Disasters,1998, 22(4): 352^360

In Defence of Humanitarianism

Nicholas Stockton
Oxfam

The humanitarian crisis which followed in the wake of the genocidal regime in
Rwanda in 1994 generated massive media attention and an unprecedented outpouring
of international public and private assistance. In late 1997, the Rwanda refugee
population in Zaire was subjected to a disaster of similarly epic proportions as a
result of military action. Yet this crisis went relatively under-reported and failed to
attract substantial aid funds, particularly from official donors. This paper seeks to
document and account for the demise of the humanitarian imperative. It confronts a
number of the criticisms of humanitarian action, concluding that, rather than being
flawed, traditional humanitarian values remain valid and should be defended
wherever there are situations of conflict.

Key words: Rwanda, Zaire, humanitarian principles, aid policy, refugees, health.

In 1996 Oxfam was one of several international relief agencies singled out for praise
in a major inter-agency evaluation of the 1994 Rwanda emergency (Borton et al.,
1996). The agency was cited for having provided clean water to over 2.5 million
refugees and the displaced in the Great Lakes region of Africa during 1994. These
were terrible times and many new records were established. The worst of all being the
genocide in Rwanda where 800,000 people were slaughtered in just six to eight weeks.
In addition there was the largest single exodus of refugees ever recorded: 200,000
poured into Tanzania in two days of April 1994; a record which stood only for four
months until 850,000 Rwandans inundated Goma in August 1994. In response, a
plethora of agencies deployed record numbers of relief workers to provide
humanitarian aid.
After this another grisly new record was to be made. The severity of humanitarian
disasters are typically nowadays measured by reference to the crude mortality rate
(CMR): the numbers of deaths per 10,000 persons per day. Under ‘normal’
circumstances deaths occur at the rate of fewer than 0.5 per 10,000 persons per
day. In dire situations the CMR can double or treble to two or three per 10,000 per day.
In Goma, the dysentery and cholera epidemic claimed about 60 people per 10,000 per
day. Some 50,000 people died in just four weeks (Borton et al., 1996). This public
health disaster was eventually contained by the provision of clean water and intensive
rehydration of thousands of victims. Such humanitarian actions did save tens if not
hundreds of thousands of lives. In certain respects, the Goma relief operation was an
outstanding triumph for the logistics, technology and professionalism of the modern

ß Overseas Development Institute, 1998.

Published by Blackwell Publishers, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
 In Defence of Humanitarianism 353

humanitarian disaster response system. It also represented a new peak of private

humanitarian response in the UK. The 1994 Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC)
appeal raised £37 million for the Great Lakes emergency.
In stark contrast to these events, played out under intensive media coverage, it is
probable that very few members of the public who contributed to the 1994 DEC
appeal also know that another new disaster record was created in the Congo/Zaire in
April and May of 1997. This event followed on from what is probably the largest case
of mass refoulement ever, when in late 1996 hundreds of thousands of refugees were
forcibly repatriated to Rwanda by military action. In the period running up to this
event, the US government, backed by many other states and NGOs, had argued that
repatriation was the sine qua non for achieving political stability within the region. In
the face of insufficient voluntary repatriation, the Rwandan government, apparently
with significant support from the US and others, decided to ‘solve’ the problem
militarily. However, while many people returned to Rwanda, the bulk of the former
Rwanda army and militias plus tens of thousands of civilians fled westwards, with the
Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo–Zaire and the Rwandan
Patriotic Army in hot pursuit. These activities were conducted in a tense atmosphere in
which many humanitarian and human rights agencies felt cowed by the constant
assertions of the US and others1 that humanitarian protection and assistance had
become part of, indeed some argued, the critical element of, ‘the problem’ (Gowing,
1998). In the meantime a rolling horror show unfolded as the military pursuit
penetrated ever further into Zaire. Médecins Sans Frontières has estimated that the
CMR of Rwandan refugees in Zaire peaked at 60.7/10,000 per day in May 1997, a rate
similar to the crisis in Goma in 1994 (Nabeth et al., 1997). For a few days in May,
Oxfam’s staff estimated that the CMR reached 300 deaths per 10,000 per day, a public
health disaster record that Oxfam has not encountered elsewhere.
During 1997 perhaps as many as 200,000 people, from the very same population
that had benefited from the DEC appeal in 1994, may have perished in Zaire —
fleeing from troops clearly intent upon revenge for the genocide of 1994. Privately,
senior UNHCR staff acknowledge that they have ‘lost’ more people registered under
their international protection mandate since October 1996 than the total cumulative
‘loss’ from 1945 to 1996.
Rwanda seems to be sinking back into full-scale civil war, the new Congo
continues to be highly unstable and Burundi’s protracted crisis continues. International
agency staff, inured to this dreadful context, frequently refer to the situation as
‘business as usual’. Such calamitous events appear to provoke no particular
international reaction from the media or from international statesmen now apparently
habituated to witnessing the widespread employment of crimes against humanity and
war crimes as standard tactical devices in contemporary internal warfare. In spite of
the severity of the public health disaster in Zaire in 1997, there was relatively little
media coverage and no DEC appeal for funds. To all intents and purposes, it appears
that those who had benefited from the massive humanitarian operation in 1994 were
deemed to be no longer worth saving in 1997.
What has happened since 1994 that can explain this apparent new indifference to
the plight of so many people in central Africa — and not just there — but also to
people in dire need in Sudan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Liberia, Sierra Leone, North
Korea and numerous other emergencies? How are we able to explain why in 1994 the
world provided US$7 billion in humanitarian aid but only some $3 billion in 1996
354 Nicholas Stockton

(Forman and Parhad, 1997)? While global refugee numbers had declined in this period
by some 16 per cent, the reduction in the refugee ‘case-load’ was almost certainly
compensated for by increased numbers of internally displaced persons.2 The erosion of
humanitarian action is reflected in the year-on-year donor response to United Nations
consolidated appeals (CAPs) for humanitarian programmes which fell short by 24 per
cent in 1994, 27 per cent in 1995, 31 per cent in 1996, 35 per cent in 1997 and so far,
by a massive 79 per cent in 1998.3 It is worth noting that this deteriorating donor
performance in response to the UN CAPs has taken place against a declining appeal
target, down from $2.7 billion in 1994 to $1.5 billion in 1997. It is also important to
recognise that this decline has taken place within a more general slide in total official
international assistance, falling from its high point of $61 billion in 1992 to $55 billion
in 1996.4 Examined from this perspective, the falling level of humanitarian aid seems
to reflect a more general OECD disillusionment with aid transfers.
There are no doubt numerous reasons for this decline in private and official
humanitarian aid and development co-operation. Just some of these pertaining to the
humanitarian system in particular will be considered below.
There are four major challenges to the humanitarian system that have caused great
damage to its reputation. These can be summarised as:
• The demonisation of the ‘undeserving’ disaster victim and asylum seeker.
• The ‘new pragmatism’ that favours the resolution of ‘local problems’ by local
actors.
• The growing hegemony of the theory of welfare dependency.
• The end of the ‘age of innocence’ in media relations with aid agencies.

The `undeserving'disaster victim

Perhaps the most insidious challenge to humanitarian values has been the widely
reported claim that many disaster victims have no one but themselves to blame.
Indeed, in the case of Rwanda it has become a commonplace that the ‘extremist Hutu’
leadership was able to sustain its political control over the refugee population by their
astute manipulation of humanitarian aid. This story line was and is used by many,
including African Rights, the US and Rwandan governments, to justify the forced
repatriation of most of the refugees (or ‘fugitive Hutu extremists’ as they have been
labelled), and the ‘disappearance’ of the remainder. This argument has also suited
many official aid agencies who found in it an excellent reason to suspend
humanitarian aid and to be ‘pragmatic’, i.e. to do nothing, irrespective of any further
distress experienced by this group of pariah refugees. This argument is flawed in many
places.
First, by no means all refugees were guilty of genocide. Indeed some 750,000 of
those forcibly repatriated or ‘lost in Zaire’ were children under five. Over 1.5 million
were under 16 years of age. Of those who disappeared in the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, some 50,000 were children under five, the majority of whom had never set
foot in Rwanda.
Second, withholding humanitarian assistance on the grounds that those in need may
be criminals is like suggesting that the ambulance service should conduct triage on the
basis of alleged criminality rather than upon the clinical urgency of each case. This is
 In Defence of Humanitarianism 355

the arbitrary application of punishment before trial and it constitutes cruel, inhumane
and degrading treatment on a massive scale. Such treatment is arguably a crime
against humanity as the right to life applies to all people. This right is non-derogable
and cannot be legally removed as an act of capricious vengeance.
Third, rights are indivisible and inalienable. The withholding of humanitarian aid as
a substitute for judicial action is ethically and morally indefensible.
Finally, extra-judicial killings and deaths arbitrarily meted out through
‘humanitarian sanctions’ simply serve to reinforce fear, prejudice and to fuel the
cycle of violence, revenge and retribution.
The concept of the ‘undeserving victim’ is therefore morally and ethically
untenable, and practically counter-productive. It represents an outright rejection of the
principles of humanity, impartiality and universalism, fundamental tenets of human
rights and humanitarian principles. When operationalised, the evidence from the Great
Lakes and elsewhere is that the abandonment of humanitarian principles in fact
reinforces the culture of impunity — it does not, as many had naı̈vely predicted,
eradicate it.

The `new pragmatists': local solutions for local problems

As well as blaming the victims, many commentators have claimed that aid prolongs
suffering as it obviates the need for local people to invent local solutions and that it
undermines political accountability and the social contract between citizen and state.
Warlords can tear countries to shreds in the full knowledge that the humanitarian
system will clear up the mess afterwards, and in effect, subsidise the human costs of
warfare. Furthermore, as humanitarian aid does not discriminate between just and
unjust causes, it consequently acts as quartermaster to all parties to any conflict and
thereby prolongs warfare, irrespective of any moral and ethical considerations.
Humanitarian aid also diverts attention away from long-term political solutions and
focuses solely upon treating symptoms. With no prospect of international
humanitarian action, local leaders would be obliged to act more humanely and
responsibly.
This argument assumes that the ‘root cause’ of the problem is to be found and
resolved locally. In other words, forget colonialism, imperialism and apartheid, forget
structural adjustment, forget international debt, forget economic globalisation, forget
the international arms trade and forget rapacious corporate behaviour. Forget covert
superpower military and intelligence operations. While not going to the other extreme
by claiming that external agency is to blame entirely for the post-Cold War increase in
the numbers of internal conflicts, these external forces can surely not be completely
absolved of all responsibility either.
Available evidence suggests that international aid is a drop in the ocean
compared to war economies. For example, total international aid to Afghanistan
stands at about $120 million per annum. The UK street value of Afghanistan’s
annual production of narcotics is an estimated $15 billion. This is about 150 times
more than is spent annually on international aid to Afghanistan and perhaps five
times the amount spent on humanitarian aid globally in 1997. If only an estimated
$45 million is paid to Afghan farmers, the remainder is presumably shared out
between international drug dealers and Afghan ‘warlords’. This would suggest that
356 Nicholas Stockton

cutting humanitarian aid would have little or no impact upon the ability of the
Afghans, and their foreign sponsors, to wage war, nor do many in Afghanistan
believe that it would persuade the warlords to shoulder the burden of the
humanitarian programme and spend less on waging war.5 Criminalised economies
obviously thrive on lawlessness and the collapse of civil authority. Embargoes on
humanitarian aid can however strengthen the hold that warlords and drugs barons
have over already desperate people. Bad as well as good local solutions also exist
and it is very hard to see how humanitarian assistance necessarily favours only bad,
or conversely, only good local solutions.
Were it not so tragic, it would be almost laughable to suggest that without
humanitarian aid wars and natural disasters would stop. It is like saying that we can
prevent traffic accidents and fires by abolishing ambulances and fire-engines.
Confusing correlation with causation is a potentially deadly error in this policy
environment. In the aftermath of the cessation of humanitarian aid to Rwandan
refugees in 1996, the wars in the region have all heated up and tens of thousands have
died. Some speak about the resumption of the genocide in Rwanda. This contrasts with
a lull in political violence in the region during the height of the humanitarian
programme in 1995 and 1996. Arguably, the Great Lakes was a more peaceful place
with international humanitarian aid and protection than it has become without it. Yet
humanitarian protection was quite deliberately suspended and tens of thousands of
people were sacrificed on the altar of a convenient combination of political correctness
and short-term financial expediency that seem to underpin the ‘new pragmatists’, ‘do
no harm’ and ‘local solutions’ policies. Cutting humanitarian assistance as a
punishment for waging war is now advocated by some as a global panacea for
ending conflict. The only likely result is that the victims of war will have their
sentences enhanced.
Finally, and perhaps most crucially, those who are willing to trade lives and
suffering today for political gains tomorrow should perhaps examine the reliability of
economic, political and social forecasting. The demonstration of causation and
attribution in a globalised environment is perhaps more difficult than ever. The
application of ‘do no harm’ policies is tantamount to playing God — a deadly, perhaps
totalitarian business to indulge in without the benefit of 20:20 future vision, a faculty
which is conspicuous by its obvious absence. There is no firmly established
relationship between the provision of humanitarian aid and the prolongation of war,
either in quantitative or in qualitative terms. Aid policies, including the application of
‘humanitarian’ sanctions or embargoes, founded upon such arguments are built upon
weak theory and anecdote only.
Much of the ‘new pragmatists’ argument is been captured in the phrase
‘humanitarianism should not be used as a substitute for political action’ which most
prominently surfaced from the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda
(Borton et al., 1996). In co-opting this argument, the ‘new pragmatists’ have slightly
modified the sentence, with a profound transformation in meaning and implication.
For example, a British Foreign Office official writes that ‘humanitarianism as a
substitute for political action is unsatisfactory’ (Evans, 1997). Does that mean that the
UK will not provide humanitarian assistance if it is seen to be at odds with its political
interests? Such an argument travesties the actual meaning of the Joint Evaluation’s
conclusion which might well have included a caveat to the effect that political action
(or inaction) should not be used as a substitute for humanitarian action. This lesson
 In Defence of Humanitarianism 357

very clearly emerges from the latest study of international assistance co-ordination in
the Great Lakes (Lautze et al., 1998). The failure to mount coherent political and
military interventions in 1994 allowed the genocide to happen. Again, in 1996/7, some
blame for tens of thousands of predictable deaths in the Great Lakes region must be
attributed to the failure (or subversion) of international political will to guarantee
protective asylum or custody for those at risk (see, for example, Stockton, 1996). In
this case ‘local solutions’ were applied, while international humanitarians mainly
watched in frustrated impotence and exclusion. Does anyone now wish to claim this as
a great success?

The culture of dependency

That humanitarian assistance is sometimes given to the wrong people may be bad
enough but it is worse still, some critics claim, that it corrupts and ‘disempowers’ even
those who are entitled to it. Like welfare scroungers, humanitarian beneficiaries
become idle, indolent and dependent. What actual evidence is there for this often-
heard challenge?
The critics of international humanitarian response regularly refer to the funds spent
on humanitarian work in quite awesome terms. In fact humanitarian spending still
amounts to just over 5 per cent of all international development assistance.6 Even at
the high-water mark of international humanitarian spending in 1994, the global total
was less than half of the sum available to the Welsh Secretary of State for Health and
Education for a population of 2.7 million people. Global international humanitarian
spending in 1996 was about the same amount that the British government estimates is
‘lost’ in fraudulent disability claims every year7 — and less than British Telecom’s
annual profit in 1996.
Of course, by definition, desperate people do sometimes depend upon
international humanitarian assistance. We know, however, that the resources
consumed by people affected by disasters are made up, in order of importance from:
their own savings; from so-called ‘survival strategies’ such as casual labour,
prostitution, etc.; from relatives; from host communities;8 and only lastly from aid
agencies. There is no systematic evidence of humanitarian aid being provided in
sufficient quantity nor with adequate reliability for anyone in their right minds,
except perhaps aid workers, to become dependent upon it, let alone build a ‘culture
of dependency’ around it.
There is on the other hand a mass of evidence demonstrating that aid policies
based upon reducing the so-called ‘dependency syndrome’ — such as food-for-
work schemes — are usually inefficient, ineffective and poverty enhancing. Even at
the height of global humanitarian spending, and even assuming no delivery
overheads, the average person affected by a natural or man-made calamity would
receive (usually in kind as the poor seem not to be trusted with money) assistance
worth less than $80 per annum. Bearing in mind that the World Bank uses $1 per
day as the benchmark for absolute poverty, it is obvious that a career in
humanitarian aid scrounging would be pretty short lived, if not to say highly
dangerous, given the places that the claimant must travel to for that assistance. The
current experience of many Sudanese ‘humanitarian claimants’ surely bears this
out.
358 Nicholas Stockton

Given that no major humanitarian operation has ever been based upon an explicit
and binding contractual relationship with beneficiaries, and given that frustrated, and
thus often dead, humanitarian claimants have no legal redress, and given that no
humanitarian agency or donor has ever accepted the concept of a legal obligation to
provide humanitarian assistance, any talk of an ‘international welfare net’ is at best
fanciful. Humanitarian aid may be a form of welfare, but it certainly has not been
given as a right, either in terms of quality or quantity. Numerous studies have
confirmed that beneficiaries normally regard it as a temporary, unreliable and
inadequate windfall (see, Harrell-Bond, 1996). This unreliability is one of the main
reasons why so many people die in humanitarian disasters.
That rich nations and rich individuals should invoke the spectre of the culture of
dependency to reduce international humanitarian spending is something of an
obscenity. Neither logic nor evidence bears out the existence of the humanitarian
dependency syndrome.

NGO proliferation, amateurism and lack of accountability

As many as 100 NGOs are said to have turned up to ‘help’ in Goma in 1994 (Borton et
al., 1996). The place was awash with the modern symbols of international aid: T-
shirts, car stickers and flags. Humanitarian ‘heralds’ were there, the NGO press
officers, doggedly pursuing journalists, brandishing their new angles on the story,
often relating to their own agency’s courage, skill and impact. All clamoured for
television coverage and made claims about what could be achieved, some of which
were indeed outrageous.
Many have subsequently argued that the relief system is now badly out of control,
having become a self-perpetuating expatriate industry unscrupulously exploiting other
people’s misery. Where genuine compassion exists, it is all too often combined with a
gross naı̈vety and amateurism that produces unforeseen and damaging side-effects.
Finally, the international agencies operate in a manner that grants their staff near
complete impunity for professional incompetence. They can get away, literally, with
murder.
While there is doubtless some truth in all of this, it is important to establish how
generalisable the picture is. There is very little empirical evidence that actual harm has
been caused by increased numbers of agencies per se.9 In fact increased agency
competition has certainly demanded more efficient and more professional approaches.
It also offers the donors, both private and official, more choice of potential
implementation partners. Indeed in the ‘development’ zone, many of the same critics
of the humanitarian scene actually celebrate institutional proliferation as an indicator
of the health of ‘civil society’.
It is surely right that humanitarian agencies pursue television and media coverage
of major humanitarian calamities. Would it be better to ignore them or cover them up?
The failure to engage much serious media attention to long-term suffering and
structural poverty is hardly likely to be remedied through cleansing our screens of
disaster stories.
Surely it makes little sense to argue that because some ambulances leave the scene
of some accidents ‘empty-handed’ that in future ambulances will be despatched one at
a time, no matter what the scale and severity of the reported incident. If in Goma some
 In Defence of Humanitarianism 359

agencies turned up unnecessarily, it is very important to consider carefully what might

have happened if an insufficient number had turned up, before jumping to the
conclusion that it is possible to define and plan for an optimal response.
Of course the humanitarian agencies and their staff are not perfect. But compare
their response after the disaster of the Great Lakes with that of governments. While
France, the UK and the US variously denied responsibility and buck passed furiously,
the NGOs got on with the Sphere project,10 People in Aid,11 and the Humanitarian
Ombudsman12 project. These very complex exercises in inter-agency co-operation,
involving hundreds of very diverse organisations, are laying down clear standards of
ethical behaviour, minimum standards in service delivery, best practice standards in
human resource management and methods of enhancing accountability to legitimate
humanitarian claimants.
It is of course easy to build up a portfolio of cases pointing to venality, inefficiency
and ineptitude within the humanitarian system. However, as is often said in legal
circles, bad cases do not necessarily make for good laws. Abolition of the health
service as a whole is not a rational and justifiable response to the identification of bad
practice in particular circumstances. Evidence for and against needs to be weighed
carefully and the principle of proportionality reflected when reforming the system.

Conclusion

The remarkable resilience of Henri Dunant’s concepts of humanity, impartiality,

neutrality and independence are based very particularly upon his recognition in 1859
at the Battle of Solferino that humanitarian aid will only be politically possible and
ethically justifiable so long as it favours neither warring party with military advantage.
These humanitarian principles are as valid now as they were in 1859; in essence the
right of non-combatants to protection from violence, inhumane or degrading
treatment. The Geneva Conventions and other human rights and humanitarian treaties
do therefore confer obligations upon humanitarian organisations and it is absolutely
right that the humanitarian system should be held accountable to these norms.
In this respect, Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent
Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief (1994) offers a powerful normative
framework to judge the performance of the humanitarian system. In general, the
humanitarian agencies are improving their performance in terms of quality, and their
willingness to be held accountable to these principles and associated technical
standards. This is well illustrated by the phenomenon of over 100 humanitarian
agencies co-operating on the Sphere humanitarian standards project. However,
growing evidence suggests that the humanitarian system is doing badly as
humanitarian demand seems to be outstripping the supply of official and private
compassion. But when contrasted with the failures of an international political culture
that fails to get to grips with war-crime impunity, the illegal arms trade and those
macro-economic processes that sustain the iceberg of poverty and inequality that lies
below the surface of most violent conflicts, then the humanitarian system and its
underlying values sometimes look like a warm, albeit beleaguered, beacon of hope.
This must not be extinguished. A public engagement with the human tragedies of
poverty and violence must be renewed, no matter how distant these may seem
geographically or politically.
360 Nicholas Stockton

Notes
1. See, for example: de Waal, A., No Bloodless Miracle, The Guardian, 15 November
1996; de Waal, A., Why One Million Will Not Die, Prospect, 11 November 1996;
Wrong, M., Indecision Hits the Case for Intervention in Rwanda, Financial Times, 25
November 1996. Many other such pieces could be cited.
2. Figures based upon US Committee for Refugees (1998) World Refugee Survey.
3. OCHA, UN Consolidated Appeals Summary data: Relief Web 17/07/98.
4. OECD: Net ODA Flows 1950–1996. Website 17/07/98.
5. At the time of writing, the Taliban have expelled international NGOs apparently on
the understanding that their humanitarian work will be taken over by the United
Nations.
6. DAC figures for 1995 show emergency aid as 5.2 per cent of all international aid
flows says OECD Website 17/07/98.
7. The Guardian, 24/01/98.
8. Host communities also includes host governments, local or national, in this context.
9. Several people have told me that this is a particularly weak section of this paper —
none however has produced any references that offer hard evidence that NGO
proliferation itself is problematic.
10. Minimum standards in humanitarian response, led by the Steering Committee for
Humanitarian Response and Interaction.
11. A UK-based inter-agency project to define and promote best practices in human
resource management.
12. Another UK-based inter-agency project to investigate the feasibility of enhancing
accountability to humanitarian claimants and other stakeholders through the creation
of a humanitarian ombudsman.

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Forman, S. and R. Parhad (1997) Paying for Essentials: Resources for Humanitarian
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Address for correspondence: Emergencies Director, Oxfam, 274 Banbury Road,

Oxford OX2 7DZ.