Editorial

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Notes

1. The case of ‘famine’ in North Korea is a recent example of this kind of stand-off. Specialised UN agencies, such as the World Food Programme, claimed that food shortages were leading to extensive and chronic hunger and malnutrition, while the Pyongyang government initially denied that the situation was critical. A report written for the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) referred to ‘[a]n acrimonious policy debate … within humanitarian organizations about the severity of the famine – indeed, its very existence – and the role of international food assistance in ending it’ (Natsios 1999:2). The report went on to admit that these questions were not new, but that they reflected ‘legitimate concerns about the effect of food aid to a country where those with political authority may have objectives very different from those of humanitarian agencies trying to reduce death rates’ (ibid.). The interlinked nature of humanitarianism and politics was underscored by the passing of the 2004 North Korean Human Rights Act, which simultaneously provides US humanitarian assistance and allows North Koreans to be granted asylum in the USA (Amnesty International 2005).

2. The definition of ‘humanitarian’ aid is often bitterly contested. During the 12-year civil war in El Salvador, for instance, the military authorities persistently maintained that any assistance to civilians in areas outside government control, including aid to refugees, was part of the rebel FMLN war effort. As Martha Thompson, an experienced humanitarian worker, notes, ‘Counter-insurgency is about militarising politics, and politicising the military. Humanitarian aid to the war-displaced becomes a military issue. … In counter-insurgency, where the state must control everything, “non-government” means “anti-government”’ (Thompson 1996:327). Meanwhile, in 1985 the Reagan administration requested US$ 14 million in military aid for the Nicaraguan Contra, promising to restrict this to ‘humanitarian’ assistance if the Sandinista government agreed to a ceasefire. In 1998 a further US$ 47.9 million was granted, again for ‘humanitarian’ purposes, despite the exposure in 1986 of the Reagan administration's acquiescence in illicitly smuggling arms to the Contra in the so-called ‘Iran–Contragate’ affair.

3. For instance, in January 2006 the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) withdrew from the southern region of the Republic of the Congo (RoC) after threats made against its staff by so-called Ninja fighters loyal to rebel leader Frédéric Bitsangou (International Relations and Security Network 2006). In July 2004, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) withdrew from Afghanistan after five of its staff had been shot and killed while serving there. Only weeks before the murders, MSF had criticised attempts by the US-led coalition forces ‘to co-opt humanitarian aid’, arguing that this was ‘endangering the lives of humanitarian volunteers and jeopardizing the aid to people in need’. In particular, it condemned ‘the distribution of leaflets by the coalition forces in southern Afghanistan in which the population was informed that providing information about the Taliban and al Qaeda was necessary if they wanted the delivery of aid to continue’ (MSF 2004).

4. MSF, for instance, withdrew from the Rwandan refugee camps because it judged that humanitarian assistance was doing more to strengthen the génocidaires than to relieve suffering. Though sometimes accused by other humanitarian agencies of being utopian, Fiona Terry, formerly the Research Director for MSF and now an ICRC delegate in Burma (Myanmar), counters that it is utopian to imagine that aid can be given without causing any harm; and that such a pretence makes it harder to assess the relative good and harm of a specific humanitarian intervention and to act accordingly (Terry 2002).

5. Terry (2002) argues that too much emphasis is placed on perceived changes in the post-Cold War context to explain the difficulties encountered in assisting victims of conflict. She expresses the view that such changes are used by some aid agencies as an excuse for avoiding responsibility for the consequences of their actions. The complex intertwining of aid and conflict is nothing new, and Terry argues that some of the dilemmas that aid agencies faced in the past – for instance, the case of assistance for Cambodians along the Thai–Cambodian border and inside Cambodia in the 1980s – were if anything more difficult than those being faced today.