To do the right thing or to do the thing right? Humanitarianism and ethics.

Walker, Peter

Humanitarian assistance has shot from relative obscurity to international prominence. Until a few years ago, world news tended to be dominated by stories about the political and military manoeuvrings of nation-states and occasionally the United Nations. Now the nightly television news programmes and daily newspapers report much more often on the ebb and flow of global economic markets, the findings of investigative journalists and the work of aid and relief agencies -- all of which essentially go on parallel to the actions of nation-states and often completely separate from them.

Under these circumstances, humanitarian agencies, like the manufacturers of the 1960s who first encountered the consumer movement, can no longer afford to do business as they always have without reflecting much more carefully about the correctness of what they are doing and the quality of what they achieve.

What, then, is the endeavour in which humanitarian agencies are engaged? Let me begin by defining what humanitarianism is not. "Humanitarian" is not a synonym for "caring"; it does not mean "alleviating poverty"; it is not equivalent to "providing relief'. To be sure, it may encompass elements of all of these. But the basic activity in which humanitarian agencies are engaged may be traced back to a 19th-century agreement between a Swiss pacifist and a French statesman -- Henri Dunant and Napoleon M.

In the last week of June 1859, Dunant convinced Napoleon, the victor in the battle of Solferino, of the moral correctness of rendering assistance to the wounded where they lay on the battlefield, regardless of their nationality. Napoleon turned the good will of Dunant into an issue of rights and justice by allowing assistance to be delivered under the protection of an official proclamation. From this stemmed the Hague and Geneva Conventions and the legal framework for the League of Nations and later the United Nations, with all its resolutions and declarations on humanitarian issues.

As it has developed in Western Europe and North America over the past century, humanitarianism has come to mean carrying out actions which are -- and are perceived to be -- impartial, neutral and, by extension, independent of political, religious or other extraneous bias. This was the essence of the trade-off between Dunant and Napoleon.

Relief aid in itself is not necessarily. Many armies relieve cities under siege, providing food, water and medical care in emergency situations. But this is not an humanitarian action. Many development agencies seek to address the root causes of poverty, tackling in an impartial fashion issues of land tenure, access to education, freedom of speech and of organization. But these are not in themselves humanitarian actions.

Humanitarian organizations, by adhering to the principles of impartiality, neutrality and independence, have in fact straitjacketed themselves. They are limited to addressing only the effects of crisis, not its causes, and they are limited to working with a specific package of tools, namely, those which conform to the principles of impartiality and neutrality. Of course, these straitjackets are there not only as limitations but also as safeguards: to protect the rights of individuals caught up in crisis, regardless of their past and their affiliations, and to preserve the ability of the agency to continue to deliver assistance and protection in the future.

That said, humanitarian aid, like the nation-state and the laws of war, is a device designed to suit a particular time. Its form and applicability-are not sacrosanct. And perhaps the question to be posed today is whether humanitarian aid is, in fact the most "humane" way to address contemporary crises.

The roots of caring

The Solferino trade-off described above has many ramifications for how humanitarian agencies act today.

Ethics, morality and impulse. Many agencies and their staff do what they do because they care. When they see suffering, their reaction is "there but for the grace of God go 1"; and with that reaction comes the impulse to act. The moral basis of such action is clear to the actors. It can be found not only in the theology of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but also in Islam, Buddhism and in many of the world's other religious and philosophical traditions.(2)

How that moral impulse is then developed into ethical principles can take us down two very different lines.(3)

1. Justice, rights and imperatives. One strand of ethical tradition holds that morality resides in the act. In certain situations, there is a duty, an imperative to act. In the language of the Red Cross, that duty is "to alleviate suffering regardless of race, creed, political persuasion". In other words, we are driven by the rightness of the act, not its consequences. This is the tradition which underlies the Geneva Conventions, and from which present-day humanitarian action is derived. According to this tradition, humanitarian action is fundamentally an issue of justice. There are nonnegotiable rights involved. By the same token, humanitarian agencies give up the right to be concerned with the cause of suffering or the consequences of its alleviation in order to be able to continue to alleviate suffering here and elsewhere in the future.

This is not to say that we are free from having to consider the consequences of our actions. We may not design them to have developmental or political effects, but we must ensure that at the very least they do no harm to people's long-term prospects. At the same time, taking such an approach does not free us from being concerned with justice issues. But our concern is to be with supporting the process of justice, not passing judgment. It is not for us to decide who is guilty or innocent, who is the perpetrator of a crime against humanity and who is a victim.

2. Goals, consequences and the best possible outcome. In contrast to this approach is one based on an ethical tradition which sees the outcome of actions, the goals achieved, as the object to be examined for moral good or ill. According to this tradition, an aid worker might for example hesitate to feed a mass murderer, fearing that the person may thus once again be able to commit heinous crimes. The good of the act must be weighed against considerations of what will make for the greatest good for the family, the community, the state or the international community.

Many nongovernmental organizations whose original orientation was to welfare or development hold to this tradition. For them, the goal is the civil, political and economic consequences of one's actions, not the actions themselves. On this view it is legitimate to address the cause of suffering and the consequences of one's actions, acknowledging that doing so may limit one's ability to alleviate suffering wherever and whenever it is found.

The problem is of course that many agencies seek to practise both traditions: they are development agencies that have ended up having to do relief work or humanitarian agencies which find it difficult to ignore the causes of suffering. It is not impossible to have both traditions represented within a single organization -- any more than it is impossible for a government to include, as most do, both a defence ministry and a health ministry -- but it is profoundly wrong to mix the two operationally in a situation in which lives are at risk. The bottom line, I believe, is that. humanitarianism has to remain pure. It is about duty and rights, not about outcomes. It is about absolute values and rights, not relative ones.

Perhaps this can be illustrated by taking a look at a number of common difficult choices faced by humanitarian agencies today.

Military involvement. Should the military do humanitarian work? By definition, foreign military forces are neither independent nor neutral. They represent the forceful expression of the political will of an outside power. To ally them to humanitarian work is thus to remove the shield of neutrality and independence from that work and in the process to jeopardize the ability of the organization to alleviate suffering now and in the future.

There is nothing wrong with humanitarian agencies working in the same geographical area in which military forces are operating. In the situation in Eastern Zaire at the end of 1996, f6r example, a case could certainly be made that there was a role for an impartial military force to restore security and the rule of law -- but that was for the benefit of everyone, not just the aid workers or the refugees or the internally displaced persons.

Development and humanitarian aid. In Sudan in recent years, Operation Lifeline has tended towards a developmental approach, placing relief in the context of the rights of the Sudanese state and the culture and economy of Sudan. In the words of the resident representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP):

We often define humanitarianism as putting bread in the mouth of a starving person, but it is

not humanitarian to let him get into that situation. We should replace free food deliveries

and make people repay what they have received; this is what we are doing... People should

repay this humanitarian loan, not to us, but to their community. We we taking them out of

the beggar mentality. People are proud to pay for themselves... This is part of

society-building, enabling people to become more consciously self-reliant. It is linked to

democracy-building, because the people have to elect a management committee.(4)

While this may in the future serve some as-yet-undefined "greater good", it means in the short term that humanitarian rights are eroded. The result is that the Sudanese get a lower quality and quantity of relief than many believe they are entitled to, because (1) it has been tailored (some would say "compromised") to adhere to the principle of sovereignty, and (2) it has been tailored to achieve developmental aim which are palpably unattainable in the present Sudanese political environment.

If there are rights, where do they rest?

The heart of the matter, then, is that humanitarianism is about rights; and in order for these rights to be claimed and for others to ensure that they are fulfilled, the rights have to be defined, codified and described in an unambiguous way. International humanitarian law and human rights declarations seek to do this at a very general level. But what has not been available is an expression of how these general rights are translated into the day-to-day practice of those who are seeking to ensure that they are fulfilled. Hence the need for universal operational agency codes and minimum standards.

It is not by chance that the finger is pointed here at operational agencies. While twenty years ago one might have expected states to codify such standards, today that will not suffice.

In a series of commentaries in Financial Times (London) last year, Edward Mortimer examined the past and future of the nation-state.(5) He pointed out that nation-states have been around for only a little more than 200 years, and that they exist in a secular age to legitimize power and in an industrial age to mobilize populations for war and mass production. The all-pervasive, fixed-boundary state is only the latest -- and certainly not the last -- system for organizing, controlling and providing security for people, economies and power.

But the power of the state is not all-pervasive. Over the past hundred years, the power of the greater good, enshrined in the notion of the nation-state, has gradually been eroded in favour of the rights of the individual. The development of international humanitarian law has put limits on the ways in which states can fight wars. The development of the World Trade Organization and international trading conventions has put limits on how states can protect their industries and their markets. The use of human rights conditionality to shape long-term aid represents another attempt to circumscribe the power of the state.

Thus the state is less and less the sole guardian -- and sometimes not even the most important guardian -- of the rights of the people. The international community -- that is, the states acting collectively - has also become a guardian. In this connection some might cite UN Security Council Resolution 688, which allowed the international community to ignore the sovereignty of Iraq in order to safeguard the basic rights of Iraqi citizens.

At the other end of the scale, community-based and citizen-based organizations are becoming more and more influential. The consumer movement in the West is a case in point, as are the global environmental movement and the humanitarian agencies. While the latter may define their mandate as coming from "the people" rather than the state, the relation between that mandate and the wishes and rights of the people is not so clear.

States have the instrument of the ballot box and the due process of law to ensure truer representation. Humanitarian agencies do riot have this instrument. They are therefore obliged to develop alternative mechanisms to keep them from straying off the straight and narrow. If not, they risk having such mechanisms imposed on them -- whether by states through legislation or by beneficiaries and claimants through popular action. What is necessary, therefore, is to develop the codes and standards which will guide these agencies in the provision of humanitarian assistance.

A code of conduct. The "Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and Non-Governmental Organizations in Disaster Assistance", produced by the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response(6) in 1994, is a first attempt to do this. The code is a simple one, setting forth how agencies and their staff should behave when engaged in the business of humanitarian assistance. It lays down ten principles of behaviour and then goes on to outline what the agencies expect from the state in return for keeping to these principles:

1. The humanitarian imperative comes first.

2. Aid is given regardless of the race, creed or nationality of the recipients and without adverse distinction of any kind. Aid priorities are calculated on the basis of need alone.

3. Aid will not be used to further a particular political or religious standpoint.

4. We shall endeavour not to act as instruments of government foreign policy.

5. We shall respect culture and custom.

6. We shall attempt to build disaster response on local capacities.

7. Ways shall be found to involve programme beneficiaries in the management of relief aid.

8. Relief aid must strive to reduce future vulnerabilities to disaster as well as meeting basic needs.

9. We hold ourselves accountable to both those we seek to assist and those from whom we accept resources.

10. In our information, publicity and advertising activities, we shall recognize disaster victims as dignified human beings, not objects of pity.

This Code has now been accepted by more than 90 indepedent humanitarian agencies. At the 1995 International Red Cross conference, 144 of the signatory states to the Geneva conventions welcomed the code and agreed to encourage nongovernmental organizations in their countries to follow it. A number of United Nations agencies, including the office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, UNICEF and the World Food Programme, are looking at ways to incorporate the code into their own criteria for partner agencies. Finally government-related international development agencies in Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom are considering whether compliance with the code might be included as one of their criteria for funding.

The need for universal standards

This code, however, is essentially about agencies, not about the rights of the beneficiaries of their aid.

The past five years have seen a massive increase in the demand for humanitarian relief and a growing concern that this demand is outstripping available resources. This has taken place against the background of a proliferation of agencies offering assistance, an increased degree of competition between these agencies and growth in the channelling of government funds to independent relief agencies.

More than ever before, the humanitarian system must demonstrate effective allocation and use of resources. It must be able to make a more objective and coherent case for additional resources when these are required. It is time to move forward with a technical elaboration of the code. The urgency of this need is most clearly articulated in a recently published multi-donor evaluation of the crisis in Rwanda.(7)

Humanitarian agencies must be able to set forth unambiguously what their beneficiaries have a right to expect from them -- both in terms of what the agencies will deliver or secure and how they will provide it. While much work has already been done in defining minimum standards and good practice, the impact and usefulness of this work have been limited by the lack of agreement over methodology and applicability. In addition, agencies have been reluctant to commit themselves to standards which may, for quite logical reasons, be impossible to meet.

This should not, however, prevent agencies from providing a transparent commitment to "state-of-the-art" humanitarian standards. The fact that these will inevitably change over time is no justification for not establishing the standards in the first place. Such a set of guidelines should cover the four essential sectors of relief assistance: (1) food and nutrition; (2) water and sanitation; (3) medical care; (4) clothing, shelter and settlements (including selection of relief camp sites).

Previous attempts to set standards have often focused exclusively on the end-point delivery of assistance -- what might be called the "entitlements". It is indeed essential that there be norms of entitlement to which humanitarian agencies are publicly committed. But beyond this first step, it is necessary to go further and specify how these entitlements are delivered, covering such issues as local procurement, targeting and distribution systems. Equal concern is necessary regarding actions after delivery. Agencies are responsible for being accountable to their beneficiaries, to themselves (through monitoring of their programmes), to their donors and, through evaluation, to future programmes.

In summary, such guidelines ought to cover: -- what the agency should deliver or ensure is available as a minimum for survival (that is, what is needed to fulfil the absolute minimum entitlement of the disaster victim); -- the methodology by which relief is made available to beneficiaries, the how of doing relief; -- the forms of accountability to which the agency commits itself; -- issues such as concern for gender and the environment.

To return to the thesis expressed earlier, such a set of standards must be anchored firmly in what people have a right to, not what agencies, donors or host feel is possible. Thus it is necessary to consider the possibility of extracting from existing international law and declarations those clauses which are most relevant to the rights of disaster victims, in order to form a kind of beneficiaries' charter. This could provide the basis for a substantial improvement in the transparency and accountability of the humanitarian system. It could also facilitate the development of organizations of people affected by humanitarian emergencies.

It may not always be the case that disasters are more complex today than previously. But humanitarian work certainly is. There are increasing pressures on agencies to compromise the high principles on which most of them are founded. When that happens, those who are caught up in disaster often end up getting poorer service. Clarity over the ethics of one's agency and adherence to universally agreed standards of behaviour and practice are essential if continued improvement in the quality of service offered to disaster victims is to be ensured.

NOTES

(1) For a fuller discussion of this issue see Charles Dobbie, "Alms Under Arms: Military Support of Humanitarian Operations", an Adelphi Paper for the International Institute of Strategic Studies, April 1996.

(2) For a fuller description of the moral development of humanitarianism, see "Evolution of the Humanitarian Idea," in T. Weiss and C. Collins, Humanitarian Challenges and Intervention: World Politics and the Dilemmas of Help, Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1996.

(3) An excellent treatment of this dialectic is offered in an unpublished background paper by H. Slim, "Doing the Right Thing", for the Scandinavian NGO workshop on humanitarian ethics sponsored by the Nordic African Institute in Uppsala, 24 October 1996.

(4) Quoted from Karim et al., eds, "Operational Lifeline Sudan Review", Univ. of Birmingham, Oct. 1996, p. 100.

(5) Edward Mortimer, "The State of Nations", Financial Times, 31 July 1996.

(6) The members of the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response are Caritas Internationalis, Catholic Relief Services, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, the International Save the Children Alliance, the Lutheran World Federation, Oxfam and the World Council of Churches.

(7) David Millwood, ed., The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience, Geneva, Steering Committee of the Joint Education of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, March 1996.

* Peter Walker is director, disaster and refugee policy, with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva. This article is based on a paper he presented at a consultation on humanitarianism and ethics organized by Action by Churches Together (ACT) in Stony Point, New York, in November 1996. ACT is a joint effort of the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation.