The Road to Military Humanitarianism: How the Human Rights NGOs Shaped A New Humanitarian Agenda

The transformation of humanitarianism from the margins to the center of the
international policy agenda has been achieved through the redefinition of
humanitarian policy and practice and its integration within the fast-growing
agenda of human rights. The new international discourse of human rights
activism no longer separates the spheres of strategic state and international
aid from humanitarianism, but attempts to integrate the two under the rubric
of “ethical” or “moral” foreign policy. As the humanitarian NGOs have been
integrated into policymaking forums, the policymakers have increasingly
claimed to be guided by humanitarian principles.
The human rights NGOs, in conjunction with governments and international
institutions, have established a rights-based “new humanitarian”
consensus, which has succeeded in redefining humanitarian policy. The
universal principles, which defined the early humanitarian internationalists,
are now widely criticized by their NGO successors as the language of
universal humanitarianism has been reworked to pursue human rights ends.
The “new humanitarians” assert that their ambitious strategic ends inevitably
clash with their earlier principles, which developed in an age when it
was necessary to obtain the consent from states, in which they operated,
and the opportunities for more long-term involvement were limited. Today,
not only is this more interventionist approach seen as a legitimate response to humanitarian crises in non-Western states, it is increasingly understood to
be nonpolitical and ethically driven.
This paper is concerned with the process through which the core ethics
of humanitarianism have been transformed, focusing on the shift in the
politics of humanitarian interventionism as advocated by nongovernmental
organizations during and after the Cold War. It considers the nonpolitical
approach of traditional humanitarian organizations and the development of
more politicized human rights-based humanitarian NGOs, it further analyzes
some of the consequences of this change, the retreat from the
principles of neutrality and universalism, and the development of “military
humanitarianism.”