Humanitarians and Intervention

By Larry Minear *

Two major topics of the day, preoccupying politicians and diplomats, academics and commentators, talkshows and conferences, are humanitarian intervention and new humanitarian roles for the military. Each topic, complex in its own right, is for the moment surrounded by more heat than light. Taken together, the confusion is compounded.

Reviewing some of the debate among humanitarian professionals on these issues, this chapter advances the view that what is most needed in the post-Cold War era is strengthened capacity among bona fide humanitarian organisations, not military forces retooled to take on humanitarian tasks.

Significant problems in both concept and operations make it difficult to use military assets much more expansively in the service of international humanitarian efforts in armed conflicts within national borders. They may, nevertheless, become more active in international wars and natural disasters.

Whether or not the viewpoint expressed here proves persuasive–it probably represents a minority view among humanitarians–the disparity of views within the humanitarian community suggests caution before building into tomorrow’s global humanitarian economy greater roles for either intervention or the military.

The Current Debate

The early years of the post-Cold War period have witnessed a marked increase in UN peacekeeping operations. The data are by now familiar. In the five years starting from 1988, the UN Security Council authorized 16 UN peacekeeping missions, more than the 14 authorized previously. As of late 1993 there are almost 100,000 peacekeeping personnel on assignment around the world.

Humanitarian considerations have provided the expressed rationale for many peacekeeping operations, large and small. In Somalia, the protection of humanitarian operations was the common strand in 1992-93 joining UNOSOM I, UNITAF, and UNOSOM II. In Bosnia, that same objective guided the deployment and direction of UNPROFOR troops during those same years. UN peacekeeping troops have also providing security umbrellas for, or have themselves carried out, humanitarian activities in other settings around the world. In northern Iraq in the spring of 1991, troops from the Allied Coalition, acting under broad UN Security Council authorization, also played an active role the direct provision of assistance.

Thus many of the current cadre of UN peacekeepers, and of others troops associated with UN-blessed actions, have had direct experience with humanitarian challenges. Conversely, a growing number of humanitarian practitioners have worked in internal armed conflicts, in the process interfacing with military personnel seeking to provide security for their operations. While many in Norway and in other countries with long traditions of peacekeeping activities had been familiar with the military side of the UN, this was new territory for many among policy-makers and the public in the United States.

During the early post-Cold War period up until early 1993, the perception of the experience with ‘humanitarian intervention’ and expanded humanitarian roles for the military was largely positive. In the spring of 1991, the dramatic life-saving activity of coalition troops among the Kurds in northern Iraq led to high hopes for a post-Cold War era in which governments would no longer be allowed to abuse their citizens with impunity. In late 1992 and early 1993, as US troops hit the beaches of Mogadishu and

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starvation deaths were reduced, a certain euphoria permeated the debate. Foreign policy journals took note of a new breed of humanitarians, ‘the new interventionists.’ What one commentator called ‘military humanitarianism’ seemed to be the wave of the future.

These were indeed heady times as the international community broke new ground in terms of legal precedent and political will. Security Council action in northern Iraq under resolution 688 in April 1991 represented the first time the world’s highest political body had found a humanitarian crisis sufficiently threatening to international peace and security to serve as the rationale for intervention. A year later the Somalia operation, observed one analyst, ‘re-presents the first time the [UN] has intervened in the domestic affairs of a member state when that state has not presented a military threat to its neighbours."¹ Breakthroughs on the ground have thus been paralleled by an erosion of the concept of sovereignty, traditionally understood to allow host governments to rebuff humanitarian initiatives by the international community to aid distressed civilian populations. In December 1991, the UN General Assembly in Resolution 46/182 agreed that such undertakings could be launched in special circumstances without the explicit consent of the governmental authorities involved.

During the past year, however, the early euphoria has begun to give way to an uneasy sense that the problems which the military is increasingly being enlisted to solve do not lend themselves to short-term interventions. In northern Iraq, civilians rescued by Allied Coalition troops are now back in their own villages in somewhat perilous condition, both politically uncertain and economically difficult as a result of a boycott by the Iraqi authorities of essential items. In Somalia, starvation death rates had been significantly reduced by March 1993, but by year’s end insecurity had returned and humanitarian activities remained under a cloud.

The experience in Bosnia was probably the most decisive set-back to a new consensus. There, too, UN troops, working together with relief agencies, succeeded in providing food and essential supplies to people in Sarajevo and beyond. The gains, however, were undercut by the continuation of warfare, ethnic cleansing, and population displacement and, most especially, by the defiant attitudes of the warring parties toward humane values and initiatives. As of late 1993, UNPROFOR troops have come to play a greater role in aid efforts as the conflict has reduced the viability of civilian humanitarian personnel. However, there is serious discussion about how much longer the troops themselves will be able to continue.

Reflecting both dramatic successes and ongoing problems, therefore, the current debate requires analysing recent experience with an eye to determining what has worked and has not worked. What are the distinctive contributions which the military can make in situations of internal armed conflict? What functions can troops perform better than humanitarian organisations? In which activities do humanitarian personnel enjoy a comparative advantage? What can be done to maximize the strengths of each? As of late 1993, serious efforts are already under way to retool the military to assist with demonstrably expanding human need. Whether or not such efforts point toward the development of what one analyst has called a ‘military humanitarian complex’ remains to be seen.² In the process, however, both conceptual and operational constraints deserve review.

Conceptual Issues

The fact that reservations exist at all about intervening to save imperilled civilian populations and about using military forces to do so seems astonishing on its face. When people are dying from exposure on the border of Turkey and Iraq, from starvation in Baidoa or Kismayu, or from lack of medical treatment in Sarajevo or Srebrenica, why would the world not come to their rescue, pressing all available resources into service?

Everyone would agree on the practical obstacles to such rescue efforts. These include the challenge of airdropping supplies without injuring people on the ground or benefiting the military, the circumlocution of roadblocks thrown up in front of relief convoys, and the

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avoidance of extortion as the price for the ‘protection’ of humanitarian personnel. Yet the view that conceptual considerations could be compelling enough to leave people unrescued and military assets unhamessed seems difficult to fathom. The idea that such reservations would be held by humanitarians–the very people committed to helping civilian populations at risk–seems all the more mind-boggling.

Five such reservations have emerged. First and most fundamental, some practitioners see a philosophical incompatibility between the use of force and the conduct of humanitarian activities. An extensive body of international law has evolved which commits states at one and the same time to protect civilian populations and to limit their own use of force in doing so. As Michel Veuthey of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has written, an entire corpus of international law–humanitarian law applicable in armed conflicts, the laws of war, the Geneva and Hague Conventions, and provisions regarding human rights in armed conflicts–‘seek[s] the same objective–namely, to limit the use of violence.’³

In such a context, the application of force should not be necessary. Governments within whose borders conflicts are taking place and whose consent is required by law before outsiders may provide humanitarian assistance have agreed to meet the humanitarian needs of civilians or to allow impartial international organisations to do so. In fact, the ICRC itself enjoys the legal right to initiate requests for access. Even insurgent movements that challenge government authority, though not themselves signatories to the Geneva Conventions and Protocols, have also been shown to have a strong political interest in abiding by those provisions.

The historical record demonstrates, of course, that the humanitarian access governments should provide is frequently denied when their own national security is perceived as threatened. Even at such times, however, enforcement action to assure compliance with international law needs to remain within specified legal parameters.

‘[E]ven on the basis of United Nations’ resolutions,’ the ICRC’s Yves Sandoz has written, ‘the use of armed force to get relief supplies through cannot be justified by international humanitarian law since... the obligation to "ensure respect for" this law rules out the use of force.’ The question, therefore, Sandoz concludes, ‘is not one of implementing international humanitarian law but of the appropriateness of using force to terminate serious and mass breaches of this law.’⁴ Strictly speaking, ‘humanitarian intervention’ is a contradiction in terms.

A second consideration, and one lending additional weight to such philosophical concerns, is the fact that some humanitarian institutions are expressions of religious and philosophical traditions which eschew violence. Organisations associated with the Quakers, Mennonites, and other historic peace churches reflect deeply held values about why and how such persons in need should be assisted. Even non-pacifist traditions have historically assisted people upon invitation rather than after gaining forcible entry. While the major institutions currently involved in responding to international emergencies are based in countries with Judaeo-Christian traditions, the sanctity of the individual is the cornerstone of non-western religious traditions as well.⁵ Those alleviating suffering borne by violence are for understandable religious and ethical reasons reluctant to reply with coercion of their own.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the international Red Cross movement themselves, inspired by the suffering of civilians at the battle of Solferino in northern Italy in 1859, have sought to create institutions to aid the victims of violence, not become purveyors of it. Their efforts to insulate activities from the application of force made for difficult choices in civil wars, where the prevailing climate is often one of violence and intimidation of aid activities. In Somalia, rather than curtail its activities, the ICRC with great reluctance contracted for ‘protection’ from ‘technicals,’ or local armed gangs. Even in accepting armed escorts, it sought to distance itself from the use of force by having their bodyguards in vehicles accompanying rather than containing aid personnel.

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Third, and a consequence of such views, consent is of the essence. Since political authorities have agreed in principle to accept external humanitarian assistance when human needs outrun their own capacities, there is a premium on persuading them to meet their commitment to do so. Once the consensual pattern is interrupted and coercion is applied, the chances of non-co-operation with humanitarian efforts at myriad points is increased. The object of coercion, belligerents become less willing to meet their humanitarian obligations voluntarily and more disposed to obstruct humanitarian efforts.

Certainly they have many opportunities to do so. They may restrict entry of aid personnel into the country or their access to specific regions; limit the equipment, currency, and other essential items they may import; or impose unhelpful groundrules governing the registration of their vehicles and telecommunications support needed for their programmes and personnel. In Iraq, the Baghdad authorities showed their displeasure by issuing an edict requiring all international aid personnel to be tested for AIDS. Once cooperative relationships become frayed, countless forms of interference with humanitarian activities exist as a ready device for registering the unhappiness of the authorities.

Fourth, humanitarian activities by their very nature place a premium on transparency. Organisations which assist people to meet their emergency human needs and which protect their basic human rights seek as a matter of principle to carry out their tasks unfettered by extraneous objectives. Particularly in civil wars, where suspicion abounds and humanitarian activities can advantage, or appear to advantage, one belligerent at the expense of others, transparency and non-partisanship are essential to effective and sustained humanitarian work.

In many civil wars, belligerents deliberately politicize access to civilian populations and as a matter of strategy seek to discredit those assisting civilians within the domain of their adversary. In such situations, transparency can make or break a relief undertaking. In fact, even ‘squeaky clean’ relief undertakings are not immune from challenge.

Intervention in Somalia was welcomed by many as an example of disinterested action by the international community, newly freed of the Cold War agendas which had wreaked havoc in the Hom. The two superpowers during the seventies and eighties, it will be recalled, had not only contributed heavily to the warfare but switched their client states, Ethiopia and Somalia. Much was made of the fact that, in a new spirit, in 1992, the Security Council acted at the request of African member states themselves. Yet as played out in the nineties, UN and US involvement in Somalia became entangled with the destructive politics of the nation itself.

When it comes to transparency, organisations like the ICRC and some NGOs, whose sole reason for being is to provide assistance and protection, enjoy an advantage over others who have multiple missions. The intervening military forces of a nation or a coalition of nations, even when given humanitarian tasks, have other interests to protect. While more detached from political agendas, even multilateral military forces take their marching orders from the UN Security Council, for whom humanitarian objectives are rarely pre-eminent.

Fifth, many humanitarian organisations seek to support and strengthen civilian institutions within countries experiencing emergencies. Outside agencies tend to interact with their own counterparts: governments with governments, NGOs with NGOs, military forces with military forces. In countries whose military forces have been associated with undemocratic and repressive rule–and, in civil war settings, where actions by military and paramilitary groups have generated suffering for which humanitarian aid is needed–the involvement of the military in human needs activities can make the task of the country’s own civilian authorities far more difficult.

During the Cold War in Central America, for example, the political objectives of ‘civic action’ programmes carried out by national militaries, sometimes with support from US troops, undercut the value of, and called- into question, the social services provided. In the post-Cold War period, when the rebuilding of civil societies and long-deferred attention to human needs should finally become the overarching agenda, the role of national militaries as a matter of policy deserves to be reduced and circumscribed rather than expanded.

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Outside aid organisations are known by the company they keep: that is, by the national and local counterpart institutions through which their activities are carried out. Enlisting national militaries in international aid activities may cast doubt in the public mind, within the country and beyond, about the integrity of the activities themselves. The co-operation of national troops with outside organisations stands to benefit their international image; the economic and political importance of funds channelled into the country through its armed forces can have major importance. Even where there are few other interlocutors for outside organisations than the military, many aid organisations are reluctant to give local armed forces the imprimatur which co-operation in aid efforts confers.

In short, a host of conceptual considerations points to major problems inherent in the assumption of wider humanitarian roles by the military in intemal armed conflicts. To those conceptual problems need to be added a number of operational difficulties.

Operational Constraints

Considerations of a more practical sort also counsel caution in embracing interventionism and in harnessing greater military muscle to humanitarian operations. The six sets of constraints elaborated here and illustrated by recent experience have been articulated by humanitarian personnel. Some of the concerns are shared by counterparts in the military as well.

First, recent humanitarian initiatives have been undercut by their association with economic and military force. In the Gulf, UN humanitarian organisations were unwelcome among some population groups because of the UN’s economic sanctions and its blessing of joint military action against Iraq. Angry demonstrators in Jordan confronted the UN’s humanitarian personnel–the Security Council had no representatives of its own in Amman–with the sanction’s damage to the local economy. ‘The United Nations kills,’ said one irate Jordanian, ‘and then hurries to walk in the funeral.’⁶

In Iraq itself, the Baghdad government noted that the location of the UN’s humanitarian work–in northern Iraq and among the Shi’ite populations in the south–mirrored the allied coalition’s political-military objectives. While the authorities might well have raised objections to humanitarian activities in any event, the lack of aid activity among suffering civilians in and around Baghdad provided an easy pretext for calling the entire humanitarian effort into question.

In the former Yugoslavia, UN humanitarian personnel and activities suffered from their association with a series of Security Council resolutions and follow-on activities. Serbs in Bosnia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were aggrieved by economic sanctions and the widespread suffering they caused. If applied to all, they said, the sanctions should have been slapped on Croatia too. For their part, Croatians were unhappy because the UN, deployed to the Krajina, had not reopened access there to Croatians. Bosnian Muslims held the UN accountable for acquiescing in territorial aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina and then for participating actively in its dismemberment.

The prevailing animosity against the UN complicated the tasks of UN aid personnel on the ground. Arriving in villages in vehicles indistinguishable from those of UNPROFOR, some UN aid of ficials would begin by reassuring people that they were not part of the UN peacekeeping operation but had instead come to provide assistance. Some UN aid officials with region-wide responsibilities used different sets of business cards so as not to alienate one party or another.

There was evidence to suggest that many efforts to obstruct or subvert UN aid efforts were fundamentally an act of political defiance by one party or another against UN policies, not against UN assistance itself. UN aid officials had to deal with obstruction from within the UN as well, where, following the imposition of economic sanctions, every individual relief shipment into Serbia and Montenegro, some of them destined for Bosnia, required its case-by-case review by the Security Council’s Sanctions Committee. Delays averaged two months, with some shipments diverted elsewhere as a result.

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To be clear, the point is not that there was no need for the UN to apply political, economic, or military pressure. In the view of many, humanitarian activities suffered from substituting for, rather than complementing, such pressure. Even if humanitarian programmes had been integrated into a concerted UN strategy linking its multifaceted activities, however, and even if the negative human impacts of the Security Council actions had been more fully taken into account in advance, associated aid activities would still have suffered.

Second, there are serious limitations on what military can do in the humanitarian sphere. A review of Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq by disaster relief specialist Fred Cuny found that ‘the military proved most effective in its traditional roles’, including logistics support and security. However, it ‘proved ineffective in providing emergency medicine for refugees, assistance for reconstruction, organizing or assisting the harvest and in supporting economic reconstruction activities.’ Cuny concluded that ‘Given the fact that humanitarian needs are often acute and can develop extremely quickly, there is a clear need to marry the military’s quick reaction capabilities with civilian agencies’ skills and expertise in specialized humanitarian services.’⁷

Even with respect to providing security, wherein the military has a broader array of weapons at its disposal than do humanitarian organisations, there are more limitations than commonly realized. Introducing military personnel is no guarantee of success. A small contingent will not necessarily be adequate, as the failure of 500 Pakistani soldiers in UNOSOM I suggests. Yet even the larger contingent under UNITAF did not succeed in establishing country-wide security or in avoiding the loss of life of aid personnel. In Somalia and Bosnia alike, the troops which came to protect aid operations soon needed protection themselves.

The UNPROFOR experience in Bosnia indicates that UN troops were frequently least available where most needed. For one thing, they operated only where the warring parties consented. Thus when ethnic cleansing imperilled the lives of civilians and aid personnel in the Serb-controlled area of Banja Luka, UNPROFOR troops were not in a position to provide assistance. Even where UN soldiers were in evidence, they were often less inclined to take risks than humanitarian personnel, who were more committed to assist people wherever they were, however dangerous the circumstances.

Third, the economic costs of involving troops can be very high. The US Department of Defense estimated the cost of six months of US troop activities in Somalia at $500 million. This exceeded by a factor of ten, UN officials pointed out, the resources available to them for humanitarian activities. With troops given the task of supporting humanitarian operations, the question arises of whether there are not more economical and effective ways of accomplishing humanitarian objectives. Moreover, an ounce of humanitarian funding deployed for preventative purposes, might be worth a pound of cure.

The involvement of the military in carrying out aid activities is itself not cheap. In the former Yugoslavia, the US Defense Department provided goods and services valued at some $144.3 million during the twelve months beginning in October 1992. Included were more than ten million meals-ready-to-eat ($47 million), air transport services ($22.5 million), and clothing and blankets ($9.3 million). Administration costs came to $31 million, however, or roughly 29.6 per cent of the total. The Pentagon’s share of the total US government aid effort during these months was a buxom 36.9 per cent.⁸

Costs of relief programmes are by necessity higher in conflicts than in natural disasters.⁹ However, recent experience suggests that the military may drive up costs further still. In procuring transport from Turkey into Iraq, US troops paid far more than NGOs arranging the same transport from the same local merchants. While the soldiers thought they were getting a bargain, they were in reality inflating the cost of operations for everyone. Although comparisons are not readily available, the cost of a soldier engaged in humanitarian delivery or support functions probably exceeds that of a civilian humanitarian professional.

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In the context of generally well-funded UN military operations and generally underfunded humanitarian efforts, a special irony emerged during UNOSOM II in late 1993. One researcher doing an initial round of interviews reported encountering two instances in which national troop contingents associated with UNOSOM had requested funds from NGOs in order to carry out activities to benefit local civilian populations. The incidents raises a host of questions of a policy and operational nature.

Given the high economic costs associated with the involvement of the military in international aid efforts, some additional analysis is needed before decisions regarding future roles are finalized. For example, it seems reasonable for national militaries to make contributions to relief programmes from existing stocks of meals-ready-to-eat prepared for soldiers. However, creating and manufacturing a new humanitarian-daily-ration, as the Pentagon has done for the former Yugoslavia, itself raises serious policy and operational issues.

Fourth, the humanitarian and military cultures are very different. Humanitarian organisations tend to be more decentralized, egalitarian, and participatory. Military ones are more authoritarian, top-down, and bureaucratic. The humanitarian culture tends to be more sensitive to public opinion and accountable to the public, both in the host country and at home. The military culture has its own self-contained system of justice. Humanitarians tend to be more open-ended in the length of time they are prepared to commit to individual emergencies–to a fault, say some critics. The military are more forced-pace in their approach, anxious to leave at the earliest possible moment.

However unfair such generalisations may be in particular circumstances, they suggest in a broad way the respective strengths and weaknesses of humanitarian and military institutions. The participatory approach taken by NGOs, for example, has the advantages of involving a local population in decision-making about its own future. However, it may also delay the pace at which critical decisions will be made. A military bureaucracy may prove less responsive and flexible yet benefit from clearly articulated policies and organisational procedures which assure a certain consistency. Each approach may have a certain value in particular country situations or at particular points in the evolution of a particular humanitarian emergency.

In Somalia, ‘Centralization of governance has been a root cause of [the] breakdown,’ some analysts have concluded.’¹⁰ That being the case, it may have been ill-advised to deploy troops in ways which focused attention on the capital and on two principal ‘warlords.’ An alternative approach would have been to give equal or more attention to other areas and, within Mogadishu, to work to strengthen the relative standing of other decision-makers elsewhere. NGO activities in a more decentralized and participatory mode have been more successful in Somalia, although they, too, have experienced difficulties.

The Somali experience also highlights another cultural difference. One of the standard features of military planning for interventions is its secrecy. NGOs, whose protection was the explicit objective of Operation Restore Hope and who place great emphasis on open and consultative planning, were not sought out by US military officials in the months leading up to the deployment. This resulted in confusion about what the Pentagon was undertaking and, in the early days after the landing of the troops in Mogadishu, mistaken expectations about how quickly they would deploy throughout the rest of the country.¹¹

Such cultural divides are not altogether unbridgeable. However, they represent a major constraint to be taken seriously before closer operational collaboration between civilian and military institutions is built into the humanitarian system of the future.

Fifth, the introduction of a higher level of force can contribute to violence and further endanger aid operations. As a visitor to Mogadishu in mid-November 1992 when the deployment of US troops was being considered, I arrived reluctantly prepared to endorse the commitment of additional troops to enable aid personnel to reach those dying of starvation. Staggered by the violence in the air and the abundance of weapons on the streets, throughout the countryside, and even in the compounds of relief agencies and UNOSOM itself, I had second thoughts. I came away persuaded that introducing more

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armed military personnel into such volatile surroundings would have an incendiary effect, endangering not only their own lives but those of people they were summoned to protect.

My reservations and those of others more knowledgeable were borne out by events. The lives of more aid personnel were lost in the months following the deployment of UNITAF than in the months immediately preceding. The fact that in mid-1993, the stepped-up contingent of airborne troops struck first at three relief UN and NGO compounds was not reassuring. By year’s end, insecurity had returned to plague aid operations and Somalia had come virtually full circle, with the important exception that starvation deaths had not returned.

The experience in Bosnia also illustrated the reality that many of the obstacles to humanitarian access in civil wars do not lend themselves to the application of armed force. When women and children in towns like Zvornik blocked access to areas controlled by enemies who had killed their menfolk, there was little that UN troops could do short of deploying force at unacceptable levels. Even confronting armed soldiers at roadblocks, UN troops were reluctant to ‘shoot their way through’. ‘Any attempt to use force has a whiplash effect throughout the entire operation,’ explained one UNHCR official. ‘The minute you use force, you make the entire operation untenable.’¹²

Finally, the use of troops caters to the prevailing tendency to embrace easy solutions to deeply rooted problems. Dr. Kevin Cahill, a physician with many years of experience in Somalia, views the military’s role there with ‘a physician’s profound mistrust of "quick fix" therapy.’ Cautioning against ‘deceiving ourselves that dramatic displays can ever substitute for the tedious tasks required to truly rehabilitate a gravely wounded nation,’ he notes that ‘Changing a humanitarian effort into a security action may offer a temporary respite from the pain of frustration, but it reflects an approach that, while gratifying the short-term needs of the healer, fails to resolve the problems of the patient.’¹³

In a world of limited resources, humanitarian assistance already benefits from unfair competition with funds available for activities in the areas of development and conflict resolution. The availability of funds for dramatic responses by the military to life-threatening emergencies are likely, over time, to lessen interest in making the longer-term commitments necessary to address silent emergencies and the tension underlying civil unrest. Military assets thus become implicated in the perennial failure of the humanitarian community to accomplish the ‘ounce of prevention’ which is worth the ‘pound of cure’. Humanitarian aid often moves people from the intensive care unit to the chronic care ward or hospice, but not back into active life once again.

It seems unfair to deny the military a more major role in humanitarian activities simply because its involvement makes more difficult the balanced responses needed to the problems underlying emergencies. At the same time, however, the international community emerges from decades of Cold War hostility with little experience in addressing the intercommunal tensions which are producing so much of today’s many conflicts. ‘When the only problem you have in your tool kit is a hammer,’ the saying goes, ‘every problem looks like a nail.’

In larger compass, then, the problems which confront the international community are ones which require an array of attention by societies themselves, particularly their religious leaders, educators, civic officials, and other forces for healing and change. In that context, the international community can play a nurturing role, but much of the initiative and the longer-term support must come from within.

If the international contribution to the necessary social and economic change is a delimited one, the role of the world’s military assets is even more so. From that perspective, the question raised by Dr. Cahill is anything but rhetorical. ‘Is it in the best, long-term interest of the UN, an organization founded on the premise that mankind could finally beat its swords into ploughshares,’ he asks, ‘to so unbalance its activities in favour of military exercises?’¹⁴

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A Look to the Future

The future is widely expected to bring an upswing in internal armed conflicts as the easing of East-West hostilities provides more space for the expression of local tensions and pentup grievances. Conflicts internal to a given state or, in the case of the former Soviet Union, between and among newly independent states, will challenge the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the international community. With conflicts outpacing the resources of civilian humanitarian organisations and the world’s military establishment looking for a constructive role to play, I see the need for accelerated action on five fronts.

First, the role of the UN Security Council in the humanitarian sphere needs to be reviewed and refined. While its newfound attention to humanitarian concerns is welcome, safeguards need to be introduced to assure more evenhandedness in its consideration of major crises around the world. More-over, the direct conduct of humanitarian operations by Security Council resolution, as in the case of Bosnia, is a recipe for disaster.

Second, recent experience in settings of armed conflict needs more careful analysis with an eye to lessons for the future. That is the thrust of a number of initiatives currently under way, including those with which John Mackinlay’5 and I are engaged. Our forthcoming study of the UN’s response to the crisis in the former Yugoslavia highlights a number of constructive roles played by UN troops, as well as a number of areas where their contribution was more limited.

Third, a number of initiatives are under way to hammer out guidelines for future collaboration between humanitarian and military institutions. These include:

• a set of ‘Guidelines on the Use of Military and Civil Defence Assets in Disaster Relief’,

mediated by the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs;

• a US Defense Department exercise in Multi-Service Procedures for Foreign Humanitarian

Assistance Operations; and

Such efforts need to be encouraged, with an emphasis on a clearly delineated division of labour and on protections to safeguard the integrity, in concept and operations, of bona fide civilian humanitarian organisations.

Fourth, more assertive leadership needs to be provided by the UN’s Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA). DHA was created in early 1992 to serve as the focal point for humanitarian interests within the UN in their interface with each other and between them and the UN’s political and military entities. DHA also serves as focal point for the broader international community on humanitarian concerns. During its initial phase, DHA’s accomplishments were disappointing, in part for reasons beyond its own control. However, the need for the application of increased focus and energy on its agenda in the coming years is critical.

Finally, post-Cold War humanitarian challenges in situations of internal armed conflicts may require new institutions. The study on the former Yugoslavia calls for consideration of the creation of a new UN entity, within the peacekeeping side of the house, which would have the responsibility, now assumed with great difficulty by the UN’s civilian organisations, for humanitarian activities where UN peacekeeping troops or economic sanctions have been applied. The report also calls for significant changes at the interface between peacekeeping and humanitarian actions and actors.

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Notes

^* The Author is Senior Fellow at the Refugee Policy Group, Washington D.C.

1. Samuel M. Makinda, Seeking Peace from Chaos: Humanitarian Intervention in Somalia. International Peace Academy Occasional Paper Series. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.: Boulder and London, 1993, p. 61.

2. April Oliver, ‘The Military Humanitarian Complex?’, In These Times, 22 March, 1993, pp. 19-21.

3. Michel Veuthey, ‘Assessing Humanitarian Law’ in Thomas G. Weiss and Larry Minear, eds. Humanitarianism Across Borders: Sustaining Civilians in Times of War. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993.

4. Sandoz, Yves,’ "Droit" or "devoir d’ingérence" and the right to assistance: the issues involved’, International Review of the Red Cross, May-June 1992, p. 220.

5. For further discussion, see Ephraim Isaac, ‘Humanitarianism Across Religions and Cultures,’ in Thomas G. Weiss and Larry Minear, eds. Humanitarianism Across Borders: Sustaining Civilians in Times of War. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993.

6. Larry Minear, et al., United Nations Coordination of the International Response to the Gulf Crisis, 1990-1992, Occasional Paper # 13. Providence: Watson Institute, 1992, p. 22.

7. Fred Cuny, et al., Humanitarian Assistance Lessons of Operation Provide Comfort, Dallas: Intertect, 1992.

8. U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, ‘Situation Report No. 14 on Former Yugoslavia Civil Strife’, Washington, DC: 16 November, 1993, p. 6.

9. For further discussion of the various factors contributing to higher costs of all such operations, illustrated with reference to the Sudan in specific, cf Francis M. Deng and Larry Minear, The Challenges of Famine Relief: Emergency Operations in the Sudan, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1992.

10. Cf John Paul Lederach, ‘The Intervention in Somalia: What Should Have Happened,’ Middle East Report, March-April 1993, pp. 38-42.

11. Cf. Oliver, op.cit., p. 20.

12. Larry Minear, et al., Humanitarian Action in the Former Yugoslavia: The UN’s Role, 1991-1993, Occasional Paper # 18. Providence: Watson Institute, 1994.

13. Kevin M. Cahill, ea., A Framework for Survival: Health, Human Rights, and Humanitarian Assistance in Conflicts and Disasters, New York: Basic Books and the Council on Foreign Relations, 1993, pp. 89.

14. Cahill, ibid., p. 10.

15. Information about the Second Generation Multilateral Military Project and the Humanitarianism and War Project and their publications is available from Brown University (Watson Institute, Box 1970, Two Stimson Avenue, Providence, R1 02912). Other publications of interest include: Larry Minear, ‘Humanitarian Intervention in a New World Order,’ ODC Policy Focus, No. 1, February 1992, Thomas G. Weiss, ed. United Nations and Civil Wars, Boulder: Lynne Reinner, forthcoming 1994, Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarian Action in Times of War: A Handbook for Practitioners, Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1993 and Thomas G. Weiss and Kurt Campbell, ‘Military Humanitarianism,’ Survival, Vol. 33, No. 5 (September/October 1992, pp. 451-465).