Verwandte Artikel zu Aid in Danger: The Perils and Promise of Humanitarianism...

Aid in Danger: The Perils and Promise of Humanitarianism (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights) - Hardcover

Buch 47 von 111: Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights

Fast, Larissa

 
9780812246032: Aid in Danger: The Perils and Promise of Humanitarianism (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0812246039 ISBN 13: 9780812246032
Verlag: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Humanitarian aid workers increasingly remain present in contexts of violence and are injured, kidnapped, and killed as a result. Since 9/11 and in response to these dangers, aid organizations have fortified themselves to shield their staff and programs from outside threats. In Aid in Danger, Larissa Fast critically examines the causes of violence against aid workers and the consequences of the approaches aid agencies use to protect themselves from attack.

Based on more than a decade of research, Aid in Danger explores the assumptions underpinning existing explanations of and responses to violence against aid workers. According to Fast, most explanations of attacks locate the causes externally and maintain an image of aid workers as an exceptional category of civilians. The resulting approaches to security rely on separation and fortification and alienate aid workers from those in need, representing both a symptom and a cause of crisis in the humanitarian system. Missing from most analyses are the internal vulnerabilities, exemplified in the everyday decisions and ordinary human frailties and organizational mistakes that sometimes contribute to the conditions leading to violence. This oversight contributes to the normalization of danger in aid work and undermines the humanitarian ethos. As an alternative, Fast proposes a relational framework that captures both external threats and internal vulnerabilities. By uncovering overlooked causes of violence, Aid in Danger offers a unique perspective on the challenges of providing aid in perilous settings and on the prospects of reforming the system in service of core humanitarian values.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Larissa Fast teaches at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Introduction

Humanitarianism is in crisis. More than a decade after 9/11 and the advent of the "war on terror," the dangers to aid workers have increased, as has the complexity of their operating environment. The humanitarian impulse to provide lifesaving assistance is under fire, literally and figuratively: literally, as aid workers from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe are attacked, injured, kidnapped, and killed, and aid agencies are prevented from accessing vulnerable populations; and figuratively, as the essence of humanitarian action—to provide life-sustaining assistance to those suffering as a result of war or natural disaster—is compromised by those who link such assistance to foreign policy or security goals. While many have analyzed the figurative challenges of conflating humanitarian action with other agendas, few have devoted attention to the literal challenge of violence against aid workers and its implications for providing aid. This issue and its attendant consequences provide a neglected yet essential lens through which to examine the state of the humanitarian system. Doing so exposes the practical and analytical challenges of providing assistance, crystallizes its ethos, and offers a pathway for reforming the system.

In 2011, 86 aid workers died, 127 were severely injured, and 95 were kidnapped in 151 incidents worldwide, representing the highest number recorded since researchers began systematically tracking such incidents in the mid-1990s (Stoddard, Harmer, and Hughes 2012). Humanitarian aid operations have evolved in complexity throughout their history, but following the "war on terror" after 2001 they changed more visibly, with an increasing sophistication and fortification in the provision of security for aid workers. These changes are both symptom and cause of the crisis in the humanitarian system. By delving into these changes, I seek not to explain why incidents are increasing but instead to explore the rhetorical constructions of explanations for violence against aid workers and the responses they engender. This project therefore entails examining from a multidisciplinary perspective the assumptions that underlie these constructions. At heart, aid work is a moral and practical good, that is, a compassionate and relational response to the suffering of others. Unfortunately, certain conceptualizations of the causes of the violence and the strategies to protect aid workers inhibit the effectiveness of those strategies, contribute to the normalization of danger in aid work, and undermine precisely those values they are supposed to uphold. Those who manage security for aid operations must take into account a range of possible causes of and responses to violence against aid delivery. In some cases, local, national, or global political and social conditions sow the seeds of security incidents. From Libya to Sri Lanka, providing assistance in the midst of war and deadly conflict is inherently dangerous work. In Pakistan and Somalia, the politics of terror shapes the operating environment and augments the risks for individual aid workers and aid agencies. In Chechnya and the Democratic Republic of Congo, aid agencies have evacuated staff or suspended programs for security reasons. For some organizations and in some contexts, the concern for security trumps other considerations about where and how to operate. Others pay less attention to managing risk, calculating threat, and mitigating the effects of threats and actual safety or security incidents.

In all contexts, however, the risks to aid workers are also ordinary, even mundane. They are embedded in everyday decisions about whom to hire or where aid workers eat and live. Hiring practices can play into long- standing grievances and cause resentment between parties to a conflict or even among those with or without gainful employment. Lifestyle choices—for example, when aid workers frequent restaurants or entertainment establishments offering fare that exceeds the means of the local population—can magnify perceptions of the aid world as the domain of the "haves" in a sea of "havenots." These actions can feed into stereotypes and perceived injustices that create the conditions that may result in security incidents. Obviously not every decision and program, whether individual or organizational, affects local perceptions of aid workers and organizations. Those who ignore these factors, however, do so at their own peril.

In analyzing threat and risk, it is tempting to rely on myopic explanations that emphasize the politicization of aid, the rise in global terror, or the increasingly blurred boundaries between civilian and military actors. Indeed, these oft-cited and compelling explanations have become axioms, accepted at face value and virtually unquestioned as the primary causal mechanisms of violence against aid workers. These factors undoubtedly complicate access to vulnerable populations and compromise the safety and security of aid workers and agencies. An exclusionary analysis of this kind, however, promotes an image of humanitarians as exceptions, operating outside of the conflict dynamics that surround them, and as exceptional, part of a special category of civilians deserving attention and protection. Therefore, these explanations serve to perpetuate the lauded role of aid actors in the public imagination and to maintain an analytical lens that preserves the exceptionalism of humanitarian actors. Moreover, it privileges external factors, which are largely beyond the control of humanitarian actors, as responsible for an increase in violence against them and serves to silence those internal, microlevel factors over which humanitarians do exercise influence, such as personal behavior and choices, security protocols, or the hiring and firing policies of individual agencies. When providing aid in contexts of danger, this is not and cannot be enough. Instead, an analytical framing of these issues that challenges the axiomatic discourses and that seeks to more accurately capture the complexity of the interrelated dimensions characterizing aid in danger is necessary.

While focusing exclusively on internal vulnerabilities negates the contextual dimension of attacks, organizations that calculate risk and vulnerability by focusing exclusively— or even primarily— on external threats place themselves in a reactive mode to the violence around them. Addressing external threats privileges high walls, alarms, guards, and even counterthreats, such as armed escorts for aid delivery. Of course, humanitarians must anticipate external threats and prepare to mitigate the likelihood and impact of an attack. Equipping vehicles with blast plates on the undercarriage and covering windows with protective film that minimizes flying glass shards, for example, limit the impact of an explosion, should one occur. Such measures offer a degree of protection and address the symptoms, if not the causes, of attack. Unfortunately, a priori decisions to react and harden against attack create humanitarian fortresses that further separate aid workers from the populations they assist and help to create a situation in which fear threatens to eclipse the humanitarian imagination. These mechanisms may save lives, but at what cost? By contrast, providing assistance in ways that privilege the relational element of humanitarianism offers an antidote to exceptionalism and a way to reassert the humanitarian ethos in the midst of war and violence.

Exceptionalizing Aid

Humanitarian assistance has long been contested. Depending on the eye of the beholder, it is seen as an individual, compassionate response to the suffering of others, as altruistic (if paternalistic) charity from rich to poor, or as a symbol of a manipulative desire and intention to remake the recipient of aid in the image of the provider. These interpretations generate competing...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
University of Pennsylvania Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0812246039
ISBN 13 
9780812246032
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
326
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Mare Nostrum Group B.V.
gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk

Doelen 72
Breda
4831 GR
Niederlande