Humanitarian action and conflict

International Journal

Volumn 54, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 537-561

  Macfarlane, S Neil ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 19244384333     PISSN: 00207020     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/002070209905400401     Document Type: Article

References (48)

1. Clare Short, 'Principles for a New Humanitarianism,' Address to the Conference on Principled Aid in an Unprincipled World, Church House, London, 7 April 1998 (mimeo).
2. See Richard Guelff and Adam Roberts, Documents on the Laws of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1989), 273, 454.
3. Emma Bonino, 'Principled Aid in an Unprincipled World,' Speech at ECHO/ODI Conference, London, 7 April 1998, mimeo, 2.
4. Yves Sandoz, 'Beware, the Geneva Conventions are under fire,' International Herald Tribune, 14 July 1999, 6.
5. Kathleen Newland, 'The soul of the new regime: progress and regress in the evolution of humanitarian response,' paper prepared for the conference on The Evolution of International Humanitarian Response in the 1990s, 23-26 April 1998, White Oak Plantation, Yulee, Florida.
6. Ibid, 6.
7. Off the record comment at a conference of the Refugee Studies Programme, Oxford University, July 1998.
8. Mary B. Anderson, Do No Harm: Supporting Local Capacities for Peace Through Aid (Cambridge MA: Local Capacities for Peace Project 1996), 5.
9. John Prendergast and Colin Scott, Aid with Integrity: Avoiding the Potential of Humanitarian Aid to Sustain Conflict (Washington DC: USAID 1996), 2.
10. This is not the only, or necessarily the most frequent, rationale for withdrawal. Others include the security of humanitarian personnel (for example, Chechnya) or the perception that parties to the conflict may be using humanitarian activities as cover to enhance their military position (for example, the Biafran use of relief flight corridors to smuggle weapons in).
11. Eric Goemaere in 'Humanitarian assistance: problems, prospects and political dilemmas,' in Winrich Kühne, ed, The Great Lakes Region Crisis: Improving African and International Capabilities for Preventing and Resolving Violent Conflict (Ebenhausen: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik 1997), 63. The United States pulled out of assistance programming in Goma at the end of 1995 for similar reasons (interview with American official, Washington, DC, February 1998).
12. See the discussion of UNHCR'S 'Open Cities' programme in James K. Boyce and Manuel Pastor, Jr, 'Aid for peace: can international institutions help prevent conflict?' World Policy Journal 15(summer 1998), 46.
13. The ICRC was active in preparing lists of prisoners, prisoner exchange, and in passing messages. Its offices on both sides in the conflict communicated through the Committee's headquarters in Geneva. See Marcel Junod, Warrior without Weapons (London: Cape 1951). The Quakers were preoccupied in the main with assistance to children through the International Commission for the Assistance of Child Refugees (established in 1937), which also worked on both the Nationalist and the Republican sides of the line. The Commission also provided informal needs assessment and publicity concerning the humanitarian situation in the country. See Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (3rd ed; London: Penguin in association with Hamish Hamilton 1977), 496, 863, 893.
14. The ICRC was active in preparing lists of prisoners, prisoner exchange, and in passing messages. Its offices on both sides in the conflict communicated through the Committee's headquarters in Geneva. See Marcel Junod, Warrior without Weapons (London: Cape 1951). The Quakers were preoccupied in the main with assistance to children through the International Commission for the Assistance of Child Refugees (established in 1937), which also worked on both the Nationalist and the Republican sides of the line. The Commission also provided informal needs assessment and publicity concerning the humanitarian situation in the country. See Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (3rd ed; London: Penguin in association with Hamish Hamilton 1977), 496, 863, 893.
15. Newland, 'The soul of the new regime,' 7.
16. For example, the Comintern affiliate, International Red Help, which became involved in support of the revolutionary side in Spain in 1934, and the Comité de l'Aide au Peuple Espagnol, founded in 1936 after the outbreak of hostilities.
17. Newland, 'The soul of the new regime,' 8.
18. As cited in William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy (London: André Deutsch 1984), 351.
19. Ibid, 233, 342.
20. Interview, November 1997.
21. This account is based principally on Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy, passim.
22. Interview with UNHCR official, October 1998.
23. David Keen, The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper No. 320 (London: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies 1998), 35.
24. In some instances this pattern persists. In the 1994 Rwandan crisis, for example, the French military intervention (Opération Turquoise), while justified on humanitarian grounds, provided cover for the escape of former government leaders and military formations long associated with the French agenda in Africa.
25. This was pointed out to me by a United Nations agency official in the Caucasus in October 1998.
26. Sadako Ogata, 'The Challenge of Forced Human Displacement Today,' Second Van Heuven Goedhart Lecture, The Hague, 31 August 1998.
27. As Mary Anderson put it: 'The battlegrounds are people's living spaces.' Do No Harm, 8.
28. See the description of Prendergast's project on local conflict in the Horn of Africa in David Smock, Creative Approaches to Managing Conflict in Africa, Peaceworks No. 15 (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press 1997), 16.
29. I understand that this characterization of the Karabakh region may be objectionable to supporters of the Armenian cause there. However, from the perspective of international law, the region is in fact a breakaway district that remains de jure under Azerbaijani sovereignty.
30. S. Neil MacFarlane and Larry Minear, Humanitarian Assistance and Politics: The Case of Nagorno-Karabakh, Occasional Paper No. 25 (Providence RI: Watson Institute 1997), 98.
31. Interview with United Nations official involved in the humanitarian response in Angola, October 1998.
32. African Rights, Food and Power in Sudan: A Critique of Humanitarianism (London: African Rights 1997), 279-80.
33. Prendergast and Scott, Aid with Integrity, 6.
34. Goemaere, in Winrich Kühne, The Great Lakes Region Crisis, 64.
35. Ibid, 63-4.
36. Keen, The Economic Functions of Violence, 60.
37. Interview, February 1998.
38. Keen The Economic Functions of Violence. As Keen notes (p 13), 'we need to acknowledge that, for significant groups at both the top and the bottom of society, violence can be an opportunity, rather than a problem.'
39. Andrew Natsios, 'Humanitarian relief interventions in Somalia: the economics of chaos,' paper presented at a conference at Princeton University, 16 March 1995, cited in Prendergast and Scott, Aid with Integrity, 6-7.
40. Andrew Natsios, 'Humanitarian relief interventions in Somalia: the economics of chaos,' paper presented at a conference at Princeton University, 16 March 1995, cited in Prendergast and Scott, Aid with Integrity, 6-7.
41. For a discussion along these lines with regard to the Karabakh conflict, see MacFarlane and Minear, Humanitarian Action and Politics, 97-8.
42. Colin Scott in collaboration with Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarian Action in Liberia, 1989-1994, Occasional Paper No. 20 (Providence RI: Watson Institute 1995), 16.
43. Prendergast and Scott, Aid with Integrity, 9.
44. I. William Zartman and Saadia Touval, 'International mediation in the post-cold war era,' in Chester Cracker and Fen Hampson with Pamela Aall, eds, Managing Global Chaos: Sources of and Responses to International Conflict (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press 1996), 451.
45. I am grateful to Mary Anderson for this observation.
46. Charles King, Ending Civil Wars, Adelphi Paper No. 308 (London: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies 1997), 35-6.
47. David Lake and Donald Rothchild, 'Containing fear: the origins and management of ethnic conflict,' International Security 21(autumn 1996).
48. One promising initiative in this regard is the work of the Organisation for Economic and Co-operation and Development on links between conflict and development co-operation. See Development Advisory Committee, Conflict, Peace and Development Co-operation on the Threshold of the 21st Century (Paris: OECD 1998).