States, humanitarian advocacy, and crisis: persuasion, mobilization, and denunciation

Abstract In times where humanitarian action is coming under pressure and attack, it is necessary to critically re-examine who carries out various humanitarian actions, such as advocacy, and how. This article aims to bring together several convergent themes to build a case for States to be seen to carry out ‘humanitarian advocacy’. The main question guiding this study is: “How, and in what ways do states utilize advocacy techniques, to affect humanitarian outcomes?” To approach this question, I examine humanitarian advocacy as a trend that runs alongside humanitarian diplomacy, as various factors contribute to humanitarian interactions occurring more often in the advocacy space. These includes ailing multilateral institutions, widescale flouting of International Humanitarian Law, and an appreciation of the complex interplay between a wide range of actors that carry out humanitarian action in some way, including states themselves (often ignored as humanitarian actors, in spite of their legal position as sovereign actors responsible for their populations). In an era of resilience humanitarianism, the role of advocacy as a humanitarian function has grown, and who is understood to be a humanitarian has similarly expanded. The discussion is supplemented by analysis of the official statements, actions, and policies of two less-powerful countries in the wake of the ongoing war on Gaza; the Republic of Colombia and the Republic of Slovenia. Three initial categorisations of ways in which states do humanitarian advocacy are offered, following analysis of the documentation, to serve as a basis for further study.