To do the right thing or to do the thing right? Humanitarianism and ethics - Common Understanding and Vision

Humanitarian assistance has shot from relative obscurity to international prominence. Until a few years ago, world news tended to be dominated by stories about the political and military manoeuvrings of nation-states and occasionally the United Nations. Now the nightly television news programmes and daily newspapers report much more often on the ebb and flow of global economic markets, the findings of investigative journalists and the work of aid and relief agencies -- all of which essentially go on parallel to the actions of nation-states and often completely separate from them.

Under these circumstances, humanitarian agencies, like the manufacturers of the 1960s who first encountered the consumer movement, can no longer afford to do business as they always have without reflecting much more carefully about the correctness of what they are doing and the quality of what they achieve.

What, then, is the endeavour in which humanitarian agencies are engaged? Let me begin by defining what humanitarianism is not. "Humanitarian" is not a synonym for "caring"; it does not mean "alleviating poverty"; it is not equivalent to "providing relief'. To be sure, it may encompass elements of all of these. But the basic activity in which humanitarian agencies are engaged may be traced back to a 19th-century agreement between a Swiss pacifist and a French statesman -- Henri Dunant and Napoleon M.

In the last week of June 1859, Dunant convinced Napoleon, the victor in the battle of Solferino, of the moral correctness of rendering assistance to the wounded where they lay on the battlefield, regardless of their nationality. Napoleon turned the good will of Dunant into an issue of rights and justice by allowing assistance to be delivered under the protection of an official proclamation. From this stemmed the Hague and Geneva Conventions and the legal framework for the League of Nations and later the United Nations, with all its resolutions and declarations on humanitarian issues.

As it has developed in Western Europe and North America over the past century, humanitarianism has come to mean carrying out actions which are -- and are perceived to be -- impartial, neutral and, by extension, independent of political, religious or other extraneous bias. This was the essence of the trade-off between Dunant and Napoleon.

Relief aid in itself is not necessarily. Many armies relieve cities under siege, providing food, water and medical care in emergency situations. But this is not an humanitarian action. Many development agencies seek to address the root causes of poverty, tackling in an impartial fashion issues of land tenure, access to education, freedom of speech and of organization. But these are not in themselves humanitarian actions.

Humanitarian organizations, by adhering to the principles of impartiality, neutrality and independence, have in fact straitjacketed themselves. They are limited to addressing only the effects of crisis, not its causes, and they are limited to working with a specific package of tools, namely, those which conform to the principles of impartiality and neutrality. Of course, these straitjackets are there not only as limitations but also as safeguards: to protect the rights of individuals caught up in crisis, regardless of their past and their affiliations, and to preserve the ability of the agency to continue to deliver assistance and protection in the future.

That said, humanitarian aid, like the nation-state and the laws of war, is a device designed to suit a particular time. Its form and applicability-are not sacrosanct. And perhaps the question to be posed today is whether humanitarian aid is, in fact the most "humane" way to address contemporary crises.

The roots of caring

The Solferino trade-off described above has many ramifications for how humanitarian agencies act today.

Ethics, morality and impulse. Many agencies and their staff do what they do because they care. When they see suffering, their reaction is "there but for the grace of God go 1"; and with that reaction comes the impulse to act. The moral basis of such action is clear to the actors. It can be found not only in the theology of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but also in Islam, Buddhism and in many of the world's other religious and philosophical traditions.(2)

How that moral impulse is then developed into ethical principles can take us down two very different lines.(3)

1. Justice, rights and imperatives. One strand of ethical tradition holds that morality resides in the act. In certain situations, there is a duty, an imperative to act. In the language of the Red Cross, that duty is "to alleviate suffering regardless of race, creed, political persuasion". In other words, we are driven by the rightness of the act, not its consequences. This is the tradition which underlies the Geneva Conventions, and from which present-day humanitarian action is derived. According to this tradition, humanitarian action is fundamentally an issue of justice. There are nonnegotiable rights involved. By the same token, humanitarian agencies give up the right to be concerned with the cause of suffering or the consequences of its alleviation in order to be able to continue to alleviate suffering here and elsewhere in the future.