of humanity. The editorial revealed that although many people retweeted Al-Jazeera's assertion that the world did not care about Syria, few bothered to actually read the story.Footnote 12 Others have criticized European governments' responses to the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean Sea as being overly focused on security and border regulation as opposed to humanitarian concerns or human rights.Footnote 13
On the battlefields of Solferino, as eloquently captured in Henri Dunant's Memory of Solferino,Footnote 14 and in the first Geneva Convention of 1864, “humanity” – particularly in its legal sense – referred primarily and even exclusively to wounded soldiers, thus reflecting the reigning European prejudices of the day.Footnote 15 At a minimum, the visions of humanity that animated the imaginations of the founders of international humanitarian law (IHL) and early humanitarian campaigns likely reflected a different vision than that of today.Footnote 16 In war, belligerents appeal to an exclusive humanity and dehumanize the “other” in ways that enable – not delegitimize – violence.Footnote 17 It is precisely an exclusive humanity that makes violence possible, even palatable. As Hannah Arendt asserted several decades ago, a “highly organized and mechanized humanity” could, by majority decision, choose to “liquidate” part of humanity.Footnote 18 In the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Hutu militants referred to Tutsis as “cockroaches”, and in World War II Allied and Axis forces alike created caricatures of the other side that portrayed them as monkeys, monsters or malleable and weak individuals motivated by greed and power.Footnote 19 Such enemy images still characterize, and subsequently enable, the torture and degrading treatment at Guantanamo Bay and Abu GhraibFootnote 20 as well as the recent violence at Charlie Hebdo.Footnote 21 Therefore, humanity as a principle must also be defined legally and morally by what it is not: inhuman treatment, the denial of human rights or the degradation of the person, all of which imply the absence of respect and dignity.
As an operational principle, humanity has received far less attention. Its contributions are usually more abstract, with uncritical reference to its universality as a principle. Its compelling character and capacious meaning allow its use to justify military action in service of foreign policy or national security interestsFootnote 22 and motivated Martin Luther King Jr's eloquent appeal to an “inescapable network of mutuality” to dismantle segregation in the United States through non-violent resistance and civil disobedience.Footnote 23 Reference to humanity consequently encompasses a plethora of means, from military operations to non-violent actions, in search of a common end: the humanity implied by our essential sameness. Clearly, humanity elicits multiple and contradictory interpretations.
The purpose of this article is not to trace the history of humanitarianismFootnote 24 or the motivating power of humanity, with its mission civilisatrice and patronizing or belittling impulses, nor to comprehensively delineate the philosophical or legal debates surrounding the principle, its proponents and its critics. While naive and uncritical views of humanity are of limited use for humanitarians in the field, so too are abstract debates that ignore the operational implications of humanity. Instead, the article explores the interlocking, inherent tensions of the principle of humanity, rooted in its ideal vision and its imperfect manifestations. It articulates their operational implications, and argues that humanity as a principle must be concretized and operationalized in everyday actions. Regardless of whether an agency claims solidarity or neutrality, or operates from a faith-based or secular perspective, humanity, with its associated practices, can and must serve as an orienting principle for humanitarianism. While many of the practices outlined below are already considered good and ethical practice and are implemented in current humanitarian responses, they are rarely linked to or conceptualized as manifestations of the foundational principle of humanity. Shifting the principle from the abstract to the concrete and everyday makes humanity tangible and, in the process, opens space to promote systemic and principled reform through a more inclusive vision of the humanitarian endeavour.
In what follows, humanity is conceptualized as rooted in a person's inherent dignity and right to life, modified by a recognition of the social and therefore relational nature of human beings.Footnote 25 The first section briefly summarizes the legal foundations of the principle. Next, humanity's inherent tensions, related to the universal and particular, to equality and inequality, and to inclusivity and exclusion are explored. These inherent tensions imply three sets of practices that emerge from an interpretation of the principle of humanity as an operational guide for humanitarianism. The final section articulates the contributions of a concrete and operationalized humanity, both for practice and for prompting systemic reform.
Conceptualizing “humanity” in international law
Scholars of international law, including human rights law and IHL, agree that humanity is a central concept in international law and the Geneva ConventionsFootnote 26 in particular, but disagree as to its precise meaning, scope of applicability and normative value. Robin Coupland, an ICRC field surgeon and adviser, asserts that international law is ambiguous about the meaning of humanity, which has prevented it from assuming a more central, guiding role. He suggests that two distinct but related concepts coexist in international law. The first is “humanity-humankind”, which refers to the collective existence of human beings. The second, “humanity-sentiment”, captures the behaviours and dispositions that are congruent with the (moral) view of being humane. As he notes, the link between the two is not entirely clear because “collective human existence is not necessarily associated with humane behavior of individuals”.Footnote 27 Tracing legal ambiguity backwards in time, Coupland examines the foundational texts of the ICRC, which contain a concept of humanity more akin to “humanity-sentiment” than to “humanity-humankind”, but fail to differentiate between the two.Footnote 28
Humanity's opposite, inhumanity, is perhaps more instructive, since it is more clearly defined in international law, and it is possible to identify the absence of humanity-as-sentiment in acts of inhumanity.Footnote 29 Such acts include torture, degradation and ill-treatment. Coupland suggests humanity “arises from and signifies restraining the capacity for armed violence and limiting its effects on security and health”.Footnote 30 For example, international law related to arms control and disarmament promotes humanity by reducing the likelihood of war and otherwise constraining the use of armed force. Human rights law focuses on personal/individual security. IHL bridges the two, and promotes humanity by protecting personal security and health in situations of armed conflict.
Like Coupland, legal scholar Ruti Teitel traces the development of what she terms “humanity law” over time, suggesting the evolution of a new normative order. She argues that a shift has occurred in the way law is applied and even conceptualized, in favour of the protection of individuals and peoples. As a legal framework, humanity law encompasses IHL, human rights law and criminal justice law and emphasizes the “protection and preservation of persons and peoples”Footnote 31 in situations of violence. Humanity law has, over time, restricted State sovereignty and the use of force. This arises in part because many contexts are neither at war nor at peace in a traditional legal sense – thus, the law applies beyond situations of armed conflict and specifies a minimum order – and because State boundaries are no longer sacrosanct (e.g., a consequence of the effects of climate change that ignore borders and the prosecution of human rights violations in countries other than where the violations occurred). The end result is a legal regime that operates in favour of humanity rather than protecting the rights of States, and that restricts the excesses of State action.Footnote 32 Similarly, in articulating the unique value of the principle of humanity, Hugo Slim argues for the application and ownership of humanity beyond the humanitarian community, precisely because of its prophetic power to restrict the excesses of war.Footnote 33
Both Coupland and Teitel recognize a fundamental tension between the individual nature of rights and the collective and social nature of human societies. Teitel suggests that the “law of humanity affirms the role of the individual within a layered conception that also takes account of the collective character of contemporary violence”,Footnote 34 despite the conflictual nature of the individual and collective “faces” of humanity. Others have likewise interrogated this tension, in the form of the universal duties and the particular aspects of one's social identities, including citizenship. For example, Bhikhu Parekh writes:
Even as the citizen's legal and political obligations should not lightly override his familial, ethnic, religious and other duties, neither should they ignore the universal obligations of his humanity, including such negative and positive ones as the duties to respect other human beings, to acknowledge their claims to equal consideration, to take account of their interests when one's actions affect them, not to cause them harm, to relieve their suffering, and to help them flourish within the limits of one's capacities and subject to one's other obligations.Footnote 35
The agreements and disagreements within the law are instructive on several points in relation to the conceptualization of humanity and its application. First, in relation to the humanitarian response, the principle of humanity, as articulated in law, restricts the permissible actions of fighting forces and thereby the excesses of war. While not defining humanity in a positive sense, these restrictions define the absence of humanity in articulating what constitutes inhumane practice. Moreover, the law highlights a central tension between individual rights and the collective or social identities that moderate these rights. Finally, these legal discussions presage the inherent tensions, discussed below, between an inclusive and universal humanity and its exclusive and unequal application in reality. Under the law, humanity is universal and equal. Yet the interlocking tensions described above represent the gap between the legal, aspirational – not yet enacted – elements of humanity that motivate a compassionate, humanitarian response and the pragmatic yet imperfect reality of its implementation as a principle.
The inherent tensions of humanity
The philosophical debates about humanity revolve around the tension between the universal and the particular, with overlapping implications for who is included and who is excluded. They therefore relate to the equality and inequalities of humanity. The philosophical debates place in stark relief the deficits and imperfect implementation of a universal and equal conceptualization of the principle of humanity.
As an abstract yet emotive concept, humanity denotes the universality of the human being. We, as humans, are the same; we are one. As humans we are not simply reducible to our biology and basic needs. Our lives are lived in rich and affective detail; we possess individual and unique biographies.Footnote 36 Hugo Slim refers to this as the value of humanity. It is precisely the affective appeal to compassion and even love that motivates humanitarian acts. The humanitarian act in response to armed conflict and natural disaster restores humanity by providing assistance and protection, particularly for those living in extremis. This is the virtue of humanity, which encourages us to act humanely toward others.Footnote 37
Yet the universalist entreaty of humanity masks a central tension between the appeal to sameness, on the one hand, and particularism, on the other. To assume all humans are the same, and thus equal, simultaneously assumes no difference and essentializes people to their “bare” and biological lives.Footnote 38 Saving lives involves counting lives, which reduces individual human beings to a dichotomous and minimalist state of living or dead.Footnote 39 In practice, this often means that some lives are valued over others: those affected by natural disaster over those enmeshed in violent conflict,Footnote 40 refugees over internally displaced, or international over national aid workers.
A number of scholars of humanitarianism deconstruct this tension, with particular reference to refugees.Footnote 41 Humanity, according to Michel Agier, suggests a complete and essentializing identity, “with no room for inequality”.Footnote 42 This mass of humanity is also a world of nameless victims, devoid of religion, sex or political opinion.Footnote 43 He writes: “Inside the camps, the category of ‘refugee’ is itself divided into several distinct subcategories of ‘vulnerability,’ which end up creating a hierarchy of misery.”Footnote 44 Thus, for Agier humanity is a fictional identity that categorizes people generically as “universal victims”, and operationally as members of a specific, vulnerable group, such as unaccompanied children or female-headed households. In order to be recognized, people must submit to the absolute (bio-)power of humanitarian agencies, sharing information, recounting trauma and embodying or showing injuries. In this, humanitarians hold the power to narrate and shape the biographies of other people's lives. Humanitarians are therefore witnesses, while those they help are too often passive objects in the stories that engulf them.Footnote 45
Jennifer Hyndman, like Agier, points out the inherent tension between an essentialist identity and one based on difference. Focusing on UN humanism and the role of culture as shared humanity and culture as a basis of difference, she asks: “How, in the context of humanitarian assistance, can one practically avoid the consequences of constructing subjects as universal – a move which effectively subsumes differences of gender, ethnicity, and nationality – without essentializing identities and reifying these same categories?”Footnote 46 Countering this essentialism, she suggests, requires engaging with the particular cultures, politics and histories of the displaced. Didier Fassin similarly highlights the tension between humanity's universalism and its particularism, where its aspirations are universal yet its enactment is rooted in inequality and difference, which are invariably particular.Footnote 47 Others interrogate the universal and particular aspects of humanity with reference to “enlarging the circle of moral inclusion”.Footnote 48
A related critique concerns humanity and charity, which highlights the inequalities and hierarchies between the beneficiaries/recipients and the providers of humanitarian assistance. In fact, humanity enacted as charity is often predicated on hierarchy, where those of higher status and means give of their excess to those with less, and thereby incur obligations on the part of the latter to the former.Footnote 49 Jeffrey Stout refers to charity as the “gift that keeps on taking”.Footnote 50 These exchanges are inherently unequal and even disempowering.
Other critiques focus on the visual portrayal of the “beneficiaries” of assistance in advertising and advocacy campaigns, suggesting that many of the images implicitly remove the victim's humanity.Footnote 51 Even the terminology of beneficiaries and recipients can be disempowering. The narrative of the “beneficiary” highlights the unequal balance of power and resources in charitable exchange and removes any possibility of agency on the part of the recipient of assistance. This inequality also manifests in the marginalization of local expertise and resources in humanitarian response, where outsider and technical knowledge is elevated above the contextualized and lived expertise of those affected by natural disaster or violence.Footnote 52
These hierarchies characterize the relationships between aid workers/agencies and beneficiaries, as well as aid workers as a category. In deconstructing humanitarianism, Fassin highlights the “hierarchies of humanity”Footnote 53 that emerge in humanitarian response – hierarchies that value soldiers' lives over those of civilians, the “freely sacrificed lives of aid workers”Footnote 54 set against the lives of the populations engulfed in the violence, and the lives of expatriate over national staff members. Thus, the hierarchies exist both in relation to external actors (e.g., soldiers or the civilian populations that humanitarian agencies assist) and within aid agencies. These particular and unequal hierarchies are at odds with the universal character of humanity.
As a category of actors, aid workers (referring to the staff of humanitarian as well as multi-mandate development organizations) are exceptionalized, a category that serves to mark them as separate and special under the law and in the spotlight of media attention. Under international law, aid workers, and UN and associated personnel in particular, receive special protections that accrue because of their status as aid workers.Footnote 55 This legal protection codifies the hierarchy between aid workers and civilians more generally, even though they are also civilians, and already deserving of the more extensive protections outlined for civilians under international law, including IHL.Footnote 56
This unequal treatment of aid workers and civilians likewise characterizes media stories. The deaths of civilians, for instance, usually appear as “dozens” or “hundreds” or, in the extreme cases, “thousands” of unidentifiable and nameless civilians who are killed in war, armed conflict or natural disaster. For example, recent headlines read “Europe Hesitates as Thousands Die Annually on Mediterranean”,Footnote 57 “Dozens Die in New Tremor” in Nepal,Footnote 58 and “More than 10,000 Afghan Civilians Died or Were Injured in 2014”.Footnote 59 Their deaths are often condemned, with calls to track down or punish the perpetrators. At other times, their deaths are relegated to obscurity, not even appearing in mainstream news sources. The deaths of aid workers likewise appear in news stories with depressing frequency. In contrast, however, their deaths are usually individual, with names, faces, biographies, accolades about their selfless work and descriptions of the grief of the families, friends and colleagues they leave behind.Footnote 60
It is not that aid workers are not deserving of these tributes – they usually are – but their powerful and individual stories exist in marked contrast to those of the affected civilians they help, who comprise a nameless and faceless humanity. Bombarding the consumer of news with the names and stories of every individual is not only impossible but is bound to backfire as people become numb to suffering. Yet it is precisely the individuality and specificity of the human stories that evoke empathy and sadness and that give power to memorials such as the Vietnam Memorial (United States), Yad Vashem (Israel) and Tuol Sleng (Cambodia), all of which name individual victims. While human rights organizations employ specific stories to evoke an emotional reaction – whether revulsion for the act or for the perpetrator – and elicit action, humanitarians often rely upon sheer numbers and their nameless/faceless corollary to prompt a similar reaction.Footnote 61 The unequal treatment allotted to aid workers and civilians is yet another example of the particularism that characterizes the imperfect ideal of universal humanity.
Within aid agencies, the hierarchy manifests in terms of the treatment, resources, salary and benefits that accompany the status of international/expatriate and national or local staff. The salaries and benefits of international aid workers, including base pay, paid leave, health and other insurance, training opportunities and even evacuation in the case of violence, usually far surpass those offered to national staff. Even multiple subcategories exist within the category of “national staff”. Regional (those from neighbouring countries) and local staff (from the village or area in which they work) are treated as national staff, even though they are more or less familiar with the cultural context in which they operate and face different risks.Footnote 62 Only occasionally do such hierarchies penetrate the public discourse. For example, given the significant burden of risk for those directly involved in caring for Ebola victims, international agencies faced the dilemma of recruiting foreign health workers to assist with the Ebola crisis response. While some victims with foreign passports were evacuated and received care in their home countries, the costs involved in evacuating individuals are significant. Instead, US officials decided to build a state-of-the-art medical facility in Monrovia to treat Ebola health workers, both from abroad and from Liberia.Footnote 63 While still indicative of an inequality between Ebola victims as civilians and as health workers, this hierarchy also addresses the higher risk that health workers face in the Ebola response.
Clearly, particularities, exclusivities and inequalities characterize the principle of humanity, as expressed in humanitarian response. These systemic tendencies are problematic, and the tensions they elicit will continue to characterize humanitarian response. Acknowledging them is crucial, even as their manifestations are not set in stone. Unpacking the gestures of humanitarianism suggests the need to first identify, then to gradually chip away, and ideally to dismantle the hierarchies and exclusions that characterize the humanitarian endeavour. Instead, we must look to the sets of transformative practices and everyday actions that embody humanity and challenge the essentialism and exclusions of institutionalized humanitarianism. It is toward these everyday gestures and practices that operationalize the principle of humanity, and thereby enlarge the circle of moral inclusion, that the article now turns.
Operationalizing humanity
The inherent tensions of the principle of humanity and the critiques that accompany them raise fundamental questions for humanitarians to ponder, and ponder them they must. The critiques, however, often fail to take account of the ways in which humanity is, could and should be enacted in everyday actions and relationships, and how these point to the possibility of a more inclusive, effective and diverse humanitarian response. Thus, the tensions help to illuminate ways that humanity could be and already is better operationalized.
Three transformative practices and everyday actions hold the promise of moderating the inherent tensions of humanity: affirming local context and capacity; adopting vertical and horizontal accountability; and valuing proximity and presence. These, and the relationships they foster, occur at both the individual and organizational levels and are enacted in the mundane yet crucial daily interactions that take place between colleagues, partners and affected communities. These practices represent what is commonly recognized in existing codes of conduct as good practice and ethical conduct, even if not consistently applied. Yet they are not simply this; they are also manifestations of the principle of humanity. In breaking apart humanity into its daily and component parts, it acquires new meaning and operational implications. Making humanity less abstract and grounding it in everyday action and transformative practices can help to lodge the principle at the forefront of the humanitarian consciousness. Linking these actions to the principle of humanity not only makes the principle more tangible but also grounds efforts to reform the system in the principles. Taken seriously, they imply a profound reorientation of the ways in which humanitarianism is enacted.
Affirming local context and capacity
A consistent critique of the humanitarian response, identified above, is that it ignores or undermines local actors. Humanitarians are driven by the urgency of need before them, yet rushing in with outside resources and expertise displaces the local. When the international system moves in, it creates a wave of international resources and attention that overwhelms existing actors and responses that both predate and outlast international attention and action. Related critiques highlight a dearth of listening and a tendency to privilege immediate action over reflection or deliberation. These critiques deftly identify the imperfect and hierarchical implementation of humanity as manifested in an unequal valuing of the knowledge, actions and expertise of those involved in giving and receiving assistance. These are manifestations of a conceptualization of humanity that elevates the universal over the particular.
Moreover, a conceptualization that relies solely upon the universality of humanity leaves no room for difference or for the role of culture. Among other things, the Ebola crisis and accompanying response have highlighted the necessity of cultural awareness and engaging the community in an emergency, not only in addressing public health crises but arguably for the more traditional humanitarian responses as well. For example, anthropological analyses of funerals and marriage rituals shed light on how and why Ebola spread between communities.Footnote 64 As one EVD responder passionately argued:
But in a public health emergency of this scale and danger, patient communication and counseling can be brushed aside under the pretext of urgency. Ebola patients can be considered mere disease-carriers rather than complicated, emotional human beings – and while at the highest levels reducing transmission is the top priority, neglecting the humane aspects of care can gravely undermine the public health response. … But while cultural differences could contribute to the tension, it may also be that more universally human processes are going unacknowledged. In what culture would it be acceptable or productive to walk into a village and so brusquely identify and inform people that they have only days to live?Footnote 65
In the passage, the author makes a case for seeing individual victims as “complicated, emotional human beings”, for attention to the ways in which humanitarians deliver care, and for the importance of seriously considering mental health and the socio-cultural aspects of a response. All can be linked to a conceptualization of humanity that is both individual and rooted in social identity, and that affirms the particular, local context.
The humanitarian community is awakening to the role of culture and society as key determinants of the effectiveness of a humanitarian response. Aid programmes that are designed to “go slow to move fast” and that build from local and existing expertise and resources do exist.Footnote 66 The 2014 World Disasters Report Footnote 67 and the 2015 World Development Report Footnote 68 are devoted to the role of culture and the importance of human behaviour and social norms in emergencies, disaster response and development. Cultural norms and behaviours, for instance, influenced both the spread of Ebola and arguably its mitigation. Anthropologists and other social scientists commented on various aspects of the response, from the histories of conflict and distrust of government to the cultural practices surrounding burials, and how these influenced the spread of the disease.Footnote 69 Indeed, the international response to the Ebola crisis was the first in which the UN employed an anthropologist as part of the mission.Footnote 70 After the chaos of the first months, agencies adapted their programming to better reflect the cultural context. These acts represent moves forward in better adapting emergency programming to context. It remains to be seen whether and how the valuing of culture will translate into the future. Operationalizing humanity, however, calls for a humanitarian response that affirms the particular – local actors, responses and cultural context – and not simply an abstract universal. As such, it suggests the need for greater humility on the part of international actors involved in humanitarian response, a humility that is geared toward the idea of contribution to the size, scope or effectiveness of a response as opposed to attributing these factors solely or primarily to individual agencies or non-local actors.
Adopting horizontal and vertical accountability
The concept of accountability in humanitarian response has received significant attention in the practice-focused and scholarly literatures.Footnote 71 The call to operationalize humanity and the inherent tensions discussed above together suggest at least two important sets of practices related to accountability. First, the tensions highlight the hierarchies and inequalities that are baked into the current humanitarian system, particularly with respect to the treatment (e.g., pay scales) and classification of staff that provide access to benefits or resources (e.g., as “relocateable” in cases of violence breaking out and forcing agencies to withdraw staff). Equality does not imply sameness. While some inequalities are inevitable, the operationalization of humanity demands attention to these inequalities. This type of accountability is horizontal, referring to the need for accountability within aid agencies and all of their constituent staff members. For example, security management has too often focused on international as opposed to national staff.Footnote 72 Operationalizing humanity requires analysis of the differential risk that all staff face and accounting for this in security management plans, such as through better access to training and other resources, and through adaptive and contextualized security measures. It suggests the need to provide for better mental health support for all staff. The above conceptualization of the principle of humanity suggests that it is impossible, and even inappropriate, to strive for or guarantee the same treatment for all staff. Yet it does require an assessment of the ways that aid agency policies and procedures support an exclusivist interpretation of humanity. It encourages agencies to take steps to rectify these exclusions and inequalities.
A second set of practices is linked to the affirmation of local context and capacity and suggests the need for vertical accountability, not only “upward” to donors but also “downward” to those affected by violent conflict, disasters or other crises. The call for greater accountability to the recipients of assistance, particularly refugees and displaced persons, is not new.Footnote 73 An evolution in this concept, linked to the technological advances of our world, is to conceive of this accountability in terms of the need to provide information to and to hear from affected communities and to use this information to adapt programming to better reflect context. Drawing upon the 2005 World Disasters Report, a 2013 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report identified information as a basic need in emergency response, linking it to the concept of human rights:
Humanitarian organizations have an operational and moral obligation to incorporate information into their work. It is demanded by the communities and individuals that humanitarian organizations serve. The freedom to seek, receive and impart information is part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.Footnote 74
Seeking out the perspectives of affected community members, carefully listening to them and, perhaps most critically, responding through programme adaptation are therefore requisite components of operationalizing the principle of humanity.
Valuing presence and proximity
A final practice that emerges from the discussion of the inherent tensions relates to the dangers of essentializing identities. Critics have commented on the monolithic and impersonal humanitarian system. Michel Agier, for example, asserts that the function of humanitarian organizations, “while technically distinct, tends to merge in everyday life into the manifestation of a single international, and totally sovereign, force”.Footnote 75 He later writes that the “humanitarian apparatus [is] a contemporary system of government and power, where control and assistance are entangled”.Footnote 76 Such a system essentializes those whom it purports to assist. Yet this analysis ignores the ways by which everyday practices reinforce and can challenge this totality, and assumes that the recipients of assistance are not necessarily capable of distinguishing between organizations within a system of control and assistance. This is both fundamentally true and incorrect, since community members can and do distinguish between organizations and their technical expertise.Footnote 77 Individual, everyday acts of compassion and respect do matter, and can pierce the monolithic identity of a “humanitarian government”. In the words of Vincent Cochetel, an aid worker who was kidnapped in Chechnya in 1998 and held captive for 317 days:
I think helping people in danger is responsible. In that war [Chechnya], that nobody seriously wanted to stop – and we have many of these today – bringing some assistance to people in need or a bit of protection was not just an act of humanity, it was making a real difference for the people.Footnote 78
Years later, a South Sudanese community remembered and celebrated a specific aid worker who assisted and stayed with them – who accompanied and literally walked with them – through the years of violence.Footnote 79
Countering essentialist identities requires seeing people as individuals who defy the confines of their labels and as needing more than the basic necessities. The value of humanity, then, cannot be restricted to simply providing protection or things, such as food, clean water, seeds or tools. It must also encompass the value of remaining present and proximate to those in need. Humanitarian assistance, as most aid workers know, is not only about providing assistance or protection. It is about how this assistance and protection are provided, and the profound value of knowing that others are paying attention. Some organizations, such as Médécins Sans Frontières, refer to witnessing, while others call this solidarity,Footnote 80 which implies a greater degree of affinity toward a particular group.Footnote 81 The value of presence, therefore, is part of the power of the humanitarian response. This presence, however, points to the intangible aspects of the humanitarian response. Presence denotes “being present” as well as accompanying and “walking beside” those affected by disaster, war or armed conflict over the long haul.
The implications of such a conceptualization are not trivial. In particular, it questions the turn toward “remote management” in insecure contexts, where international staff leave and national staff remain to carry out programming. Proximity and presence require outsiders, and as a consequence, they imply a significant degree of risk. Witnessing by those who are in some way embedded within the context is important, yet it is the presence of a proximate outsider that provides its deterrent effect. Proximity and presence also challenge the use of fortified measures as elements of a security or risk management approach, which further separate aid workers from the people they assist. The benefits and drawbacks of remote management are contested,Footnote 82 as is the value of humanitarian “bunkers” that more closely resemble fortified military compounds than aid agency offices or guesthouses.Footnote 83 These measures complicate any effort to be truly present in the midst of violence. A humanity-based humanitarianism requires, at minimum, a concerted evaluation of the intangible costs of these approaches, particularly in the most dangerous places.Footnote 84
Humanity as embodying the relational nature of humanitarianism
Unpacking humanity and the gestures of humanitarianism uncovers a series of contradictions and tensions. These tensions, however, can serve as platforms from which to analyze the shortcomings of humanitarian acts and identify pathways for reform. Humanitarianism is enacted within a complex set of interdependent relationships: between aid workers of various nationalities, between the givers and receivers of assistance, between local and national officials and aid workers, between donors and staff. Operationalizing humanity calls attention to these relationships and encourages a corresponding ethic that challenges the hierarchies and inequalities which exist within aid organizations and within the system itself, such as between the categories of civilians and aid workers as exceptions. Operationalizing humanity moves away from an exclusive and particular vision of the principle and suggests a relational, intersubjective interpretation of humanity as a way of further extending the boundaries of inclusion and a pathway to reforming the humanitarian system. Building from and on local context and capacity, enlarging accountability to include its horizontal and vertical dimensions, and affirming the value and implications of proximity and presence all encourage a different humanitarian system. Their value as responses to the inherent tensions of the principle is threefold: they explicitly link existing good and ethical practice to a foundational principle; they identify ways in which it is possible to moderate between the inherent tensions of humanity; and they recognize the possibility of operationalizing humanity in ordinary, everyday actions, thereby contextualizing the abstractions of humanity as a lofty and unattainable principle. Vertical and horizontal accountability link the internal and external practices of aid agencies. Presence and proximity embody the virtue and universality of humanity and elevate the role of the outsider. Affirming local context and capacity acknowledges the central place for the particular and the affected insider.
Operationalizing humanity will force aid agencies to recognize and grapple with the tension and inequalities that do exist and with the ways by which the everyday practices of aid define its meaning. It thereby holds the enterprise as a whole to a higher standard and helps to move it toward a vision that affirms the connectedness and equality inscribed in humanity as a guiding principle, both internally within organizations and externally in their relations with others suffering, living and working in the areas in which they operate. Additionally, it offers the possibility of a humanitarianism more consistent with the principles that it espouses.
In conclusion, the principle of humanity not only offers a prophetic call against the excesses of war, as Slim suggests,Footnote 85 or as a restraint on violence, as Coupland observes,Footnote 86 but also radically undermines the dominant dynamic of violence, which relies upon dehumanization and the denial of the humanity of the “other” to sustain it. To return to the words of former ICRC President Cornelio Sommaruga,
If humanitarian action can offer a respite in the fighting and preserve an island of humanity in the midst of conflict, then it can assume a positive and even politically useful role in the pursuit of reconciliation and reconstruction and in the development of new national and regional structures and ways of thinking.Footnote 87
Failing to recognize this fact underestimates the profound potential of the principle of humanity.
The imperfect implementation of the principle of humanity will likely remain, yet it does not excuse the humanitarian community from taking steps to rectify its exclusiveness and particularities. Cochetel concludes his talk by passionately and movingly explaining his continued motivation for humanitarian work, after his kidnapping in Chechnya: “We try to do whatever we can to provide some assistance, some protection, some comfort. We have to, we can't do otherwise. It is what makes us feel, I don't know, simply human.”Footnote 88 To him, not trying is worse than failing. He recounted his reply to colleagues and others who asked him why he continued as an aid worker: “My answer was very simple. If I had quit, that would have meant that my kidnappers had won. They would have taken my soul, my humanity.”Footnote 89 Indeed, the principle of humanity, along with its inherent tensions, offers a framing from which to challenge the existing system and work toward reforming the institutionalized response. None of the transformative practices and everyday actions articulated above is new or original. Together, however, they add up to a more inclusive, equal and universal humanity and a more responsive humanitarianism.
