Humanitarian Aid and the Failure of Peacekeeping

Abstract

When a war creates hundreds of thousands of victims among the civilian population, a common response of the international community is to furnish humanitarian aid to those affected. When large numbers of refugees or internally displaced people are created, such aid can mean the difference between life and death for them. The goal of the international effort is to ensure they have the most basic human needs met—security, water, food, shelter, medical care, and sanitation—until they can return to their homes. Humanitarian assistance is considered to be unquestionably beneficial by those who are in the business of providing it because it is designed to alleviate the suffering of noncombatants. Many consider humanitarian action to be impartial, neutral, and independent from political, religious, or any other extraneous bias. Humanitarian assistance does not always have positive effects however. This is particularly true when it comes to the impact on peacekeeping. How peacekeeping affects humanitarian aid, and vice versa, depends on which of the three types of peacekeeping and conflict are being considered—classical peacekeeping in response to an interstate war, multidimensional peacekeeping after a civil war or a protection/stabilization mission in response to violent extremism.