Humanitarian Intervention and the Use of Force
Humanitarian Intervention and the Use of Force
Michael C Williams (UNHCR)
Much has been written on the subject of ‘Humanitarian Intervention and the
Use of Force’ in the 1990s and much has been published in the pages of the
journals represented around this table today. It is somewhat invidious to pick
out some of those for praise but we in the policy world have learnt much from
the contributions of Stanley Hoffman in Foreign Affairs and Survival, of Tom
Weiss in the Washington Quarterly and Adam Roberts again in Survival are
only some of the memorable contributions to the burgeoning literature on this
subject. I suspect that the current crisis with regard to Kosovo will spark new
contributions seeming to raise as it does the possibility for the first time of a
meaningful reversal of ‘ethnic cleansing’. When I wrote a short piece for the
current issue of ‘World Today’ on this subject I was tempted to draw a
comparison with the 1950s talk of a ‘roll-back’ of communism. Of course as the
Hungarians found to their misfortune in 1956 there was no assistance from the
West, let alone humanitarian intervention. Indeed, the sole assistance provided
was that given by UNHCR, and other humanitarian agencies, to resettle the
200,000 refugees who fled in the West. It was in that much over used phrase, a
defining moment, for UNHCR, hitherto an agency that had not shown much
initiative, or been strongly supported by the international community.
Several decades later in the 1990s as the West again stumbled in its
reactions to another crisis in Eastern Europe, UNHCR was once more the
vehicle for humanitarian intervention. There, as in Hungary earlier, UNHCR
found itself propelled into the front line, literally the front line in the case of
Bosnia. Far too frequently UNHCR as well as other humanitarian actors have
had to make up for political inaction on the part of the international community.
In many respects, political and humanitarian actors are uncomfortable
bedfellows. Some humanitarian actors argue strongly that the principles of
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humanity, neutrality, and impartiality should be strictly adhered to. Others are of
the opinion that in the face of massive human rights violations – ethnic
cleansing in Bosnia and the genocide in Rwanda – humanitarian agencies can
and should no longer maintain their neutrality. There are others who argue that
humanitarian action has de facto become an effective form of political action.
Referring to Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Great Lakes region of Africa, they
argue that the provision of relief assistance and the protection of civilians –
wherever possible – were the principal response in the absence of effective
policies to intervene to end the conflict and to agree on a peace settlement.
There are, however, more important differences between humanitarian and
political action. The fundamental objective of humanitarian action is to alleviate
suffering and save lives. Humanitarian action focuses on people and is rights
based. Political action focuses on states and is guided by national interests and
respect for sovereignty. These are two different starting points – the individual
and the state - and they are not always compatible. How to balance the rights
and ensure the protection of the individual with the interests of the state is a
challenge that any concerted strategy among humanitarian and political actors
must seek to overcome.
Conflict situations and humanitarian crises
Until recently, and with the notable exception of the International Committee
of the Red Cross, most humanitarian agencies did not work in conflict
situations. In the days of the Cold War, the work of humanitarian agencies
matched the geopolitical environment. Refugees, for example, crossed
international borders that were also ideological boundaries - Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Vietnam. Polarisation made political solutions difficult to
achieve. Humanitarian action was needed to save lives, and it was relatively
easy for humanitarian work to be perceived as neutral.
Humanitarian Intervention and the Use of Force
Then the Berlin Wall came down. In humanitarian terms, the crisis in
Northern Iraq, less than two years later, was a turning point. The Kurds brought
a new dimension to the concept of displacement. They did not cross an
ideological line - they massively fled an internal conflict. The interest of the
international community was for them to return home, and most of them indeed
did. Operation Provide Comfort gave rise to the illusion that in the New World
Order there would be space for a New Humanitarian Order.
This illusion was short lived. The end of Cold War polarisation allowed
countless internal conflicts to explode - confused, violent, in which human
displacement was not only the consequence of conflict, but also often its very
objective. In Somalia, troops sent in to support humanitarian operations found
themselves mired in a civil conflict of unexpected complexity. Rightly or wrongly,
they were perceived as taking sides. The failure in Somalia undermined
subsequent efforts to mobilise military interventions in support of humanitarian
action. The subsequent trend has been toward small, low-risk operations after a
peace settlement has been agreed upon.
Humanitarian action by itself cannot resolve the fundamental social and
political root causes of conflicts. When humanitarian agencies are left alone with
problems requiring political and military response, they might even unwittingly
compound such problems. They risk being identified as party to a conflict, and
eventually becoming the scapegoat for political inaction.
The experiences of Bosnia and eastern Zaire were particularly shocking
and traumatic for humanitarian agencies. As a consequence, many suggested
that in such extreme cases, humanitarian agencies should withdraw, or refuse
to intervene. I do not agree. Non-intervention is in contradiction with the
fundamental objective of humanitarian action - saving lives. Rather than limiting
our analysis to the purely humanitarian sphere, therefore, I think we should
examine it in a much broader context, which includes political and - if necessary
- security action, to protect the neutrality and ensure the effectiveness of
humanitarian agencies.
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At the political level, growing awareness exists of the causes and
consequences of massive refugee movements. The threat to regional peace
and security of large-scale forced population movements and massive human
rights violations has been recognised. On an almost daily basis the Security
Council discusses issues which deal with internal conflicts with grave
humanitarian concerns and implications. Likewise, regional organisations have
taken on increasing responsibilities in the area of peace-making and peacesettlements.
This increasing awareness and readiness by international and regional
organisation presents opportunities as well as challenges to humanitarian
agencies: It leads to the mobilisation of peace efforts, provides greater
opportunities for harmonising policies and actions, and facilitates information
sharing,
consultations and
decision-making.
Particularly,
it allows the
incorporation of humanitarian concerns in peace making and peace-keeping
arrangements. The return of refugees was an integral part of the Paris Accord
on Cambodia as well as the Dayton Peace Agreement on Bosnia and
Herzegovina. Many peace-keeping missions - UNTAC, UNIMOZ and UNAMIR included provisions for humanitarian assistance and protection of civilians in
their mission.
To build the momentum for peace, it is essential that a framework guiding
political and humanitarian action is established early on. During the war in
Bosnia and Herzegovina this quite simply did not happen before 1995 - hence
we had the UN deployed when there was war and NATO when there was
peace.
That the primary objective of humanitarian action is to save lives is a widely
accepted, almost tautological statement. However, hard questions are being
asked about humanitarian operations in the 1990s. Some of these questions
grow from the perception that humanitarian efforts have come too little and too
late, or have missed their intended targets, or have caused more harm by
Humanitarian Intervention and the Use of Force
unwittingly prolonging war. We know that the reality is different. We know that
humanitarian efforts have too often been left to stand alone, disconnected from
the political and diplomatic action needed to end the crises that have placed
people in danger.
Saving lives is a moral impulse, not a legal doctrine. In the international
context, that impulse must be translated into reality through a system in which
states are still the major actors. Under international law the sovereign state is
the protector and guarantor of its own people, and of its fundamental rights. In
reality, states very often fail to fulfil this obligation. UNHCR, acting as facilitator,
setting norms, providing support, and often operating on the ground - has two
basic ways to rescue those at risk: facilitate their escape from danger and
protect them in exile, or intervene to end the danger in their home countries.
Asylum or intervention? National governments have become more and more
reluctant to open their doors to asylum-seekers, especially when large numbers
of people are involved. In the richer countries, exclusion and control measures
meant to counter illegal immigration are making it extremely difficult for people
in genuine need of protection even to make a claim for asylum. Poor countries
subject to refugee flows from neighbouring states have become increasingly
unwilling to bear the economic, environmental, political, and security costs of
hosting large refugee populations.
Despite, or rather because of the narrowing of the asylum option, we must
continue to defend it. On the other hand, the intervention alternative is not
promising. The prohibition against intervention in the internal affairs of a state
remains very strong. The record of actual interventions to suppress violence
and restore peaceful relations among peoples at war within their own societies
is not encouraging. Intervention is costly, in financial, political and human terms.
And so the will to intervene, even in the face of horrific violations of human
rights, seems to have faded as the decade has progressed. Will Kosovo reverse
this trend - doubtful, cf, for example, East Timor.
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The number of people in need of rescue, however, has not diminished. In
fact it has grown. One should be deeply concerned about the diminishing
observance of humanitarian principles by governments in many parts of the
world. Many of the poorest countries, particularly in Africa, have long traditions
of hospitality toward refugees. But even in some of these, the past two years
have seen refugees forcibly turned away from the borders of states where they
sought asylum, or forced to return home to unsafe conditions. We have seen
humanitarian agencies denied access to people in great need, governments
unwilling to separate fighters from refugees, and wanton disregard for the
civilian character of refugee camps.
Despite this, the humanitarian impulse remains strong in public sentiment
throughout the industrialised democracies. Increasingly, it finds expression
through civil society. Ordinary people are often far out in front of their leaders in
this respect, as the Kosovo crisis has consistently shown Most are not trying to
be heroes, or even have the chance to be. But many are actively engaged as
citizens
and
organisations,
members
academic
of
churches,
institutions,
advocacy
think
groups,
tanks,
professional
political
parties,
neighbourhood or ethnic associations, and so forth, all promoting human rights
and the humane treatment of people at risk.
This commitment of citizens, and their willingness to organise and support
networks and institutions, have made non-governmental organisations a central
pillar of humanitarian response. NGOs have exerted enormous influence on
humanitarian doctrine in the post-war period. From the late 1960s, prominent
NGOs increasingly have refused to accept the strictures of the Westphalian
doctrine of non-intervention, if the consequences were to deny access to people
in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. During the Nigerian civil war, the
French NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres was formed as a protest against the
Nigerian government’s prohibition of humanitarian aid deliveries to Biafra (and
other aid agencies’ willingness to abide by that prohibition). Over time, states
and intergovernmental organisations have come to accept the gradual erosion
of the sovereignty barrier against humanitarian assistance. UN Security Council
Humanitarian Intervention and the Use of Force
Resolution 688 of 1991, which opened the door of northern Iraq to humanitarian
intervention, is probably the most explicit formulation to date. Humanitarian
agencies, including UNHCR and - very prominently - many American NGOs,
are frequently intervening to protect and rescue people whose lives are in acute
danger, negotiating access sometimes with hostile governments, sometimes
with rebel forces.
Humanitarian intervention alone, however, does not and cannot eliminate
the root causes of the problems it addresses. In spite of its increasing
"sophistication", if I may use this term , it remains a curative measure, unless it
is part of a more comprehensive approach which includes, in particular, a
political dimension. Operation Provide Comfort, in northern Iraq, gave rise to the
illusion that the New World Order would include a New Humanitarian Order. We
know, of course, how history challenged the overall concept of New World
Order. Somalia, in particular, represented the failure of its humanitarian
ambitions.
Former Yugoslavia and the Great Lakes region of Central Africa defined the
contours of this "humanitarian crisis" in the following years. In both, the
combination of humanitarian intervention and political abstention was
conspicuous. Proximity to the West, however, prompted the major powers, and
the US in particular, to finally overcome this gap in the former Yugoslavia.
Dayton, despite all its shortcomings, remains a very important model of
comprehensive response to a crisis which is "humanitarian" in its effects, but
not in its causes.
On the contrary, in Central Africa, the major powers did not see it as part of
their responsibility (nor of their interests) to use force to prevent the 1994
Rwandan genocide, nor - later - to separate refugees from the military and
political elements in the Zairean and Tanzanian camps, nor - in 1996 - to help
humanitarian agencies rescue hundreds of thousands of refugees scattered in
the rainforest during the Zairean civil conflict. Despite its repeated recognitions
of its own multiple failures, and despite dramatic public apologies, the
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international community has yet to engage in an intensive and comprehensive
effort to resolve the dangerous political and ethnic tensions that have caused
the genocide, the controversial refugee exodus, and the Zaire conflict.
Academics and statesmen have often supported the idea of limiting
humanitarian intervention only to situations in which vital national interests are
at stake. I believe the Great Lakes region of Africa, like the former Yugoslavia,
teaches us a vital lesson: that the national interest of a great power is broad and
can in fact be undermined by too narrow a conception of what national interest
is. Today's complex emergencies usually require large-scale relief programmes
or military interventions. They require not individual acts of conscience but
public outcry and political decisions. The resources involved will be collective
ones - political will, tax dollars and national defence assets. Add to this that the
issues surrounding any humanitarian crisis are rarely simple or obvious; in fact,
they are usually complex and almost always subject to dispute.
Humanitarian action often involves agonising dilemmas. In the former
Yugoslavia, we faced excruciating choices: to be an accomplice to ethnic
cleansing by helping persecuted groups flee their areas, or to refuse an
involuntary complicity, but let these people be killed. In the former Eastern
Zaire, the only choice we could give to refugees whom we could find in the rain
forest was to either leave them at the mercy of killers, or help them return to
Rwanda, to deeply divided, and sometimes hostile communities.
The complexities of humanitarian disasters dictate that, while the impulse to
save people in danger may be simple, the act of rescue is not. Our actions may
-in fact almost certainly will -have unintended consequences. At times, they may
end up harming some of the very people they were intended to help.
Humanitarians have often been charged with naivete, and worse - with allowing
themselves to be manipulated by parties to a conflict. If the disasters of this
decade have had any positive outcomes, dispelling this kind of naivete may be
one of them. But it would be futile if naivete were replaced by cynicism or
paralysis.
Humanitarian Intervention and the Use of Force
Humanitarianism has to be smart, effective as well as compassionate. This
may mean at times confronting painful trade-offs between short-term and longterm goals. In my view, however, the presumption must be strongly in favour of
helping people to survive - when choices are limited, as for Rwandans in the
Zairean forest - in order that they may be able to make their own choices later.
Because humanitarian organisations have developed considerable expertise in
providing food, water, sanitation and shelter, saving lives at least offers the
morality of a relatively sure option. As much as humanitarians must guard
against over-reach, we should also guard against over-caution, and not be
afraid to do what we can.
A commitment to rescue does not preclude the political and diplomatic hard
work that must go into bringing about peace, and then helping war-torn
societies achieve reconstruction and reconciliation. In Central Africa, the
awareness of having been abandoned by the international community has
made governments suspicious and cynical in the face of current international
efforts to engage in protection and human rights monitoring.
Towards Full and Effective Cooperation in Crisis
Management
For better or worse, humanitarian, political and security problems and their
solutions are linked and influence each other. Let me therefore first reiterate my
plea for better integrated approaches to international crisis management.
Humanitarian action, far from being solely a question of international charity,
can support peace and reconciliation. In turn, it depends on political and
sometimes military action to end human suffering, both in the short term during
conflict and in the long term to move closer to peace. Humanitarian action,
peace making and the willingness to address security issues are interlinked. In
the absence of an overarching international structure of checks and balances,
they can together generate the synergy necessary to at least prevent chaos
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from spreading in a world which is increasingly moving at very different speeds.
On both moral and practical grounds we cannot afford to let local wounds fester
with the band aid treatment of the past, from which we may be fortunately
moving away.
My second point is the need for further re-thinking of the concept of threats
to international peace and security as a basis for collective action. If the
calamities in former Yugoslavia and the African Great Lakes region have
demonstrated one thing, it is the frequent indivisibility of peace between and
within states, but also between international and human security. In this regard I
deeply appreciate the active interest shown in recent years by the UN Security
Council in humanitarian issues, even when their cross-boundary impact on
international peace and security has not been immediate. For me, this
constitutes enormous progress to the realities of today. It must be further
explored and consolidated.
Third, I wish to emphasise that recognition of the dependency as well as
potential of humanitarian action should not make it subservient to interests in
the political and security realm. Humanitarian action should be used neither as
a fig leaf nor as a scapegoat. Its integrity must be preserved: its strength but
also its weaknesses should be fully acknowledged in political decision making.
While our humanitarian presence can have a moderating effect on receptive
authorities, humanitarian agencies cannot provide protection against virulent
attacks on the security of people, and it is this protection which, although
needed most, remains in short supply. Preserving the integrity of humanitarian
action means recognising fully the impartiality with which it focuses on the
material and protection needs of the victims on either side of a conflict. It means
distinguishing humanitarian impartiality from the question of political neutrality, a
distinction which may pose serious practical challenges in integrated operations
and, for ourselves, painful moral dilemmas when dealing with heinous acts. It
means recognising humanitarian impartiality without hiding behind it because of
reluctance to choose sides against unacceptable behaviour or objectives. It
means drawing clear lines when for the sake of negotiations on peace and
Humanitarian Intervention and the Use of Force
stability certain human rights and humanitarian interests may be sacrificed. And
it means that humanitarian actors should not be left to muddle with unresolved
political questions in the transition from war to peace. I realise that these are
difficult issues given the realities and dilemmas with which we have to work, but
I am convinced that they must be tackled in the interest of effective
humanitarian action and peace.
The fourth and last point I should like to make today is directed at the
institutional level and concerns the future of the UN. The ongoing reform
process offers a crucial opportunity to clearly define the UN's role, including its
humanitarian function as complementary to its essential role for peace and
security. Most importantly, we need to define an appropriate division of
responsibility between the world organisation and its member states. While I
hope for a strengthening of the UN mission for the political settlement of
conflicts, this task needs to be better synchronised with diplomatic initiatives
and the carrot and stick potential of member states, regional political actors and
economic organisations. Too often there has been easily exploitable confusion
rather than synergy. If the world's leading nations fully support the UN's
essential role for peace - rather than engaging themselves in areas where their
strategic interests are thin, the organisation must in my view be equipped with a
rapid military deployment capability. Such forces should not only be prepared to
provide protection and to support the delivery of assistance in mega-crises, but
will hopefully also be mandated to separate and disarm armed elements in
civilian refugee camps. It should provide the necessary leverage to contain
elements that obstruct peaceful settlement as well as to support those that opt
for such settlement.