Abstract
The humanitarian landscape has changed considerably during the last two decades. On the one hand, large population displacements as a result of protracted conflict seem to be on a downward trend. On the other, the number of people affected by natural disasters—particularly sudden onset ones related to meteorological hazards—has grown exponentially. With this backdrop, the use of international military and civil defense assets in humanitarian operations has grown significantly. In large-scale sudden onset natural disasters, responding to the needs of affected populations often requires logistical capacity that only military actors, often international military actors, possess. In conflict-related crises, the drive toward deeper integration among the political, security, and humanitarian agendas had a significant impact on the role of the military, expanding they remit more broadly into the delivery of development and humanitarian assistance. This has generated impassioned debate within the humanitarian community, whose principal positions have been that the military are a poor fit for such work, and that co-opting assistance as a tool to achieve local, national, and even international security is not effective. Humanitarians have also argued that blurring the distinction between humanitarian and military, and consequently, other political objectives, not only puts humanitarian staff at risk but, by undermining the key principles of impartiality and neutrality, also endangers the humanitarian enterprise as a whole. The use of military and civil defense assets in emergency situations does not benefit from an internationally recognized binding legal framework. All that is available are two sets of non-binding guidelines developed with the participation of a large number of stakeholders, crucially involving member States, and another two reference documents developed by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) and therefore relevant primarily for the humanitarian community.
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Notes
- 1.
http://www.emdat.be/natural-disasters-trends, accessed 14 February 2012.
- 2.
Sir John Holmes in an interview to AFP. See http://www.earthlab.com/articles/climatechangewarnsun.aspx
- 3.
Pachauri and Reisinger 2007.
- 4.
Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC); World Health Organization (WHO). Protecting the health of vulnerable people from the humanitarian consequences of climate change and climate-related disasters 2009.
- 5.
Articles 55, 56, 59 and 60 of GC IV.
- 6.
Bessler and Seki 2006, 4–10.
- 7.
The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) is the top policy-making body of the humanitarian community, involving the key UN and non-UN humanitarian partners. The IASC was established in June 1992 following United Nations General Assembly Resolution 46/182 on the strengthening of humanitarian assistance. General Assembly Resolution 48/57 affirmed its role as the primary mechanism for inter-agency co-ordination of humanitarian assistance.
- 8.
The following States and Organizations were involved in this effort: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, Norway, Russian Federation, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, United States of America, AFDRU, Brown University's Watson Institute, DHA, European Union/ECHO, ICDO, ICRC, IFRC, INSARAG, NATO, Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response, UNHCR, UN Legal Liaison Office, University of Naples, University of Ruhr, WHO, and Western European Union. Over 180 delegates from 45 States and 25 organizations attended the conference. .
- 9.
This paragraph also draws an important distinction between military and civil defense assents, on the one hand, and foreign civil protection assets on the other. It is interesting to note that several European countries (notably including Italy) insisted on this distinction and strongly advocated for the use of civil protection mechanisms rather than military assets in disaster response. Nonetheless, among these countries France has deployed military assets in response to major natural disasters, including the 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran; the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami; and the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. Belgium and Germany also reported sending military assets in response to only a few, large-scale natural disasters.
- 10.
The MCDA Guidelines were developed with the collaboration of a broad representation of the international humanitarian community, through a Drafting Committee consisting of representatives of Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Sudan, Switzerland, UK, USA, DPKO, SCHR, UNHCR, UNICEF and WFP, as well as a Review Committee consisting of representatives of Australia, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Ghana, Greece, India, Japan, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russian Federation, Sweden, Turkey, Yugoslavia, COE, ECHO, EC, EUMS, ICDO, ICRC, ICVA, INTERACTION, IOM, NATO, OCHA, THW and WHO.
- 11.
A complex emergency is defined by the IASC as: “a humanitarian crisis in a country, region, or society where there is total or considerable breakdown of authority resulting from internal or external conflict and which requires an international response that goes beyond the mandate or capacity of any single agency and/or the ongoing United Nations country program.”.
- 12.
Gourlay 2000.
- 13.
For an in-depth analysis of Integrated Missions from a humanitarian perspective see: Weir 2006.
- 14.
Jakobsen 2005, 37.
- 15.
Jakobsen footnote 14 above.
- 16.
SIPRI 2008.
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Calvi Parisetti, P. (2012). The Use of Civil and Military Defense Assets in Emergency Situations. In: de Guttry, A., Gestri, M., Venturini, G. (eds) International Disaster Response Law. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague, The Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-6704-882-8_24
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