FULL TITLE: Politics and Humanitarian Action (Occasional Paper 41)

AUTHOR(S): S. Neil MacFarlane

PUBLISHER: Watson Institute

PLACE OF PUBLICATION: Providence RI

DATE OF PUBLICATION: 2000

NUMBER OF PAGES: 106

This study examines the prevailing tensions between would-be apolitical humanitarianism, on the one hand, and political influences that intrude upon it. After an initial chapter reviewing earlier variations on current challenges in the pre-Cold War and Cold War past, the author analyzes the interplay between humanitarian action and politics at the level of the belligerents in conflict areas, of governments nearby, and the international community more broadly. Drawing on earlier case studies by the H&W Project, the monograph concludes that "political interest in not necessarily an impediment to effective humanitarian response, nor is political interest unchangeable." Humanitarian interests are urged not to steer clear of politics but to engage political actors at each of the three levels.

Humanitarian principles, humanitarian access, human rights, international law, sovereignty, warfare, pre-Cold War, Cold War, post-Cold War, economic sanctions, peacekeeping, security, reconstruction, regional organizations, funding, professionalism; Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Zaire, Great Lakes Region, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, the Sudan, Biafra, Nigeria, Horn of Africa, Central America, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Georgia, Abkhazia, Ossetia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Caucasus, Iraq, United States, United Kingdom, USSR; UN, UN Security Council, OCHA, DHA, UNHCR, WFP, ECHO, USAID, OECD, OSCE, UNOMIL, UNPROFOR, UNOMIG,UNITAF, ECOMOG, NGOs, the Red Cross Movement.