FULL TITLE: Humanitarian Action: The Conflict Connection (Occasional Paper 43)

AUTHOR(S): S. Neil MacFarlane

PUBLISHER: Watson Institute

PLACE OF PUBLICATION: Providence RI

DATE OF PUBLICATION: 2000

The proposition that humanitarian initiatives fuel the conflicts to which they respond has been a major criticism in recent years of humanitarian action. After reviewing similar critiques of humanitarian activities earlier in the twentieth century, the author examines the ways in which humanitarian assistance may fuel conflict: for example, through diversion of relief supplies and through freeing up local resources for war efforts. He concludes that “the view that humanitarian action has played a substantial role in sustaining or exacerbating armed conflicts and deepening their negative consequences for civilian populations has been significantly overblown. … Humanitarian action is, after all, a rather small element in the complex dynamic of conflict.”

In a concluding chapter, the author examines the possibilities that humanitarian action can play a role in transforming conflicts. He draws on case study material from Guatemala, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, and Georgia to study the extent of any positive effects. He concludes that “relatively small-scale and contextually sensitive efforts to adjust humanitarian programming in active conflicts may have a positive effect in mitigating the impacts of aid on war.” He cautions, however, that the impacts are likely to be modest, localized rather than macro in nature, and may even reduce the impacts of humanitarian assistance itself.

The Conflict Connection is the third of three Occasional Papers on the interconnections between politics and humanitarian action. It builds on its predecessors, Occasional Paper 41, also by S. Neil MacFarlane, and Occasional Paper 42 by Don Hubert.