You don’t have to be neutral to be a good humanitarian

Four principles – humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence – are considered the foundations of humanitarian action. Without them, it is said, aid workers can neither be legitimate, nor effective. 

For too long, it has also been suggested that international organisations should dominate humanitarian action because only they can be truly neutral third parties in war.

It’s time to question these assumptions, especially when racial justice campaigners are rightly demanding that power be relinquished to national humanitarians in whose countries wars are being fought out – and when the COVID-19 pandemic has placed local aid workers even more at the forefront.