to remain politically impartial.”^42 For Fiona Fox, “new humanitarianism demands
that all aid be judged on how it contributes to promoting human rights”.^43 The
biggest test of such an approach has come in the form of debates over the
controversial practice of military humanitarian intervention, which will be examined
in more depth in the next section. First, I will set out the potential conceptual value-
added that human rights offer to the disempowered recipients of aid discussed
above. Then I will question two equally implausible practical approaches to the
relationship between humanitarianism and human rights: a complete elision, and a
firm distinction. Neither succeeds in avoiding the contingencies of humanitarian
action, as is further illustrated by the case of military intervention.
Few would disagree with Charles Beitz that “the language of human rights
has become the common idiom of social criticism in global politics”.^44 Chris Brown
agrees that “the language of rights has become the way in which humanitarian
impulses are expressed in the modern international system”.^45 Beitz sees this
development as a watershed moment in the broader history of international
humanitarian action. The relationship between humanitarianism and human rights
is an extremely complex one, not least because both ideas defy (in similar ways),
simple categorisation. In his recent study of human rights Beitz concludes that:
the idea of a human right is not best understood as a fundamental moral
idea in the way that some people conceive of ‘natural’ or ‘fundamental’
rights. Human rights operate at a middle level of practical reasoning, serving
to consolidate and bring to bear several kinds of reason for action. Their
normative content is to some extent open-ended and their application is
frequently contested.^4642
43 Leebaw, "The Politics of Impartial Activism: Humanitarianism and Human Rights": 232.
Fiona Fox, "New Humanitarianism: Does It Provide a Moral Banner for the 21st Century?"
Disasters 25, no. 4 (2001): 278. For a good case study of the “new humanitarianism” in
action, see Tanja Schümer, New Humanitarianism: Britain and Sierra Leone, 1997-2003
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 44
45 Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights , xi.
46 Brown, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice , 133.
Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights , 212.