Humanitarian Business

Thomas G. Weiss

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745665221
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Mondialisation

With some 50 million people living under duress and threatened by wars and disasters in 2012, the demand for relief worldwide has reached unprecedented levels. Humanitarianism is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise, and aid agencies are obliged to respond to a range of economic forces in order to 'stay in business'. In his customarily hard-hitting analysis, Thomas G. Weiss offers penetrating insights into the complexities and challenges of the contemporary humanitarian marketplace. In addition to changing political and military conditions that generate demand for aid, private suppliers have changed too. Today's political economy places aid agencies side-by-side with for-profit businesses, including private military and security companies, in a marketplace that also is linked to global trade networks in illicit arms, natural resources, and drugs. This witch's brew is simmering in the cauldron of wars that are often protracted and always costly to civilians who are the very targets of violence. While belligerents put a price-tag on access to victims, aid agencies pursue branding in a competition for 'scarce' resources relative to the staggering needs. As marketization encroaches on traditional humanitarianism, it seems everything may have a priceÑfrom access and principles, to moral authority and lives.

CHAPTER ONE

Responding to Humanitarian Demands

This chapter provides an overview of the actors that flock to any human-made disaster from outside the war zone in question. International “suppliers” consist of an unlikely group of bedfellows: NGOs; the ICRC; members of the UN system; bilateral aid agencies; the military; and for-profit actors (corporations and private military companies). Within specific war zones, they interact not only with one other but also with local actors, such as belligerents, who control access to humanitarian space, and representatives of civil society organizations and businesses, who participate in the delivery assistance “supply chain.”

This chapter begins with a brief history of the humanitarian idea and three distinctive historical periods: the founding of the International Committee of the Red Cross to World War II; the Cold War humanitarian system, 1945–89; and the turbulent present. The basic distinction between the politics of helping in natural disasters and in wars also figures in the discussion.

A Brief History of Humanitarianism

Michael Barnett’s masterful treatment of the history of humanitarianism argues that its origins are found in transformations in the late eighteenth century, specifically the first rumblings of the abolitionist movement.¹ The issue for these idealists was not to save lives at immediate risk because of warfare but rather to alleviate the suffering caused by another human-made tragedy, slavery. The movement’s success was facilitated by the economic impediments that slavery imposed on the expansion of industrial capitalism, which meant that those with moral concerns were on the same side of the barricades as capitalists.

The most relevant contemporary forms of humanitarianism, as Craig Calhoun argues, began in the nineteenth century as a consequence primarily of the coming together of the forces of production and salvation.² The context was the perceived breakdown of society and emergence of moral ills that were being caused by rapid industrialization, urbanization, and market expansion. Karl Polanyi’s seminal work articulates the perverse effects of capitalism on traditional social order, which intimately tied economic organization to social relationships through systems of redistribution and reciprocity. With the rise of industrial capitalism, he argued, production was extracted from society, which became subordinated to the needs of the “self-regulating” market. The result was massive social dislocation and efforts to protect society from the vagaries of laissez-faire capitalism.³

Drawing from a mixture of religious and Enlightenment ideas, various intellectuals, politicians, jurists, and clergy adopted the language of humanitarianism to describe their proposed social and political reforms and to push for public action to alleviate suffering. The result was the formation of social movements to foster temperance, charity for the poor, regulations regarding child labor, and mass education. Marxists critiqued such efforts as mere “bourgeois reform” because by providing a palliative to the ills produced by capitalism, humanitarian and philanthropic initiatives sustained an inherently exploitative system. In the short term they eased suffering, but in the long term they thwarted meaningful societal change.

In addition to counter-movements to slavery and free-market capitalism, modern humanitarianism’s roots can be traced to efforts to mitigate colonial exploitation. The relationship between colonialism and humanitarianism is more complicated than the reductionist view that the latter was merely an outgrowth of and justification for imperialism.⁴ The basis for that simplistic view relies on an easy target, the unsavory King Leopold’s rapacious exploitation of the Belgian Congo as advancing civilization and as a “humanitarian” project.⁵ Missionaries frequently could be “civilizing” agents, easing the way for external domination. Yet there were instances in which missionaries called for reform and action that were at odds with imperial interests; some were outraged by the un-Christian behavior of colonial governments and foreign merchants who engaged in all forms of debauchery and exploitation.⁶ And in the late nineteenth century, various organizations began to express doubts about conversions on the grounds that they denigrated local traditions, customs, and cultures. Thus, although humanitarianism was often invoked as an alibi for interest-based imperial interventions, it sometimes stood in stark opposition to colonial sentiments as well.

If we are to pinpoint the inaugural moment for war-related international humanitarianism, it was in 1864 with the establishment of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the emergence of international humanitarian law.⁷ During the 1859 Battle of Solferino, the Swiss businessman Henry Dunant witnessed wounded soldiers callously abandoned on the battlefield to die, which prompted him to propose the creation of relief societies with trained volunteers to assist injured combatants in times of war. We begin our treatment of humanitarian action in war zones here. The popularity and resonance of Dunant’s idea were surprising: within three years the grassroots campaign produced the ICRC and the Geneva Conventions. Dunant was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, and the ICRC has stood as the industry standard since. A failed effort in Brussels in 1874 to consider a draft of the laws of war drawn up by Russian Tsar Alexander II met with more success in 1899 and 1907, when it became the basis of the Hague Conventions.

Humanitarianism’s next great leap forward – ironically but predictably – was as a consequence of the two world wars of the twentieth century. In terms of institution-building, many familiar contemporary NGOs and IGOs emerged in reaction to the forces of destruction unleashed by those worldwide cataclysms. In response to the refugees caused by the Russian Revolution, the League of Nations established the High Commission for Russian Refugees (1920–2), headed by Fridtjof Nansen, who subsequently expanded his mandate to include other continental populations. Two holdovers from his efforts, the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees and the High Commissioner for Refugees, fused in 1943 to form the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). NGOs, in most cases, were running ahead of states in the area of refugee relief: for example, Russian refugees prompted two sisters, Eglantyne Jebb and Dorothy Buxton, to found Save the Children in 1919, while the birth of the Nazi regime led the famous refugee Albert Einstein to found an American branch of the European-based International Relief Association in 1933, which later merged with the Emergency Rescue Committee in 1942 to form the International Rescue Committee.

Except for the ICRC and a handful of NGOs, however, few organizations thought of themselves as permanent. Instead, most came and went in order to respond to an emergency. However, after World War II a new generation of agencies arose to assist European victims; they subsequently developed a global reach, and many are still with us. Their permanence introduced a new set of dynamics, including not only the economics of a growing industry and bureaucracies, but also a growing consideration of the purpose of humanitarianism, its proper relationship to states, and the principles guiding actions.

The specter of rampant inhumanity throughout World War II led to hope for a different future – ironically, not the triumph of humanitarianism but rather a response to the utter desecration of the very idea of humanity. The Holocaust, massive displacements, fire bombings, and ultimately the use of nuclear weapons led diplomats and activists to call for the protection of civilians. The search for human dignity led to the construction of such normative humanitarian pillars as the 1945 UN Charter, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and the 1949 Geneva Conventions (and eventually the 1977 Additional Protocols). There also was a growth in intergovernmental and nongovernmental machinery. UNRRA was revamped in 1946 as the International Rescue Organization, which became the UNHCR in 1951; although it was supposed to be a temporary agency limited to European refugees, it soon became a permanent feature in global affairs. The UN Children’s Fund, or UNICEF as it is more commonly known, had a similar institutional biography and is now one of the most well known of humanitarian agencies. In 1942 a group of Quakers founded the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (later shortened to Oxfam) to respond to the appalling famine in Greece during which perhaps half of the children died. Shortly after the end of World War II, Lutheran World Relief, Church World Service, and Caritas International came into being – founded by Lutherans, the US National Council of Churches, and the Vatican, respectively. As mentioned, many of the relief organizations established in response to the needs of European victims turned their attention to reconstruction and then development following the return or resettlement of the wounded and displaced. Oxfam, the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (better known by its acronym, CARE), and Catholic Relief Services all got their start providing relief during World War II and then turned their attention to poverty alleviation and development.

The tectonic political shifts with the thawing and ultimate end of the Cold War opened the latest chapter in the history of the international humanitarian system. One of its key distinguishing characteristics is the dramatic expansion of “suppliers” in terms of numbers and diversity of organizational approaches. To begin, the sheer growth in NGO numbers alone is nothing short of remarkable.⁸ Setting aside for the moment what is and what is not a truly humanitarian organization, there are at least 2,500 international NGOs in the business, although probably only a tenth of them are truly significant.⁹ In a no-holds-barred exposé, one journalist cites UN Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that there could be 37,000 international NGOs with some relevance for “the crisis caravan,” and that on average 1,000 international and local NGOs show up for any contemporary emergency.¹⁰ Part of what two authors depict as a “swarm”¹¹ of agencies appearing for a new crisis can be explained by the proliferation of mom-and-pop aid deliverers, sometimes called MONGOs (“my own NGO”).

Global longitudinal data are unavailable, but a detailed survey of US-based private voluntary agencies engaged in relief and development is undoubtedly indicative of more general patterns in today’s marketplace. Considerable growth has taken place over the last three-quarters of a century. In 1940, shortly after the start of World War II, the number of US-based organizations rose to 387 (from 240), but the numbers dropped to 103 in 1946 and 60 in 1948. They rose steadily thereafter and reached 543 in 2005. The growth was especially dramatic from 1986 to 1994, when the number increased from 178 to 506.¹²

What about the number of aid workers worldwide? Abby Stoddard and her colleagues hazard a guess of over 200,000.¹³ But Peter Walker and Catherine Russ are undoubtedly closer to the mark when they confess: “We have no idea what size this population is.” Estimates include everyone from cleaning personnel and drivers in field offices to CEOs in headquarters. As a result of vague and inconsistent definitions and poor reporting, Walker and Russ prefer to extrapolate from reliable Oxfam data and estimate that there probably are some 30,000 humanitarian professionals (both local and expatriate) worldwide.¹⁴

In addition to the growth in numbers of NGOs, other types of actors have become increasingly involved in the delivery of assistance, as we see below. Among these are military forces as well as for-profit firms that typically specialize in security, transportation, and logistics.

What explains the explosion of the sector in the post-Cold War era? Two intertwined global phenomena are key: the collapse of the bipolar system; and the debt crisis of the 1980s, the so-called lost decade, and its international response – neoliberalism. Combined, these factors had a particularly debilitating effect on developing countries, in terms of the state’s capacity to deliver public services and maintain a monopoly of violence within its territorial borders.

The neoliberal agenda of the IMF and the World Bank had devastating effects on the most economically vulnerable populations, as the state was trimmed down, public budgets for social services were slashed, and once protected domestic markets were liberalized. Humanitarian agencies and other private organizations closed some of the gaps in the social safety net. For regimes that relied on patronage to sustain their rule, such reforms would fuel instability both from above and from below.

The loss of geostrategic significance of parts of the Third World and the resulting decrease in military and economic aid also added fuel to the fire. The superpower patronage that for decades had propped up illegitimate governments was no longer available to them. The result of these political and economic trends was an increase in civil wars – initially in both absolute terms and relative to international armed conflicts. These would be dubbed “new wars,” owing to the combination of characteristics, including mass civilian suffering.

The next chapter addresses whether the dynamics of today’s warfare actually are all that new, but humanitarian emergencies certainly were increasingly prominent on the international agenda and in the media spotlight.¹⁵ As states paid more attention, “complex humanitarian emergencies” was an expression coined to depict the ugly and confusing reality of a “conflict-related humanitarian disaster involving a high degree of breakdown and social dislocation and, reflecting this condition, requiring a system-wide aid response from the international community.”¹⁶ Gossips observing the UN committee that drafted the definition put forward the view that it reflected the reality that no one really knew what was going on or what to do.

Much like the response to World War II, the growing number of crises that erupted in the turbulent 1990s helped catalyze new movements that were intent on rescuing and protecting civilians at risk. Several features stand out. Perhaps the most prominent was the growing internationalization and institutionalization of human rights, with the United Nations playing the signature role. In particular, the Security Council became more deeply involved in interpreting, protecting, promoting, and monitoring human rights as essential components of peace operations, a development made possible with the end of the East–West rivalry. A most distinctive feature of this period was the council’s expansion of what it deemed as constituting a “threat to international peace and security,” the trigger for UN involvement. During the Cold War, the council had limited its definition of such threats to disputes between states that might or had become militarized, conflicts involving the great powers, and general menaces to global stability.¹⁷

One reason why the Security Council redefined peace and security was the emerging relative significance of the so-called new wars. In reaction to the growing perception that domestic armed conflicts were leaving hundreds of thousands of civilians at risk, creating mass flight, and destabilizing entire regions, the council authorized coercive measures on the grounds that war-induced disasters and mass atrocities imperiled regional and international security. Thus, grave humanitarian crises and human rights abuses became part of an expanded definition of what states legitimately viewed as threats to international peace and security.¹⁸

Perhaps the...