|
|
|
|
Fall 1993: Armed Interventions And Humanitarian Causes
Triumph or decline of the humanitarian? (PDF, 13 pages, 44 KB) , by Guy Hermet
What meanings does the term humanitarian overlap? Where does it come from? What is its "history"? If the author retraces the history of the concept, which takes a truly universal scope during the 18th century, his goal is to primarily show that the conventions, the practices which have concretised it at present, are not homogeneous, and answer to a wide range of different situations. They obey to logics that are, if not opposing, at least hardly reconcilable under the same term. One can therefore examine the very use of the word and ask if it has (or rather if it still has) a real meaning after having been abusively used and invoked for so many reasons stranger to its own logic.
What will one put on your grave soldier? (PDF, 10 pages, 37 KB) , by Claude Le Borgne
The end of bipolarity, the essential feature of the "new international order", has affected and transformed the nature and materiality of the military policy of the Northern States and of France in particular. The disappearance, for the professionals of war, of the "historic" Soviet enemy has as a direct consequence the redistributing of a certain number of military personnel to missions of peace or protection within humanitarian actions. Deprived of their classical targets, soldiers "dedicate" themselves to missions which logics are opposed to those of battle. The systematisation of these "unnatural" actions represents a threat for the "value" of military forces. Furthermore, the efficiency of humanitarian protection, the facts show, should naturally and legitimately induce the soldier to ask for the extension of his "humanitarian contract". The soldiers' humanitarian missions are not sufficiently clear or precise to allow for their successful accomplishment. If, for Claude Le Borgne, the UN has come to be considered as a respected courthouse, it still remains a "military thing" and one should not exalt the use of law, which sometimes reveals itself to be contradictory, while reducing the use of force to a mere sign or allusion.
From geopolitics to the humanitarian and inversely: the case of Iraqi Kurdistan (PDF, 22 pages, 69 KB) , by Hamit Bozarslan
The "humanitarian" operation "Provide Comfort", which, as the author recalls, constituted an intervention in the juridical "interior" affairs of a Member-State of the United Nations, broadly overtook the initial intentions of Westerns countries, as well as those of the Kurds, since it succeeded in creating a Kurdish territorial entity. If the operation has however failed in causing the final defeat of Saddam Hussein, or in provoking an "Iraqi partition", the Kurd protest of Iraqi power in the Kurdistan is nevertheless a true fact, and the territorial sovereignty of Iraq is chipped. The Kurd case, in spite of its apparent geopolitical aspect, presented some shared points with other humanitarian operations since it stemmed from a will to suspend conflicts: a real policy of postponement or suspension of war, avoiding genocides. But it oscillated between geopolitics and humanitarian causes! The analysis of relationships between the regional actors engaged or confronted with the Kurd problem (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, United States, etc.), enabled a better understanding of the intersection between the humanitarian logic within a highly geopolitical context. It inscribes itself into the process of crisis of the Nation-State and of amplification of ethnic conflicts.
The humanitarian action of French NGOs in Central America (PDF, 10 pages, 36 KB) , by Gilles Bataillon
French humanitarian organisations, notably MSF (Médécins sans Frontières), MDM (Médécins du Monde) and ERM have radically changed their mode of action in Central America within the scope of ten years. The humanitarian action concept, originally based on the definition of punctual goals, pursued with a certain degree of spontaneity and concerned by the maintaining of altruistic ideals, was modified by the will to professionalize all NGO members. This also occurred in order to answer to several "imperatives": justifying the permanence of their actions, adjusting these actions to the beliefs of the "public opinion" and notably to that of donors. The development of a human rights vocabulary, the advent of "new concepts" as, for example, "hostage populations", create the conditions for the humanitarian actors to become the only true witnesses and even "experts" of the Third World. It is however necessary to mention that the actions of these NGOs, new features inscribing themselves into the transforming relationship between the Third World and the West, have always been marked, at times, by a certain degree of disturbing ambiguity, and have sometimes adapted to very paradoxical situations.
The militarization of the humanitarian: the example of Somalia (PDF, 15 pages, 49 KB) , by Roland Marchal
"International public opinion" discovered or rediscovered the Somalian drama during autumn 1992 watching those reports which strove to underline the efforts of humanitarian organisations and commented the intervention of the United Nations forces at the end of the same year. But being too optimistic about these "saving" interventions, one may easily end up forgetting or simply hiding the ambiguous role played by the humanitarian organisations in Somalia. The presence of humanitarian organisations was not recent; they were in the country since the war with Ethiopia. Humanitarian assistance was associated to the political and military strategy of the authoritarian regime and served it through its additional resources, notably by the embezzlement of aid. The characteristic of the Somalian example resides in the extreme indulgence of donors towards the regime in power. Once the regime ousted in 1991, the role played by the few NGOs remained no less ambiguous, since they contributed, certainly unconsciously, to the political economy of the conflict. Finally, the UN military intervention and the massive return of humanitarian assistance, which completely excluded the political, military and social dimensions of the conflict, further deteriorated the situation by only giving priority to the struggle against famine at the beginning.
The stakes of the assistance to Afghanistan (PDF, 19 pages, 59 KB) , by Gilles Dorronsoro
The assistance to Afghanistan represented, ever since the 1950s, a politically decisive stake. The author recalls that the assistance was, even before 1978, among the most significant in the World. It constituted an important factor of destabilisation for Afghan society and could be regarded, according to the author, as one of the main reasons for the Afghan Revolution. The assistance radically varied in nature after the beginning of the civil war in 1978. The new Afghan interlocutors of the NGOs, political parties or military commanders instrumentalised the assistance according to their own political objectives. The humanitarian organisations were certainly not puppets in the hands of the multiple local actors, but the refusal of politics to the profit of "humanitarian gestures". More precisely, their refusal to become acquainted with the complexities of Afghan politics, have certainly not prevented NGOs, for which "no political commitment" was considered as essential, from becoming an active player in the political game. The UN intervention after the Soviet withdrawal transformed the international assistance into a political instrument to get the diplomatic settlement the mudjaheddins refused until now.
Victims or Martyrs (PDF, 109 pages, 37 KB) , by Guy Nicolas
The development of the humanitarian cause, which one would believe definitive, is now increasingly confronted to the resurgence of "nationalitarian" mobilisations. The author evokes the different aspects of these national mobilisations: ethno-nationalist, confessionnalo-nationalist, and messianico-nationalist and explains the reasons for their confrontation with the Nation-State, their ambiguousness, and their lethal effects. He insists on the instrumentalisation of the victims, notably of the acquiescent victims, or "martyrs" influenced by all kinds of national affirmation, all "polis" in arms. In a second part he retraces the evolution of the "humanitarian crusade" and its various aspects, from human rights to the collective minority's right to become a nation, from the altruistic impetus to the "duty of emergency" and the "humanitarian war", underlining the contradictions inherent to this "Utopia", as well as its paradoxical amplifying effects on the production of victims within the frame of the new "victim market" that it contributes to create. He finally evokes the increasingly aggressive confrontations between the different actors, promoting and supporting the new passion for martyrdom and claiming, for some, their opposition to the universalist ideology promoted by humanitarian actors.