Abstract
People often need help desperately, and sometimes that help is not or cannot be provided from within their own countries. At times international assistance is provided in spectacular ways. On April 5, 1991 the Security Council of the United Nations passed a resolution condemning Iraq’s repression of the Kurds and calling for humanitarian assistance. On the same day the U.S. president ordered the U.S. military to begin airdropping humanitarian supplies to Kurds camping along the Iraq-Turkey border. In December 1992 the United States Marines, acting under United Nations cover, moved into Somalia to rescue a faltering humanitarian assistance program. The airdrop of emergency food supplies to remnants of what had been Yugoslavia was started in March 1993. The problems of providing humanitarian assistance in the midst of armed conflict have been clearly documented in connection with the civil war in the Sudan.1 Even in non-conflict situations, assistance becomes the victim of all kinds of inefficiencies and political pressures.2 Often there is no attempt to assist. What principles should guide the provision of humanitarian assistance?
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Notes and References
Francis M. Deng and Larry Minear, The Challenges of Famine Relief: Emergency Operations in the Sudan (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1992);
Thomas G. Weiss and Larry Minear, eds., Humanitarianism Across Borders: Sustaining Civilians in Times of War (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1993).
Frances Moore Lappé, Joseph Collins, and David Kinley, Aid as Obstacle: Twenty Questions About Our Foreign Aid and the Hungry (San Francisco: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1980);
Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues, Famine: A Man-Made Disaster? (New York: Vintage, 1985);
Graham Hancock, Lords of Poverty: The Free-Wheeling Lifestyles, Power, Prestige and Corruption of the Multi-Million Dollar Aid Business (London: Macmillan, 1989).
To convey the idea that we are concerned with compassionate assistance regardless of whether it is a conflict situation, we could devise an encompassing term such as humane assistance. Jean Pictet says that ‘while humanitarian law is only applicable in cases of armed conflict, human rights are operative above all in times of peace … the two systems are related but distinct … If we were to bring them together under one all-embracing title, we might think of the term ‘humane law’, which would be defined as follows: humane law consists of all international legal provisions ensuring respect for and full development of the human being.’ United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, International Dimensions of Humanitarian Law (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 1988), p. xxi.
Mary Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York: Free Press, 1991), pp. 76–108.
On the developing doctrine of humanitarian intervention, see Fernando R. Tesón. Humanitarian Intervention: An Inquiry into Law and Morality. (Dobbs Ferry, New York: Transnational Publishers, 1988);
Richard B. Lillich, International Human Rights: Problems of Law, Policy and Practice, Second Edition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991), pp. 372–441;
David J. Schefcr; Richard N. Gardner; and Gerald B. Helman, Post-Gulf War Challenges to the UN Collective Security System: Three Views on the Issue of Humanitarian Intervention (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1992);
Yves Beigbeder, The Role and Status of International Humanitarian Volunteers and Organizations: The Right and Duty to Humanitarian Assistance (Dordrecht, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1991), pp. 353–84. There also have been numerous articles in the law journals.
Varindra Tarzie Vittachi, Between the Guns: Children as a Zone of Peace (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1993).
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R. J. Rummel, Demoeide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 1992).
Jan Eliasson, ‘A Message from the Under Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs,’ UNDRO News (March-April 1992), pp. 2–4. Also see Jan Eliasson, ‘The World Response to Humanitarian Emergencies,’ in Kevin M. Cahill, ed., A Framework for Survival: Health, Human Rights, and Humanitarian Assistance in Conflicts and Disasters (New York: Council on Foreign Relations/Basic Books, 1993), pp. 308–18.
Peter Macalister-Smith, International Humanitarian Assistance: Disaster Relief Actions in International Law and Organization (Dordrecht, Holland: Martinus Nijhoff, 1985), p. x.
Ruben Banerjee, ‘Children on Sale for Rs 20,’ India Today, February 15, 1993, pp. 80–1.
United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report1992 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 44–5.
James P. Grant, The State of the World’s Children1994 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 21
David H. Lumsdaine, Moral Vision in International Politics: The Foreign Aid Regime, 1949–1989 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 97.
William Ryan, Blaming the Victim, Revised, updated edition (New York: Vintage Books, 1976).
Peter Macalister-Smith, ‘Protection of the Civilian Population and the Prohibition of Starvation as a Method of Warfare,’ International Review of the Red Cross, No. 284 (September-October 1991), pp. 440–59.
Brian Urquhart and Erskine Childers, ‘strengthening International Responses to Humanitarian Emergencies,’ in Towards a More Effective United Nations, special issue of Development Dialogue (Uppsala, Sweden: Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, 1991), pp. 41–85, at pp. 79–80
This argument should be placed in the context of the ongoing discussion of whether international assistance of different kinds should be provided conditionally to advance specific policies relating to human rights, economic ideologies, nutrition, or other considerations. See, for example, Mark W. Charlton, The Making of Canadian Food Aid Policy (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992);
Edward Clay and Olav Stokke, eds. Food Aid Reconsidered: Assessing the Impact on Third World Countries (London: Frank Cass, 1991);
Francis M. Deng and Larry Minear, The Challenges of Famine Relief: Emergency Operations in the Sudan (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1992);
Rachel Garst and Tom Barry, Feeding the Crisis: U.S. Food Aid and Farm Policy in Central America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990);
Tony Jackson, Against the Grain: The Dilemma of Project Food Aid (Oxford: OXFAM, 1982);
Larry Minear, Humanitarianism Under Siege: A Critical Review of Operation Lifeline Sudan (Trenton, New Jersey: Red Sea Press/Bread for the World, 1991);
Lars Adam Rehof and Claus Gulmann, Human Rights and Domestic Law and Development Assistance Policies of the Nordic Countries (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1989);
Paul B. Thompson, The Ethics of Aid and Trade: U.S. Food Policy, Foreign Competition, and the Social Contract (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
Katarina Tomaševski, Development Aid and Human Rights (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989);
Steven L. Varnis, Reluctant Aid or Aiding the Reluctant? U.S. Food Aid Policy and Ethiopian Famine Relief (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 1990).
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, World Food Security Compact (Rome: FAO, 1986).
It is curious that the role of international nongovernmental organizations in global civil society has been studied while the role of international governmental organizations has been ignored. See Paul Ghils, ‘International Civil Society: International Non-governmental Organizations in the International System,’ International Social Science Journal, Vol. 44, No. 33 (August 1992), pp. 417–31.
Garrett Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons,’ Science, CLXII (December 13, 1968), pp. 1243–8.
Martin Shaw, ‘Global Society and Global Responsibility: The Theoretical, Historical and Political Limits of “International Society”,’ Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1992), pp. 421–34. at p. 431.
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Kent, G. (1995). International Children’s Rights. In: Children in the International Political Economy. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375536_10
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