Humanitarian contradictions

I have spent much of my academic career thinking through the limits and effects of humanitarian aid, especially its uses and abuses by governments and regimes of power. At the same time, I have been involved, professionally and as a volunteer, in several initiatives and actions that would fall under the “humanitarian” rubric. Historically, the critique of humanitarianism has been intellectually productive and has helped expose forms of control, violence, and injustice perpetrated in the name of compassion. This includes a range of tragic experiences, from humanitarian wars to the humanitarian containment of migrants. In the past decade, scholars have been more preoccupied with illustrating how the critique of humanitarianism does not (always or fully) apply to the many different forms of solidarity or aid. Although these forms are not immune to the hegemony of “humanitarian reason,” as Rizvi maintains regarding iṣlāḥ, they cannot be understood merely as humanitarianism by another name. Like all categories and vocabularies, those of humanitarianism are largely shaped and affected by powerful narratives, corporate interests, and state politics and ideologies—the war on terror, for example, redefined notions of security, protection, help, threats, international intervention, peace, and so on. Today, what many still associate with “humanitarian reason” corresponds to a vast conceptual, political, and experiential diversity of ideas and actions that go far beyond governing the suffering of distant Others. From Doctors without Borders to the Free Burma Rangers, from Islamic relief to Christian missions, and from humanitarian soldiers to diaspora humanitarianism, the variety of humanitarian endeavors is irreducible to a single modality of governance (or resistance to it). As in the “humanitarian peace” discussed by Solana, which allowed violence to continue in Western Sahara under the auspices of humanitarian peacekeeping, there are multiple instances of power and hierarchy that, in different contexts, can make humanitarianism benevolent for some while detrimental for others, necessary in a specific moment while avoidable in others, desirable for some aid actors yet inconsistent for others, principled for some while ambivalent for others. Humanitarian aid can save lives, yet it can be used to justify military violence. Amid the complexity of these diverse realities, humanitarianism, as a way to both interpret our world and to change it, is both intrinsically contradictory and a powerful feature of contemporary history (e.g., most governments and authorities use humanitarian terms to quantify global needs and mitigating measures). Compassion and control. Violence and hope. Humanity and inhumanity. If we analytically accept the contradictory configurations of humanitarianism, this implies recognizing how attempts by different actors at both rejecting or embracing it are politically situated. Clearly, humanitarian politics can enable forms of domination, which in turn generate reactions that question specific modalities of intervention (“It could have been more effective,” a humanitarian practitioner in Kabul once told me, referring to the massive international humanitarian intervention in Afghanistan). More broadly, such interventions can reproduce global patterns of inequality, as is often perceived by “beneficiaries” and populations affected by war and catastrophes. As in the case of the Sahrawi refugees who see through the “false hope” that their elders have placed in the legal and diplomatic tools of a liberal, humanitarian world order (Solana), the failure of the 20-year humanitarian-military intervention in Afghanistan (2001–21) has revealed the extent to which humanitarianism can serve as a pretext for different interests including geopolitical strategies and control over resources. Again, hegemonic practices can coexist with emancipatory dynamics or efforts to save lives. For instance, proposals for a “humanitarian ceasefire” in Gaza have lacked provisions for protecting Palestinians from the brutal violence of the Israeli government and military, even though humanitarian workers have been on the front lines of the genocidal war. Indeed, amid the Israeli military's indiscriminate bombings, many humanitarians have paid with their lives for their efforts to bear witness and bring aid to the Palestinian people. Historically, international institutions and humanitarian approaches (including UN initiatives) have failed to bring justice to Palestine. Yet, in light of the West's complicity in, and its inability to stop Israel's occupation of Palestine and its ongoing destruction of Gaza, humanitarian aid continues to represent, for the people in dire need, the only glimpse of hope. Complicating this, however, is the debate around the attitude of moral superiority that normally accompanies humanitarian projects. Many representatives of Western countries continue to describe themselves as protectors and promoters of values, such as human dignity and respect for fundamental rights, often with an attitude of superiority and arrogance toward other countries and cultures. But in the case of Gaza, this self-serving narrative has been fully exposed in its inherent incoherence. The “humanitarian guise” can no longer cover the historical crimes committed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, to name but a few cases, where violence, instability, and destruction have been unleashed by exploiting the rhetoric of exporting democracy or through the imperial war on terror. As global hierarchies are reconfigured, there is much uncertainty about the prospects for peace in several regions of the world. Demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian people are taking place internationally, even if most Western political leaders either remain passive toward Israel or explicitly support its policies. On the one hand, a repressive climate persists in which intellectual freedom is being seriously called into question (many scholars in Europe and the US have been punished or marginalized for speaking out against genocide). On the other hand, we have an opportunity to renew our understanding of “humanity”—no longer as an expression of global asymmetries or of hierarchies defining who deserves protection and who can be killed with impunity, but as the source of a postcolonial humanism, one that effectively merges different historical trajectories and identities. In such a critical historical moment, we must seek to understand what role(s) humanitarianism and humanitarian actors can play in liberating these forces for radical change.