It is most challenging for humanitarian organizations to operate in accordance with humanitarian principles in contexts where one or more parties to a conflict, most often including the government, refuse to allow humanitarian organizations to provide relief in opposition areas. Belligerents may also seek to control or predate on humanitarian assistance, by setting ethnic or community-based conditions for its distribution. The enduring failure to hold parties to conflicts to account for flagrant breaches of international humanitarian law (IHL) and the rejection of humanitarian principles are well described by David Miliband in his 2019 Fulbright lecture. Long-standing divisions between UN Security Council members have also weakened the authority of the UN system overall. This has negatively affected the efforts of individual leaders, departments and agencies to promote greater compliance with IHL and international human rights law (IHRL). The impunity enjoyed by belligerents has allowed situations to develop in which the lack of political action by states and the pressures of fundraising objectives for humanitarian organizations have, taken together, displaced proper consideration of the interests of affected civilian populations.
It is most challenging for humanitarian organizations to operate in accordance with humanitarian principles in contexts when one or more parties to a conflict refuse to allow humanitarian organizations to provide relief in opposition areas.
Workshop discussions that informed this paper demonstrated that there are important tensions in the application of humanitarian principles that create problems for humanitarian organizations. Foremost among these dilemmas is when belligerents set conditions for assistance that run counter to humanitarian principles, particularly the principle of impartiality, but where humanitarian organizations perceive that refusal to cede to these conditions would threaten their presence, lead to loss of access and risk support to people in need.
The use by donors of humanitarian assistance as a proxy for political action has led to inconsistent responses to the challenges of impunity. This has left humanitarian organizations exposed to further political dilemmas around the nature of their engagement with the state and state institutions, including regional and local authorities. These are issues that humanitarian organizations are ill-equipped to address. The evolution of humanitarian assistance as a means of supporting basic services in protracted crises, in failing and fragile states, has increased the financial vulnerability of humanitarian organizations in ways that encourage them to accede to state pressures. It has also created further dilemmas by allowing humanitarian organizations to replace the role of the state, undermining the social contract between the government and its people to provide basic services. While every context is different and donor priorities influence the ways in which humanitarian organizations are able to respond, these tensions and dilemmas frequently result in trade-offs that actors agree to without the help of a comprehensive conflict-sensitivity assessment or shared ethical framework to aid decision-making. Such processes would help organizations to identify and navigate these issues with a greater understanding of institutional responsibilities for achieving the best possible outcomes.
Participants at the workshops also recognized the long-standing problems of operating transparently and with clearer accountability to those receiving assistance. Specific operational requirements for confidentiality within the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and human rights organizations have, in many cases, been misappropriated by other humanitarian organizations to create a culture that is weak in transparency. This undermines the perceived neutrality of humanitarian actors and more generally their accountability.
‘Humanitarian exceptionalism’ and entitlement
The evolution over time of a culture that may be referred to as ‘humanitarian exceptionalism’ has further complicated the ethical dilemmas faced by humanitarian organizations. In their promotion of the humanitarian imperative and principles, many organizations have neglected the obligations normally incumbent on actors providing humanitarian assistance in a foreign country. Such organizations claim that their humanitarian identity and purpose override their legal obligations to engage with national and local authorities. An underlying reluctance by many international NGOs to engage meaningfully with governments, local authorities and de facto authorities in countries such as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia and Sudan has been a consistent feature of the humanitarian response in those countries. However, the authors of this paper disagree with this position and believe that this culture should be resisted.
Constraints on humanitarian operations
In assessing how humanitarian organizations can work together in a coherent manner to help ensure good outcomes for those in need of assistance, it is necessary to consider the constraints imposed on such organizations by host states and other belligerents that prevent them from operating impartially.
This section builds on the material in the first research paper for this project that looked in detail at the value of joint operating principles in relevant contexts and offers responses to the questions: How can organizations best respond in contexts where belligerents prevent them from operating in accordance with humanitarian principles? And should the mandates of different organizations affect the ways in which they respond to this challenge?
UN General Assembly (GA) resolution 46/182 requires the UN to provide humanitarian assistance in accordance with the principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality. The principle of independence was added in GA resolution 58/114 of December 2003. The pressures on UN organizations to operate accordingly are considerable. Despite differences of interpretation in specific contexts, humanitarian organizations continue to refer to the importance of humanitarian principles. For the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), ‘the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence underpin all areas of the response, across all geographical locations throughout the humanitarian programme cycle’.
For the ICRC, neutrality and impartiality are at the core of its mandate as custodians of the Geneva Conventions and its specific duties under these laws, such as visiting prisoners in conflicts.
For international and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), however, there is no such requirement to operate in accordance with humanitarian principles. Nonetheless, these organizations frequently adopt the principles voluntarily as part of their organizational philosophy and charter. They may also have signed up to the Code of Conduct of the international system of the Red Cross, first adopted in 1994. Organizations may also accept the principles because doing so is a condition of donor funding.
When host governments and other belligerents impede the neutrality and impartial operation of humanitarian organizations, and potentially delay access to populations in need, this can lead to dilemmas and difficult policy choices for humanitarian organizations. An example of such a dilemma is whether to continue providing assistance to people in areas under government control when the government is preventing the same organizations from assisting people in need in areas under opposition control.
This paper suggests that, in such situations, humanitarian organizations always need to confront their options transparently, and in ways that fulfil their responsibility to be accountable, both to local communities and to the states and institutions that authorize and fund their activities. They need to conduct this process, first in the context of a conflict analysis and conflict-sensitivity assessment for the country and specific regions within it, and second by employing an appropriate ethical decision-making framework, as described in the following section, to ensure that all relevant factors are considered in decisions.
Humanitarian organizations always need to confront their options transparently, and in ways that fulfil their responsibility to be accountable, both to local communities and to the states and institutions that authorize and fund their activities.
While each context is unique, there are of course broadly two options, either to cease or reduce operations on the grounds that the humanitarian actor is being prevented from operating in an impartial manner, or to continue operations. If operations continue, humanitarian organizations are faced with sometimes agonizing choices about the extent to which they are willing to accept limitations on their work.
Given the clear mandates of the UN and the ICRC and their commitments to the principles, and the expectation that they will insist on operating in accordance with those principles, it might be expected that these organizations would be extremely sensitive to any attempt to limit their access to people in need and might consider, in some circumstances, either restricting their activities, or even withdrawing altogether.
In recent years, the ICRC and the UN have only very rarely opted to fully withdraw from armed conflict situations. Both have generally continued to deliver assistance in areas under government control, even when the host government has consistently failed to fulfil its obligations under IHL not to ‘arbitrarily withhold consent’ to humanitarian organizations seeking to assist in areas outside government control, and to allow and facilitate the rapid and unimpeded passage of such operations.
Discrepancies in policy and field practice
Research workshops for this project indicated that there are significant gaps between policy statements issued by the headquarters of some humanitarian organizations and the operational decisions and practice of their field offices. In broad terms, where headquarters insist that the organization is undertaking ‘principled humanitarian action’, some field personnel admit that they are approving compromises and trade-offs that allow aid to continue to flow to the people who can be reached. This often seems to be done without assessing the likely impact on the conflict in the local area or the priorities of the local population. In some situations, this willingness to compromise on the principles has been used by host governments to their advantage, as has occurred in Syria since 2011.
Some international NGOs, particularly in Syria, finding it impossible to operate in an impartial manner, have withdrawn or limited their operations to cross-border support in opposition-controlled areas.
‘Solidarity’ as an alternative to the principles
As discussed in some detail in the first paper in this series, there are NGOs openly operating in Syria, Myanmar and some other conflicts that do not accept that it is appropriate for them to conduct activities in accordance with the principle of neutrality. Such NGOs are often referred to as ‘solidarity’ organizations. This title covers an extremely wide range of organizations, with different motivations, funding sources and operational practices. Recently, particularly in relation to Myanmar and Ukraine, the term ‘resistance NGOs’ has also been used.
International NGOs referring to themselves as solidarity or resistance NGOs are more likely to operate through local groups that are resisting repressive regimes or invasions in affected areas, for whom neutrality is not a relevant concept. If donors insist on neutrality as a pre-condition for funding humanitarian operations, they may miss opportunities to support local resilience through solidarity NGOs in the face of oppressive government action.
This also illustrates the dilemmas of other organizations, such as the UN or ICRC, whose mandates prevent them from adopting a solidarity position when they are prevented from operating in an impartial manner.
This situation places a strain on the credibility of the concept of ‘principled humanitarian action’ in several protracted armed conflicts, notably in Syria, which, in the view of the authors, is not being sufficiently recognized or addressed by the UN, the ICRC and their donors.
In addition, some observers may argue that humanitarian organizations of all kinds can be overly influenced in their decision-making by the desire to compete for available funds.
Whatever the validity of such criticisms, decision-making by humanitarian organizations in Syria has not been based on the kind of conflict analysis and conflict-sensitivity assessment proposed in the first research paper in this series, or, so far, on the basis of an ethical decision-making process, such as those discussed below. Such exercises can offer a credible assessment of the impact of these decisions on the peace process and the resilience of local communities.
In addition to the decision-making processes that should take place before operations are undertaken, real-time or later evaluations should also consider these questions. For example, when humanitarian organizations committed to the principles have been systematically prevented from assisting people held in besieged areas and other zones outside the control of the Syrian government, the consequences of the decisions of the government and of the agencies’ responses should be identified.
