Solidarity, Not Neutrality, Will Characterize Western Aid to Ukraine

The war in Ukraine is already causing terrible human suffering, the likes of which is all too familiar from recent wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and elsewhere. But this war is also likely to see a significant change in humanitarianism itself. Many humanitarian organizations, and the governments funding them, will step away from the principle of humanitarian neutrality, which has so dominated western humanitarian aid in the wars of the last 30 years.

Instead, many humanitarians will opt for political solidarity with Ukrainians and recognize humanitarian aid as an important part of Ukrainian resistance against Russian violence and dictatorship. This moral challenge was posed in Myanmar last year and it will happen in Ukraine as well. I expect that several established humanitarian agencies, and most new ones born from this crisis, will not act as politically disinterested humanitarian third parties in this war, but prefer to operate in political solidarity with the Ukrainian government and the humanitarian administration and resistance networks that spring up around it.

The war in Ukraine will not be one in which the Western-funded humanitarian system simply scales up and expands across the war as a neutral humanitarian third party. Many governments and aid agencies will opt for political solidarity with Ukraine, and those that try neutrality will constantly be met with Russian suspicion, refusal, attack, and control.