With the changing nature of global conflicts and disasters, the humanitarian responses to these issues have evolved too. In the 1990s, a new take on humanitarianism was developed called new humanitarianism, which is a more principled, human rights based, and politically inclined approach to aid (Fox 2001). Unlike traditional humanitarianism, new humanitarianism is not neutral in regards to avoiding intervention in political conflicts. New humanitarianism is focused on providing developmental aid that would protect basic human rights and bring long-term peace and stability to all parts of the world. However, most importantly, new humanitarianism rejects the passivity of traditional humanitarianism and focuses on taking direct steps towards intervention, regardless of the situation. By 1993, the United Nations had identified over fifty new wars that were complex political emergencies requiring humanitarian aid. Because the overwhelming majority of these wars were internal and civil wars that entirely affected societies, many experts called for a more hands on humanitarianism approach than previously seen (Nascimento 2015). These criticisms began towards the end of 1980 in regards to the humanitarian interventions in Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda that failed due to lack of agency. After many conversations about the implications of altering the idea of humanitarianism during the late 90s at the meetings of the Politics and Humanitarian Aid Debates, Dilemmas, and Dissention Conferences, the United Nations finally endorsed and officially implemented the idea of new humanitarianism during their world summit in 2005 (Fox 2001).
However, the idea of new humanitarianism was highly controversial, and many thought that for humanitarianism to be most effective it should remain a neutral source of aid, like originally intended. For example, the Secretary of State during the Bush administration admonished the humanitarian efforts that selectively aided civilians in Iraq based on political inclinations and geographic locations, rather than helping all they could. This brings up the idea that the politicized new humanitarianism fosters an exclusivity of who receives aid in order to further political agendas, which completely contradicts the idea that humanitarianism should help and provide aid to all (Mills 2005). Advocates of neutrality in humanitarianism also argue that when aid becomes politicized, it puts the volunteer workers in danger of being targeted by politically inclined groups upset by the direction and implications of the aid. The end of using neutrality as a safety shield also increases the chances that volunteer agencies will be caught in the middle of the fighting and engrained into the conflict. Similarly, locals are less likely to trade with, feed, and advise aid workers when they fear that the workers’ political affiliations will affect the locals’ well being (Mills 2005). Although proponents of politicized new humanitarianism argue that this new system makes it easier to establish peace and structural entities that will maintain stability for long periods, those against it argue that it makes aid workers pawns in the conflict, taking the emphasis away from helping others and shifting it to political agendas.
However, one of the first uses of new humanitarianism successfully mediated conflict and resorted long term stability in Sierra Leone. During the civil war in Sierra Leone, over 100,000 people were forcibly amputated and more than 20,00 were killed. Over 3,000 villages had been affected before the United Nations intervened with the Lomé Peace Agreement and new humanitarianism aid (Bah 2013). Once on the ground in Sierra Leone, the United Nations began efforts to protect civilians, enforce peace, and create a structure for a democratic electoral political system. The foreign aid was concentrated on those who were unaffiliated with the war or whose state was unwilling or unable to protect them, a tenet of new humanitarianism. The war “necessitated a political stance that draws a moral boundary between victims and victimizers, peace seekers and war makers, promoters of democracy and warlords” (Bah 2013, 15). Because new humanitarianism is political in nature, aid in Sierra Leone went beyond the traditional relief work to address root causes of the conflict and enforce the long term peace. Since the end of the war, international agencies continue to mediate conflict in the area in order to maintain the peace and ensure the democratic political system stays in place. Because the humanitarian efforts focused on setting up a political system and instituting long term regulations rather than just providing relief, the aid was truly classified as the new politicized humanitarianism, and in this case, it worked.
Humanitarian Aid in Sierra Leone
The French have a similar system of politicized medical humanitarianism in which immigrants can obtain citizenship contingent on their illnesses in order to receive healthcare and medical assistance. Miriam Tickin discusses this process of obtaining a biological citizenship through the political, exclusionary system of new humanitarianism in her article “Where ethics and politics meet.” It is through this relationship that the connection between new humanitarianism and the politics of health is most clear. The French bill that politicized humanitarianism efforts to provide medical care to immigrants has worked to provide more equal and widespread access to care. Through the new humanitarianism in France, medical personnel selectively provide care to those whose access is restricted, thus giving select individuals biological citizenship through sympathy and exclusion (Ticktin 2006). Therefore, the idea of biological citizenship, or the state recognition based on acknowledgement and compensation for illness, is contingent on individual biases and subjectivities. Because the French use new humanitarianism, they are able to provide ample government resources to the issues, specifically medical care, that might have been otherwise unavailable from NGOs. However, on the other hand, the lack of neutrality in the new humanitarianism fosters an increase of the use of sympathy and exclusion in deciding who receives aid and who doesn’t (Ticktin 2006). Because new humanitarianism focuses on selectively allocating aid to those whose political inclinations align with the intents of the aid organizations, the aid workers use their sympathies to exclude and include individuals from receiving care. When new humanitarianism is applied in the medical context, there are more resources to allocate to medical care, yet care is still only allocated to certain individuals.
References
Bah, Abu Bakarr. 2013. “The Contours of New Humanitarianism: War and Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone.” Africa Today 60 (1): 2-26,137. http://login.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/docview/1446486753?accountid=14816.
Fox, Fiona. “New Humanitarianism: Does It Provide a Moral Banner for the 21st Century?” Disasters 25, no. 4 (2001): 275-89. doi:10.1111/1467-7717.00178.
Mills, Kurt. 2005. “Neo-Humanitarianism: The Role of International Humanitarian Norms and Organizations in Contemporary Conflict.” Global Governance 11 (2): 161-183. http://login.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/docview/213728618?accountid=14816.
Nascimento, Daniela. “One step forward, two steps back? Humanitarian Challenges and Dilemmas in Crisis Settings.” The Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, February 18, 2015.
Ticktin, Miriam. “Where ethics and politics meet.” American Ethnologist 33, no. 1 (2006): 33-49. doi:10.1525/ae.2006.33.1.33.
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