[I have been drafting and delaying the posting of a number of blogs related to Gaza. In the small points they make they simply don’t seem appropriate given the latest news. Now over nine weeks in, I’ve lost faith in the idea of waiting for the right time.]
Last Thursday, world humanitarian #1 Martin Griffiths conceded defeat in Gaza: the message that we have been giving – we here being the humanitarian community […] – is that we do not have a humanitarian operation in southern Gaza that can be called by that name anymore.
A praiseworthy defense of the idea and the word behind the idea. We need more. “Humanitarian” has become a misnomer when used to describe a type of crisis,[1] or mistaken for an “it’s okay, you can focus elsewhere” counterbalance in a hyper-localized Armageddon like Gaza, or applied as an adjective to describe violence (the oxymoronic “humanitarian wars” in the Balkans or Libya), or even a pop culture armada of ships (at 1:34) carrying enough proton torpedoes to detonate a galaxy. Truth is, our label – humanitarian – carries with it far more capacity to mask, mislead, and divert than we defend against. Maybe that’s because it also bestows such pride and prize.
To pause or not to pause? That is the wrong question
Gaza’s supercharged media environment seems particularly capable of freighting the word with ever greater political liabilities. By way of an example, last month the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2712, calling for “urgent and extended humanitarian pauses” throughout the Gaza Strip to enable humanitarian access in the Gaza Strip. Though immensely more desirable than unrestrained violence, humanitarians should reject the idea of a pause in their name, or any suggestion of a compassionate act by the pausing parties. Let’s look at the math:
- A pause in the music = a musical pause.
- A pause in the speech = a speech pause.
- A pause in warfare and atrocities ≠ a humanitarian pause.
The conduct of war needs no pause to deliver humanitarian aid because the rules of war (International Humanitarian Law) take specific care to protect civilians and their access to lifesaving aid. In this case, a “humanitarian pause in combat” (as used recently by an IDF spokesperson on the BBC) in fact describes a pause in the unlawful blockage of humanitarian aid and a pause in the nine weeks of neglect for IHL’s principles of distinction and proportionality.
Exploitation of the humanitarian luster
Speaking of the conflict, Nesrine Malik called it “a constant”, for “years it can be forgotten.” Humanitarian aid has spent decades expensively ensuring the biological sustenance of Gazans while they stewed in an embittering boil of immiseration and humiliation. A flow of aid that openly assuaged the urgency of Gazan grievances, allowed major powers to withdraw their pressure for change (a two-state solution, now moribund?), and encouraged the world to go about its business while the humanitarians engaged in theirs. Nothing to see here.
This humanitarian alibi has long operated in Gaza, a sleight of hand whereby humanitarian action and objectives mask political inaction. It is one thing to deliver humanitarian aid to people who need it. It is another to do so a little too silently, a little too deferential to the hands that feed us humanitarians while we feed others. And it is still another matter to accept the terms and conditions of Israel’s effective control over Gaza (if not legal occupation of it), and specifically the Israeli faucet’s drip feed of lifeblood into Gaza. The UN understands, even if it has failed to operationalize this understanding: “There is outrage that humanitarian action is still often used as a substitute for political solutions.” (One Humanity, Shared Responsibility, p. 3).
The situation illustrates an old and difficult ethical tension, where silence is often justified in the name of access to or greater funding for the people most affected by that silence. Soon we will have to choose. As Dr Sultan Barakat lamented last week (see HPG’s excellent panel discussion on the backlash against human rights – beginning at 58:00), humanitarians will again line up to share in the aid funding to come, suggesting that we have some difficult reckoning ahead over the enduring crises in many places, including Palestine.[2]
The need for humility and honesty about the humanitarian endeavor
Humanitarians have long indulged a deep psychological and professional interest in the public overestimation of our moral and operational greatness: in the public’s confidence in our virtue and overconfidence in our impact in crisis situations like Gaza, or Syria, or Sudan. The aid is critical. It does save lives and alleviate suffering. We should neither underestimate nor overestimate it. That’s us – the insiders.
The bigger issue is the public’s belief in the reach and effectiveness of our work as a solution, and how that contributes to the problem of political disengagement. Beyond us insiders, the battle behind closed doors and in the media for aid to be delivered in Gaza carries far too many assumptions of the capacity of aid to address (and redress) these wounds. Large flows of aid will help. But even large flows of aid will be more grossly insufficient than sufficient. I worry that people need to believe in us, because how else to deal with a world on fire?
What can we do? First, may I suggest consistent use of the term “relief”, which seems a little more accurate by signalling to the public its limited nature. The sector needs to help the public to understand our insufficiency, let alone that old truth that there are “no humanitarian solutions to humanitarian problems”. Second, we need to highlight the capacity of people to aid themselves, and to ensure that aid efforts deliberately flow to humanitarian agencies and the society at large. Aid flows – in substance and in name – need to much more deliberately support mutual aid, moving beyond convoys of stuff that humanitarians deliver to resources that leverage Gazans capacity to help themselves.
[1] See Tom Scott-Smith here for a related discussion; or §3.1 of my paper The New Humanitarian Basics. Further critique: at what point does calling violent or even criminal destruction a “humanitarian crisis” become a blend, part euphemism and part neutralizer, akin to Josef Stalin’s famous observation that a million deaths become a statistic?
[2] And within that reckoning, we may want to devote some time to (a) the silence of affected populations in our decision-making processes, which remains stuck in the weeds; and (b) the ethics of accepting funding from governments such as the US, UK, or many others, given their role in the pursuit of this war.
Had to read this post several times and still can’t catch the gist. Perhaps it’s me — sleep deprived for more than 2 months as I watch literal genocide in Gaza. Or perhaps it’s the distraction of the UN GA vote on ceasefire that plays in the background as I try for formulate my question. But why are we talking about what to call “humanitarian” work? Why are we calling for humanitarian access — so we can pick up the bodies that we watched massacred on Instagram? Why are we not talking about the now apparent complete failure of the entire post-WWII system of global governance, which poses not only an existential threat to the Palestinian people, but to us all?
Nora, believe it or not I think we are on the same page here, but working at completely different ends of it. Above the blog is my apology for picking up on issues that may be important for some humanitarians but are small in the larger frame. I think that’s ok. The larger point, though, is exactly the one you make. Humanitarian relief is not what is needed at the forefront of a reponse to the violenc. It is what should be guaranteed as a bare minimum, one all too impossible for now, and likely woefully insufficient in the future. Do not undersestimate, though, the number of places in the world where the perception of there being a significiant humanitarian response helps drain away the political pressure to take more meaningful action.
I have always regarded ‘humanitarian’ to be more suitable as a reference to the quality of the person rather than an adjective suitable for describing a situation on the ground. In these highly politicised crises, words are seemingly important, but also hugely devalued. With ‘Islamophobia’ and ‘antisemitism’ so frequently deployed, and ‘genocidal’ an equally emotive accusation on either side of a conflict, it is unsurprising that so many both misuse and misunderstand the concept of humanitarianism. My own position in past conflicts has been that I, and people with a similar approach, can make a difference by intervening to help someone who has been disempowered by circumstances beyond their control. I was a humanitarian, supporting humanitarian action, due to the qualities of the assistance I tried to provide. When in doubt, take away the emotive adjectives. The people in the state of Israel and the occupied territories of Palestine need to give each other (access to) impartial assistance, in order to alleviate the suffering, whatever other adjectives may be attached.
In a similar vein, they need a solution (one-state, two-state, multi-state – who knows?) that is a shared project of all sides. But here I am – stuck in the weeds of pedantry, trying to develop my own thesis – just like all the a*s*hole politicians!