In the wake of my imbalanced reaction to the Ukraine war, I worry that too much of my attention, like this blogpost, is generated by news/social media’s distorted ranking of things in the world. The media also produces a new ordering of anxieties and questions.
How can we better articulate the differences and samenesses between the archetypal deaths of children in the rubble of a bombed house and by the alleged slitting of their throats?
In what ways does our temporal frame of reference also frame our judgment? How far back from October 7th do we need to go in order to see October 7th for what it is, or prepare for what is still to come?
The distinction in the first question seems tangible, and yet such distinctions are becoming warped by ever greater politicization. I struggle to unpack why throat slitting brings headlines of “sheer evil” and “murder” yet hundreds of deaths in the rubble can be palmed off as collateral damage, or are criticized but in less full-throated terms. Throat-slitting is more of an atrocity. This suggests that harm and damage, such as the accumulation over decades of “non-atrocities”, calls for a more fine-grained vocabulary.
How many people on each side of these divisions hold a deep and lasting conviction in the necessity of violence? What feeds and maintains this perception?
Is there anything that can be judged wrong (or right) through all eyes? Or is everything, from the blockage of aid to the killing of children, to be contextualized, considered relative or justifiable from a particular point of view?
Some days it seems awfully difficult to be optimistic about us humans. What would it take to reverse the relative invisibility of peace as a form of security? That inquiry seems related to humanitarian protection, and yet there’s a sectoral wall blocking such thinking, a conviction that talking about peace violates neutrality and independence in a way that might jeopardize access. I tend to agree if we are thinking about peace and neutrality in old terms (read: “rigidly sectorialized”). But we shouldn’t be.
The triple nexus suggests that we humanitarians need to pay attention to peace, specifically to our responsiveness (or not) to peace, to (a) our direct contribution to grievance and conflict or (b) the indirect workings of the humanitarian alibi, where relief assistance becomes the primary vehicle for the international political management of conflicts and crises not named Ukraine-Russia or Israel-Gaza. Perhaps the distinction between ‘Big P’ and ‘little p’ (see here for an explanation) offers a way of engaging at the project level with peace, placing it within the rubric of humanitarian protection and conflict sensitivity. For example, in some contexts, little p – not doing little p but thinking little p while doing humanitarian work – suggests responding to people’s need for protection from conflict simply by bringing different communities together in the implementation of assistance.
Are we being herded into a dominant us-them discourse, one where each side believes that it alone holds and is entitled to act upon the absolute truth?
The general social trend of the past 20 years seems headed in the direction of powerful us-them divides. Having shied away from neutrality for some good reasons, the public humanitarian voice might need to backtrack towards the posture of neutrality even if individual humanitarians take a side.
Beyond self promotion and fundraising, how can the humanitarian sector capitalize on the intensity and likely duration of the focus on Israel-Gaza (without contributing to it); and how can we diminish the negative consequences?
How might this conflict, so emblematic of the positioning of the West generally, effect on a global scale the trust of people in humanitarian action? Specifically, how might it contribute to a perception of (or render more visible) humanitarian agencies delivering on the direct strategic interests of the West, or being funded by Western governments as force multipliers in the clash of civilizations? What of the perception that humanitarians are blind to their being steeped in/carriers of /attached to a predominantly Western set of principles, policies, ways of working, and culture?
When will Biden fly to Burkina Faso, Yemen, Myanmar, DRC or some other “acceptable” crisis?[1] Would actual engagement even prove effective after decades of bare minimums of humanitarian relief as the primary form of foreign intervention (in other words, is the embeddedness of crisis as big a problem as the original crisis)?
It is quite understandable that aid agencies raise loud demands for access, for all parties to respect international humanitarian law, and for the various authorities to grant safe access into Gaza for relief and other supplies vital to life (e.g., fuel to run the water desalination plants). But note how much of the political conversation is also centred on this human and political minimum. Obviously, there’s an immediate priority for humanitarian relief. Yet humanitarian work in protracted crises bears witness to how the focus on immediate lifesaving measures means that the important conversations to come (resolution of the crisis) will not come, leaving the same unacceptable human despair that we’ve grown to accept these past decades.
It is quite understandable as well that aid agencies are talking about respect for International Humanitarian Law. The necessity is to be very clear about how IHL is being misused by politicians to reinforce a distinction between “murderers” on one side and a law-abiding military power on the other. That’s the clash of civilizations that we’re being asked to buy into in much of the US/UK media. Let’s be loud and clear: urban warfare such as in Gaza produces a high-visibility challenge to the law of proportionality.
It is not quite understandable that so many people believe civilian deaths are simply legal within the pursuit of war (including the news presenter on BBC 4 yesterday morning). My concern is that for Western publics, thus politicized discussion risks undermining IHL’s (fragile) integrity, this transforming IHL into a tool of power designed not to place limits on war but to demarcate the line between good and evil, and hence to justify transgressions of those limits. This seems like what is happening right on the front pages of the news. IHL thus becomes one more tool of domination in the eyes of people who experience “evil” differently.
[1] The world’s crises seem divided into the haves and have-nots – those that have to be fixed (political engagement) and those that do not have to be fixed so long as they do not disrupt Western publics with horrifying images or threaten key strategic interests.
Thanks Marc, a lot to think about. Been thinking a lot about the point your footnote makes…
A lot to unpack there.
I’ve always found IHL to be too complex and malleable once the lawyers are involved to be useful. Its simplest expression – you don’t kill civilians on purpose is most useful and in that – you are 100% correct perception is that everyone violates it all the time – regardless of what the lawyers say in the end. That simple expression is what gives humanitarians moral authority if applied appropriately. But that same perception can be misapplied as easily as applied.
A thought on the footnote … the geopolitics has moved on from thinking all conflicts are ‘fixable’ to thinking more in terms of ‘what needs fixing’ for system survival. The post-WWII system was never really threatened in the modern humanitarian era, post-Cold War. How much is it really under threat now vs. the perception of that threat? Nexus big p’s and little p’s almost unreadable in that context?
Thanks for jumping into the discussion Jason. Re the footnote, I go back and forth on this. Is the system’s survival more at stake these days? What would you look at to answer that? I don’t know. In this case, the treasury (military expenditure, aid) being spent by the EU, US, UK in response to Israel-Gaza and still in Ukraine, and it signals to me that they they view the stakes as high, as a must fix.
Thanks for commenting Pete. That footnote has been growing on me, and I wonder how much it comes back to our attention and our pre-existing affinities/relations. Note that using the word “fixed” was an intentional misuse, as I don’t believe a crisis like this (or many others) has a fix, as opposed to “being addressed” or “ways forward”.
I’d want to ask “which ‘Western values’?” When you chaps meditate on these issues I do wish you’d contemplate making a *few* basic human rights for women and children your starting point and leit motifs:
What would happen if humanitarian theorising started from “we will make everything safe for women and children to not get raped. What would it take to stop accepting rape as collateral damage? What implications are there for peacekeeping if we said “peace is the absence of rape.” ?
Is rape & VAWC commonplace, especially in conflicts x disaster areas? Absolutely; as Joan Smith has documented, men assault their wives and kids before they go out to terrorise others. Dr Mukwege has documented the DRC’s rape history. This is ubiquitous, finally recognised as a war crime, and the US State Department and the OC annual report record it: but although women are the world’s multi-taskers and omnipresent our welfare at this *basic* level is never tackled head on.
Example: reproductive health including abortion (yes, a needful technique, no question) is always framed as a woman’s issue. Yet the sole cause of pregnancy, technically, is male ejaculate. Where does any campaign anywhere on earth advocate for men to choose a reversible vasectomy as part of their experience of life in an adverse setting? In Tigray women were killed and maimed by fighters pounding sand up their vaginas and through their cervixes.
What would happen to peacemaking if we all chose the single most basic ongoing atrocity going, which is sexual assault, and made eliminating that one thing a humanitarian priority?
Thank you Katherine for your raising the VAWC issue. Aside from largely unsubstantiated claims circulating in social media, I have not seen VAWC highlighted as one of the key IHL concerns in this conflict. Maybe that says something about the threat/actuality posed by Hamas and the IDF in this way.
You raise a really important issue, though, and one that I hadn’t thought about — the way in which soldiering in this sort of combat leads to soldiers being violent in their families. I dont think that’s covered by IHL (any experts who want to weigh in?) so much as a violation of national law. Rape in the family by soldiers is not seen as rape as a weapon of war, seems very clearly like rape as a product of war. You’re right that it needs attention.
For me, that would be something humanitarian could pay more attention to, and raise their voice where it is happening. And I agree that as you point out, humanitarians should never confuse geo-political calm with the absence of violence or rape. I don’t think, though, that the international humanitarian brigade should be at the front line of tackling this, because of its focus on immediate needs rather than taking on the root causes (deeper social and economic structures). That’s where I’d see civil society, human rights groups, women’s groups, etc as much better placed to tackle the problem, while at the same time humanitarians put in place programming to put approprite care and support in place.
Finally, I’ve been thinking about doing some ‘mansplaining’. re male ejaculate as the “sole cause” of pregnancy! It was a long time ago, but that’s not how I remember my father explaining it to me.