own humanity. One may well involve sacrificing the other.^23 Though it may not
always be articulated as such, this dilemma can go all the way down into an
individual’s experience of rescue. Caroline Moorehead’s sensitive study of refugees,
Human Cargo , demonstrates that many refugees who are relocated and attain
bodily security, who are thus rescued in quite a concrete way by institutionalised
humanitarianism, nevertheless often experience a numbing, irreplaceable loss of all
the other elements, beyond their own immediate bodily security, that add up to a
human life beyond the mere passing of days.^24
This tension is of course primarily experienced by the rescued. But it also
characterises some of the sharpest dilemmas of humanitarian action by potential
rescuers. Naturally, other considerations beyond the rescue of those in danger, such
as political expediency, often condition the actions of potential humanitarian
actors. But assuming their good faith (and at times that can be a heroic
assumption), there can often be real dilemmas about whether, say, to effectively
collaborate in an ethnic cleansing, and the destruction of ways of life, in order to
save people in the short term. Variations of this kind of dilemma have been
experienced widely within the “humanitarian international”, for instance in the
creation of “safe areas” in Bosnia in the early 1990s, in the delivery of aid in Hutu-
run camps in Zaire in 1994-1996, or in the violation of the principle of non-
refoulement in disbanding those camps.^25 Of course, in facing these dilemmas,
humanitarian actors are necessarily imposing their own conceptualisations of
rescue, and what it means to be rescued.
23
This links to the discussion of the relationship between humanitarianism and human
rights in the next chapter. For an argument on how humanitarianism can aggravate the
issues by dehistoricising and depoliticising refugees, see Liisa H. Malkki, "Speechless
Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization", Cultural Anthropology 11,
no. 3 (1996). 24
25 Moorehead, Human Cargo.
Power, Chasing the Flame. Terry, Condemned to Repeat?