Can violence be justified to achieve humanitarian ends?

Humanitarians want to save lives and do no harm and are often understood to work in contrast to war, in fact violent war is exactly what most humanitarians are trying to bring an end to. If humanitarian assistance is only required when there are victims, there is a sense that there has to be a �bad guy� in such a scenario

To address this issue I will look into what we mean by humanitarian ends and how they relate to the goals of what humanitarian intervention seeks to attain. I will look at the various forms of humanitarian intervention and relate it in light of violence, and look at both the ways in which humanitarian intervention has been used to achieve humanitarian ends but with time how international law in its same capacity to protect people and restore peace, has left room to be manipulated to start wars in recent times in populations driven by fear and lack of security.
The roots of humanitarianism lie in religious and moral benevolent acts of helping strangers in need without recompense. Such assistance to strangers in need comes with a sense of not judging who the stranger is and whether he/she deserves the help or not, it is associated with short term assistance needed in an urgent immediate situation. In other words ideally this relates to the principles that a humanitarian or humanitarian actors should have. The core humanitarian principles are humanity (the responsibility of humans to each other), universality (to offer relief as widely as possible), impartiality (distribution of aid according to need to those on all sides of a conflict regardless of race, religion or ethnic group), political neutrality (not taking sides or contributing to strengthening any side in the conflict), and the independence of agencies from the political, or other objectives, of donors.
Now let us turn to humanitarian ends. What are the ultimate goals of humanitarians and are these principles in fact ideal in attaining such ends? Humanitarians want to save lives and do no harm and are often understood to work in contrast to war, in fact violent war is exactly what most humanitarians are trying to bring an end to. If humanitarian assistance is only required when there are victims, there is a sense that there has to be a ‘bad guy’ in such a scenario. Perhaps such a sense has steered attention more towards the root causes of such suffering, or towards focusing on the ‘bad guy,’ and understanding that short term assistance to populations with a principality of universality and impartiality, barely enhances long term peace keeping, but, in fact, have in many instances prolonged wars.
International actors have stemmed out humanitarian intervention out of humanitarian assistance. Humanitarian intervention may exist in the form of the UN DPKO peacekeeping (Cyprus South Sudan), peacekeeping and peace enforcement (DRC, Somalia) under Regional Organization Auspices (for example the AU, AU-UN, NATO, ECOWAS in Liberia), the hybrid option (Darfur-UN and AU) unilateral state military intervention (UK in Sierra Leone) and third party state military intervention, with private company support, funded by western governments (US contract Private Military/Security companies to support UPDF forces to go into Somalia).
How has humanitarianism transformed from having its space from war and wanting to do no harm to having humanitarians with guns? Kosovo in 1999 saw the first military intervention after diplomatic strategies had failed. The result was seen a success, giving the US and the international community more ideas of ways to utilise their military forces to protect human rights and refuges, and to end wars with military intervention. This intervention was followed by a second liberal intervention in Sierra Leone. The intentions of these interventions were noble as the British army pushed back rebel forces and handed the country to the Sierra Leonean government. Such intervention has been made to fit with a set legal framework implemented by the international community. The right to protect, the right to intervene when human security or human rights are threatened, and the rights of refugees, are all given legal authority and legitimacy in the framework of international law. After all, if the aim of international law is to restore peace and order, it is grounded in non-aggression and state sovereignty, then humanitarian intervention must coincide with such aspirations, or is it that the use of the term humanitarianism automatically legitimises illegal invasion, and any illegality can be overlooked to serve the higher purpose of restoring peace in the long term?  Even though humanitarian intervention was instigated with honourable intentions, it was war dressed up in humanitarian implications.
War means undermining the principles embedded in humanitarianism; but how universal, impartial, humane and independent is humanitarian assistance? Such principles are abstract, idealistic and hardly operational. Universality ignores the reality of agencies incapacity to reach all areas of need and to have enough for everyone in need. Impartiality ignores the fact that aid relief allocation is, to an extent, dictated by political actors and donors, for example, it is easier for aid workers to reach citizens who follow the government in power, aid workers may not be allowed to feed rebels and their discretion is limited by the agendas of political actors and donors. Therefore, in their truest sense such principles do not exist amongst aid agencies and humanitarian actors in the first place. Helping a stranger with a blind eye to his or her political, ethnical and religious background is more idealistic and naïve than realistic. In circumstances where assistance has been delivered, short term assistance has seen to help feed the ‘bad guys’ and prolong wars, impeding long term peace goals. However, the problem with undermining such inherent humanitarian principles is that, as David Reiff suggests, it creates a population of ‘undeserving victims’. Who is to say who the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’ are?
If such principles are not adhered to, in practice anyway, then is humanitarian intervention in its politically motivated response that contradictory to trying to achieve long term peace negotiations, even though it employs coercive and violent means? Humanitarian intervention should not however be completely severed in its identity from neither war on one extreme end or humanitarian in its other extreme end. Stopping human rights violations and killings might lead to more killings, guns and collateral damage. It entails militarisation of aid, impoverishment through war - made harsher or stronger through the involvement of the stronger international community. This means more business for the weapons industry, whose best interest is to keep the war going, whereby the killing of civilians has proven to be inevitable.
I have thus far referred to the goals of humanitarian intervention simply as restoring the peace. However, looking at the bigger picture, many would say it involves imperialistic motives that allow state sovereignty to be undermined; is it a means of imposing western ideals on the developing world, or imposing democratic ideals at the point of a gun or merely safeguarding national interest, or is it promoting human rights, development and good governance? If it has been motivated by purely altruistic aims or purely to promote human rights and development, then what dictates the selectivity in the process of deciding which state to intervene, for example why Somalia and not Sudan? Such acts are also criticised to have ulterior motives demonstrated by a greater interest in oil or other resources required by developed countries, and how can an institution go out of its way to fix a problem in a foreign land when its own policies are questionable.
‘We welcome a no-fly zone, but the blood of Libya's dead will be wasted if the west curses our uprising with failed intervention’, this was one of the clearest views of the Libyan people that I came across in an article titled ‘Libya is united in popular revolution – please don't intervene’ in ‘The Guardian’. Muhammad Min supports such measures that have been taken by the international community as barring Qaddafi from exile abroad, freezing his assets and referring his regime's crimes to the international court of justice - this examples of how security concerns can be dealt with without intrusion. However, he warns that any military intervention on the ground by any foreign force would be met with much harsher fighting. Nevertheless, he does criticises western countries of being fearful of getting involved, for their own interests, in Libya. The revolution initially unfolded and ends on this note - ‘I'd like to send a message to western leaders: Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy. This is a priceless opportunity that has fallen into your laps, it's a chance for you to improve your image in the eyes of Arabs and Muslims. Don't mess it up. All your previous programmes to bring the east and the west closer have failed, and some of them have made things even worse. Don't start something you cannot finish, don't turn a people's pure revolution into some curse that will befall everyone.’ This is also a clear demand to respect local institutions which are usually trampled over with the western world trying to assert its own policies in the land it intrudes. ‘Crises that at first glance appear to be a manifestation of a ‘conflict trap’ may in fact be in a state of evolution, with the potential to produce new social orders out of chaos. These social orders are almost invariably violent, exploitative and illiberal... However, they are orders, not anarchy, and their evolution may in some instances constitute the best chance a
country or community has to emerge from the ruin of war ...’ (Ken Menkhaus2004:163). The book ‘Beyond Terror’ argues that terrorism is not the greatest threat to world security and that the on-going ‘war on terror’ is in fact increasing the likelihood of more terrorist attacks.
After 9/11, focus shifted from emergency relief for victims (the Asian earthquake in December 2004) to prevent conflict in low income states e.g. from Sudan to war on terror (in Afghanistan, Pakistan), and forcible disarming of states followed (invasion of Iraq). This shift in focus is changing patterns in foreign aid. Donors are hijacking foreign aid to pursue their own security objectives rather than those which would help the poorest. The increase in US aid has been destined for projects to serve the security imperatives prevailing 9/11, the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq have been extremely costly, and the debts incurred may soon gobble up aid budgets. The problem with the current battle on terror is an overdeveloped military strategy and an underdeveloped strategy for human security. External powers pursuing their own strategic goals, trading of weapons and the capture by narrow interest groups or spoilers are helping to sustain such conflicts.
I have started my article by talking about the interventions that were instigations with noble intentions and those that, even today, people will largely agree were necessary. As Kosovo and Sierra Leone stand as success stories, Rwanda stands as a case of allowing genocide by non-intervention. I have addressed humanitarian intervention in the light of violence as military intervention is violent - perhaps aimed at different groups of people for different purposes.  The current scenario seems to have shifted the focus away from humanitarian assistance to an
alarming need to focus on the security of western populations. In the process the ambitions of interventions which was once seen to coincide with humanitarian ends is now questionable.

The writer is lawyer currently based  in England

Can violence be justified to achieve humanitarian ends?

Humanitarians want to save lives and do no harm and are often understood to work in contrast to war, in fact violent war is exactly what most humanitarians are trying to bring an end to. If humanitarian assistance is only required when there are victims, there is a sense that there has to be a �bad guy� in such a scenario

To address this issue I will look into what we mean by humanitarian ends and how they relate to the goals of what humanitarian intervention seeks to attain. I will look at the various forms of humanitarian intervention and relate it in light of violence, and look at both the ways in which humanitarian intervention has been used to achieve humanitarian ends but with time how international law in its same capacity to protect people and restore peace, has left room to be manipulated to start wars in recent times in populations driven by fear and lack of security. The roots of humanitarianism lie in religious and moral benevolent acts of helping strangers in need without recompense. Such assistance to strangers in need comes with a sense of not judging who the stranger is and whether he/she deserves the help or not, it is associated with short term assistance needed in an urgent immediate situation. In other words ideally this relates to the principles that a humanitarian or humanitarian actors should have. The core humanitarian principles are humanity (the responsibility of humans to each other), universality (to offer relief as widely as possible), impartiality (distribution of aid according to need to those on all sides of a conflict regardless of race, religion or ethnic group), political neutrality (not taking sides or contributing to strengthening any side in the conflict), and the independence of agencies from the political, or other objectives, of donors. Now let us turn to humanitarian ends. What are the ultimate goals of humanitarians and are these principles in fact ideal in attaining such ends? Humanitarians want to save lives and do no harm and are often understood to work in contrast to war, in fact violent war is exactly what most humanitarians are trying to bring an end to. If humanitarian assistance is only required when there are victims, there is a sense that there has to be a bad guy in such a scenario. Perhaps such a sense has steered attention more towards the root causes of such suffering, or towards focusing on the bad guy, and understanding that short term assistance to populations with a principality of universality and impartiality, barely enhances long term peace keeping, but, in fact, have in many instances prolonged wars. International actors have stemmed out humanitarian intervention out of humanitarian assistance. Humanitarian intervention may exist in the form of the UN DPKO peacekeeping (Cyprus South Sudan), peacekeeping and peace enforcement (DRC, Somalia) under Regional Organization Auspices (for example the AU, AU-UN, NATO, ECOWAS in Liberia), the hybrid option (Darfur-UN and AU) unilateral state military intervention (UK in Sierra Leone) and third party state military intervention, with private company support, funded by western governments (US contract Private Military/Security companies to support UPDF forces to go into Somalia). How has humanitarianism transformed from having its space from war and wanting to do no harm to having humanitarians with guns? Kosovo in 1999 saw the first military intervention after diplomatic strategies had failed. The result was seen a success, giving the US and the international community more ideas of ways to utilise their military forces to protect human rights and refuges, and to end wars with military intervention. This intervention was followed by a second liberal intervention in Sierra Leone. The intentions of these interventions were noble as the British army pushed back rebel forces and handed the country to the Sierra Leonean government. Such intervention has been made to fit with a set legal framework implemented by the international community. The right to protect, the right to intervene when human security or human rights are threatened, and the rights of refugees, are all given legal authority and legitimacy in the framework of international law. After all, if the aim of international law is to restore peace and order, it is grounded in non-aggression and state sovereignty, then humanitarian intervention must coincide with such aspirations, or is it that the use of the term humanitarianism automatically legitimises illegal invasion, and any illegality can be overlooked to serve the higher purpose of restoring peace in the long term? Even though humanitarian intervention was instigated with honourable intentions, it was war dressed up in humanitarian implications. War means undermining the principles embedded in humanitarianism; but how universal, impartial, humane and independent is humanitarian assistance? Such principles are abstract, idealistic and hardly operational. Universality ignores the reality of agencies incapacity to reach all areas of need and to have enough for everyone in need. Impartiality ignores the fact that aid relief allocation is, to an extent, dictated by political actors and donors, for example, it is easier for aid workers to reach citizens who follow the government in power, aid workers may not be allowed to feed rebels and their discretion is limited by the agendas of political actors and donors. Therefore, in their truest sense such principles do not exist amongst aid agencies and humanitarian actors in the first place. Helping a stranger with a blind eye to his or her political, ethnical and religious background is more idealistic and nave than realistic. In circumstances where assistance has been delivered, short term assistance has seen to help feed the bad guys and prolong wars, impeding long term peace goals. However, the problem with undermining such inherent humanitarian principles is that, as David Reiff suggests, it creates a population of undeserving victims. Who is to say who the good guys and the bad guys are? If such principles are not adhered to, in practice anyway, then is humanitarian intervention in its politically motivated response that contradictory to trying to achieve long term peace negotiations, even though it employs coercive and violent means? Humanitarian intervention should not however be completely severed in its identity from neither war on one extreme end or humanitarian in its other extreme end. Stopping human rights violations and killings might lead to more killings, guns and collateral damage. It entails militarisation of aid, impoverishment through war - made harsher or stronger through the involvement of the stronger international community. This means more business for the weapons industry, whose best interest is to keep the war going, whereby the killing of civilians has proven to be inevitable. I have thus far referred to the goals of humanitarian intervention simply as restoring the peace. However, looking at the bigger picture, many would say it involves imperialistic motives that allow state sovereignty to be undermined; is it a means of imposing western ideals on the developing world, or imposing democratic ideals at the point of a gun or merely safeguarding national interest, or is it promoting human rights, development and good governance? If it has been motivated by purely altruistic aims or purely to promote human rights and development, then what dictates the selectivity in the process of deciding which state to intervene, for example why Somalia and not Sudan? Such acts are also criticised to have ulterior motives demonstrated by a greater interest in oil or other resources required by developed countries, and how can an institution go out of its way to fix a problem in a foreign land when its own policies are questionable. We welcome a no-fly zone, but the blood of Libyas dead will be wasted if the west curses our uprising with failed intervention, this was one of the clearest views of the Libyan people that I came across in an article titled Libya is united in popular revolution please dont intervene in The Guardian. Muhammad Min supports such measures that have been taken by the international community as barring Qaddafi from exile abroad, freezing his assets and referring his regimes crimes to the international court of justice - this examples of how security concerns can be dealt with without intrusion. However, he warns that any military intervention on the ground by any foreign force would be met with much harsher fighting. Nevertheless, he does criticises western countries of being fearful of getting involved, for their own interests, in Libya. The revolution initially unfolded and ends on this note - Id like to send a message to western leaders: Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy. This is a priceless opportunity that has fallen into your laps, its a chance for you to improve your image in the eyes of Arabs and Muslims. Dont mess it up. All your previous programmes to bring the east and the west closer have failed, and some of them have made things even worse. Dont start something you cannot finish, dont turn a peoples pure revolution into some curse that will befall everyone. This is also a clear demand to respect local institutions which are usually trampled over with the western world trying to assert its own policies in the land it intrudes. Crises that at first glance appear to be a manifestation of a conflict trap may in fact be in a state of evolution, with the potential to produce new social orders out of chaos. These social orders are almost invariably violent, exploitative and illiberal... However, they are orders, not anarchy, and their evolution may in some instances constitute the best chance a country or community has to emerge from the ruin of war ... (Ken Menkhaus2004:163). The book Beyond Terror argues that terrorism is not the greatest threat to world security and that the on-going war on terror is in fact increasing the likelihood of more terrorist attacks. After 9/11, focus shifted from emergency relief for victims (the Asian earthquake in December 2004) to prevent conflict in low income states e.g. from Sudan to war on terror (in Afghanistan, Pakistan), and forcible disarming of states followed (invasion of Iraq). This shift in focus is changing patterns in foreign aid. Donors are hijacking foreign aid to pursue their own security objectives rather than those which would help the poorest. The increase in US aid has been destined for projects to serve the security imperatives prevailing 9/11, the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq have been extremely costly, and the debts incurred may soon gobble up aid budgets. The problem with the current battle on terror is an overdeveloped military strategy and an underdeveloped strategy for human security. External powers pursuing their own strategic goals, trading of weapons and the capture by narrow interest groups or spoilers are helping to sustain such conflicts. I have started my article by talking about the interventions that were instigations with noble intentions and those that, even today, people will largely agree were necessary. As Kosovo and Sierra Leone stand as success stories, Rwanda stands as a case of allowing genocide by non-intervention. I have addressed humanitarian intervention in the light of violence as military intervention is violent - perhaps aimed at different groups of people for different purposes. The current scenario seems to have shifted the focus away from humanitarian assistance to an alarming need to focus on the security of western populations. In the process the ambitions of interventions which was once seen to coincide with humanitarian ends is now questionable. The writer is lawyer currently based in England