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ABSTRACT
While humanitarian work has always implied a certain level of risk, in the last two decades there has been a growing concern that humanitarian and peacekeeping agents are exposed to unprecedented levels of insecurity. To determine whether or not such claims and perceptions are substantiated, researchers have developed quantitative datasets aimed at measuring and tracking threats to humanitarians and peacekeepers at the global level. In contrast to humanitarian practitioners which use such quantitative expertise to suggest aid work is becoming increasingly dangerous, the producers of quantitative representations of humanitarian security suggest instead that attack rates have remained for the most part fairly stable despite increases in absolute numbers. In order to make sense of this paradox, this article draws on neo-Bourdieusian approaches, the sociology of professions and organizations, as well as global governance literature on quantification to suggest that such inconsistencies relate to the use of quantitative data to legitimate organizational change and bureaucratic restructurations in relation to the institutionalization of security expertise. By understanding the dynamics of organizational change, this article sheds light on one of the ways through which international humanitarianism and peacekeeping is shifting from a paradigm of proximity to a paradigm of distance and remoteness.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Jef Huysmans, the participants of a Master Class workshop in Geneva, and three anonymous reviewers for their comments on previous drafts of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributor
Monique J. Beerli is a PhD candidate in international relations at Sciences Po Paris and University of Geneva. Her current research project examines the social dynamics and effects of the professionalization of security in humanitarian organizations.
Notes
1 Defined by Keen as ‘humanitarian crises that are linked with large-scale violent conflict.’ Keen, Complex Emergencies, 1.
2 Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace.”
3 Hannan and Freeman, “Structural Inertia and Organizational Change”; Abbott, The System of Professions.
4 Hannan and Freeman, “The Population Ecology of Organizations,” 931.
5 See, for example, Sheik et al., “Death among Humanitarian Workers”; Humanitarian Outcomes, Aid Worker Security Report 2015; Wille and Fast, Operating in Insecurity; Humanitarian Outcomes, The Aid Worker Security Database.
6 Brassard-Boudreau and Hubert, “Shrinking Humanitarian Space?”; Fast, “Characteristics, Context and Risk”; Fast, “Minding the Gap.”
7 Barnett, “Report on Security of Humanitarian Personnel”; Dandoy and Pérouse de Montclos, “Humanitarian Workers in Peril?”; Dandoy, Humanitarian Insecurity, Risk and Moral Panic; Neuman, “Is Medical Care Really Under Fire?”; Taithe, “The Oldest War Crime in the Book?”; Weissman, “Violence Against Aid Workers.”
8 Smirl, Spaces of Aid; Duffield, “Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound”; Duffield, “Challenging Environments”; Collinson et al., “Paradoxes of Presence”; Fast, “Aid in Danger.”
9 See, for example, Abbott, The System of Professions; Dezalay and Sugarman, Professional Competition and Professional Power; Dezalay and Garth, “The Internationalization of Palace Wars”; Georgakakis, “Don’t Throw Out the ‘Brussels Bubble’ with the Bathwater”; Bigo, “The (In)Securitization Practices”; Cohen, “Legal Professionals or Political Entrepreneurs?”; Dezalay and Garth, “Hegemonic Battles, Professional Rivalries, and the International Division of Labor in the Market for the Import and Export of State-Governing Expertise”; Guilhot, The Democracy Makers; Kauppi and Madsen, Transnational Power Elites; Krause, The Good Project; Martin-Mazé, “Lextension transnationale du domaine de la lutte symbolique”.
10 Stoddard, Harmer, and Haver, “Data Are Not Dangerous.”
11 Davis et al., “Indicators as a Technology of Governance,” 73.
12 Merry, “Measuring the World,” S92.
13 Barnett, The International Humanitarian Order.
14 Barnett, “Humanitarian Governance.”
15 Fassin, Humanitarian Reason; Fassin, Humanitarianism.
16 Krause, The Good Project, 93–7.
17 Barnett, The International Humanitarian Order, 19.
18 Fassin, “Inequality of Lives, Hierarchies of Humanity”; Collinson et al., “Paradoxes of Presence.”
19 Abbott, The System of Professions, 35.
20 Abbott defines tasks as human problems amenable to expert service. Ibid.
21 Ibid., 34.
22 Dezalay and Sugarman, Professional Competition and Professional Power, 5.
23 Ibid.
24 Hansen and Mühlen-Schulte, “The Power of Numbers in Global Governance,” 456.
25 See notably Löwenheim, “Examining the State”; Merry, “Measuring the World”, Davis et al., “Indicators as a Technology of Governance”; Hansen and Mühlen-Schulte, “The Power of Numbers in Global Governance”; Porter, “Making Serious Measures”; Seabrooke, “Pragmatic Numbers”; Fukuda-Parr, Yamin, and Greenstein, “The Power of Numbers”; Rocha de Siqueira, “Measuring and Managing ‘State Fragility’.” Rocha de Siqueira, Leite and Beerli, “Powered and Disempowered by Numbers.”
26 Fougner, “Neoliberal Governance of States”; Löwenheim, “Examining the State.”
27 Dezalay and Garth, “The Internationalization of Palace Wars,” 39.
28 Mudge and Vauchez, “Fielding Supranationalism,” 148.
29 Bigo, “The (In)Securitization Practices,” 217.
30 Hansen, “The Power of Performance Indices,” 509.
31 Davis et al., “Indicators as a Technology of Governance”, 99.
32 Abbott, The System of Professions, 46.
33 Desrosières, La politique des grands nombres.
34 Interview with former ICRC humanitarian executive, November 5, 2015; Jeannenot, Marbeau, and Joli, “1987–1999, Cornelio Sommaruga, Souvenirs d’un président du CICR.”
35 Dandoy and Pérouse de Montclos, “Humanitarian Workers in Peril?,” 342.
36 Bradt, “Evidence-Based Decision-Making”; Knox Clarke and Darcy, “Insufficient Evidence?”
37 Bourdieu, Manet, 15 [author’s translation].
38 Ibid., 15–16 [author’s translation].
39 Ibid., 15 [author’s translation].
40 Bourdieu, Science de la science et réflexivité. Beerli, “The Power to Count and the Stakes of Counting.”
41 Beerli and Weissman, “Humanitarian Security Manuals.”
42 References to quantified data on humanitarian insecurity tend to stress and selectively reproduce absolute numbers of security incidents. Percentages and rates are rarely referred to. This is perhaps due to the fact that ratios and percentages would give a less significant impression of insecurity. For example, in their 2015 Figures at a glance summary report, Humanitarian Outcomes writes that in Afghanistan in 2015, for example, 54 aid workers were attacked per 10,000 aid workers. This means that out of a pool of 10,000 aid workers, there is a .54% cumulative incidence rate that is there is a .54% chance of being attacked. Moreover, whereas Humanitarian Outcome reports refer to relative representations of insecurity, this information is not provided in the open-access database. To have a better idea of relative risk, despite certain data constraints, it would seem more prudent to speak in terms of relative risk and risk ratios as opposed to absolute numbers.
43 Dauvin and Siméant, Le travail humanitaire.
44 Though Duffield does not use the same terminology of sans-frontiérisme, he similarly refers to disappearance of a specific form of NGO voluntarism, born in the late 1960s to early 1970s, that valorized proximity and respected the decision of individuals to determine their own threshold of risk. See Duffield, “Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound”, Duffield, “Challenging Environments.”
45 Donini and Maxwell, “From Face-to-Face to Face-to-Screen”; Duffield, “Challenging Environments.”
46 Humanitarian Outcomes, “Aid Worker Security Report 2011”; Donini and Maxwell, “From Face-to-Face to Face-to-Screen”; Fast, “Aid in Danger.”
47 Fast, “Aid in Danger”; Fast, “Unpacking the Principle of Humanity.”
48 Interview with former ICRC humanitarian executive, November 5, 2015; Interview with a retired security specialist from an IHO, February 13, 2015.
49 ATHA, “On World Humanitarian Day, Reflections on the Bombing of the UN in Baghdad with Claude Bruderlein.”
50 Interview a security specialist from an IHO, April 9, 2014.
51 Interview with a security specialist from an IHO, June 16, 2014.
52 Interview with a security specialist from an IHO, April 9, 2014.
53 As noted in an interview, however, support-advisory roles can sometimes slip into an informal decisional role. Judging themselves as not competent enough on security matters and unwilling to accept the responsibility to make decisions in relation to security, some headquarters program managers and field-level senior managers may opt to pass such decisional authority on to security advisors.
54 Interview with a security specialist from an IHO, April 24, 2014.
55 Interview with a security specialist from an IHO [author’s translation], March 10, 2014.
56 Mac Ginty, “Routine Peace,” 301.
57 Duffield, “From Protection to Disaster Resilience.”
58 Taithe, “Danger, Risk, Security and Protection”; Dauvin and Siméant, Le travail humanitaire. Beerli and Weissman, “Humanitarian Security Manuals.”
59 Interview with a security specialist from an IHO, April 9, 2014.
60 Krause, The Good Project; Egger, “Résistance et exclusion face aux bonnes pratiques de la réforme humanitaire onusienne.”
61 Hansen and Mühlen-Schulte, “The Power of Numbers in Global Governance.”
62 Stoddard, Harmer, and Haver, “Data Are Not Dangerous.”
63 Stoddard, Harmer, and DiDomenico, “Providing Aid in Insecure Environments: 2009 Update”; Stoddard, Harmer, and Haver, “Providing Aid in Insecure Environments: Trends in Policy and Operations.”
64 Stylianides, “Statement on World Humanitarian Day 2015 by European Commissioner Christos Stylianides.”
65 Weissman, “Violence Against Aid Workers”; Dandoy and Pérouse de Montclos, “Humanitarian Workers in Peril?”
66 Fast, “Securitization and Threats to Humanitarian Workers,” 315.
67 Duffield, “Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound.”
68 Fast, “Aid in Danger.”
69 Interview with former humanitarian security expert, May 14, 2015.
70 Interview with international NGO HQ security advisor. January 29, 2015.
71 In-house security module powerpoint presentation of an IHO; Observation of an external training course, February 19, 2015.
72 Security module presentation for an IHO.
73 Rocha de Siqueira, “Development by Trial and Error.”
74 Abbott, The System of Professions.
75 Harmer et al., “Operational Security Management,” 274.
76 Stoddard, Haver, and Czwarno, “NGOs and Risk.”
77 See, for example, Baudendistel, Between Bombs and Good Intentions; Neuman, “On Danger, Sacrifice and Professionalisation; Taithe, “Danger, Risk, Security and Protection.”
78 ICRC, “After the Death of Two ICRC Delegates”; ICRC, “Death of Four Members of ICRC Delegations”; ICRC, “ICRC Delegate Killed in Angola.”
79 Krystalli et al., The Humanitarian Evidence Program.