stake is humanitarian ethics, humanitarian practice, and humanitarian identity as
they evolve within a changing political dynamic”.^5 Arguably, the crisis of
humanitarianism is in large part a crisis of accountability. Indeed, I will argue that
the search for accountability must always be one of the grand, yet unresolved,
underlying purposes of humanitarianism. Exploring this question reveals the core
problem about the source of accountability within humanitarianism: it is
“humanity”. Yet humanity is not an agent it is easy to be accountable to or for.
The concern with accountability is intimately linked to the recognition of the
harm that humanitarian action can cause, as set out in the previous chapter. The
account given was in agreement with David Rieff’s conclusion that “it is impossible
to really do no harm”.^6 The institutionalisation of humanitarian action can
exacerbate or prolong this in a number of ways.
Firstly, it was seen in the last chapter that power disparities in the
mechanisms of rescue created a problem: on the one hand, to need to be rescued is
to need someone with the power to rescue, on the other, that power conditions the
content of acts of rescue. Secondly, it can cement inaction. Michael Barnett makes
the point that the institutionalisation of humanitarianism has given humanitarian
organisations the power to shape social reality. Their power and authority gives
them a big role in shaping what we consider relevant emergencies and suffering
worthy of consideration.^7 It therefore impacts substantially on what become
“forgotten crises”. Thirdly, institutionalisation can merely represent the
institutionalisation of emergency, and states of “permanent emergency”.^8 A prime
example of this is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
5
Janice Gross Stein, "Humanitarian Organizations: Accountable - Why, to Whom, for What,
and How?" in Humanitarianism in Question: Politics, Power, Ethics , ed. Michael Barnett and
Thomas G. Weiss (London: Cornell University Press, 6 2008).
7 Rieff, A Bed for the Night , 22.
Michael Barnett, "Humanitarianism as a Scholarly Vocation", in Humanitarianism in
Question: Politics, Power, Ethics , ed. Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss (London: Cornell
University Press, 2008), 256. 8
On the concept of “permanent emergency”, see Mark Duffield, "Complex Emergencies
and the Crisis of Developmentalism", IDS Bulletin 25, no. 4 (1994). A useful in-depth study is
Mark Duffield and John Prendergast, Without Troops & Tanks: The Emergency Relief Desk
and the Cross Border Operation into Eritrea and Tigray (Lawrenceville: The Red Sea Press,
1994). See also Edkins, Whose Hunger? , 136-139.