humanitarian grounds. For me, that will always be a contradiction in terms. It is a
perversion of humanitarianism, which is neutral or it is nothing.”^73 As should now
be clear, though, this justification is ultimately untenable, as I have demonstrated
that “humanitarian grounds” necessarily represent a vision of politics, and the
“political grounds” acceptable from a humanitarian perspective will precisely be
those that plausibly represent a politics of humanity. Moreover, as we saw in the
previous chapter, the use of violent means cannot a priori be excluded entirely from
the category of humanitarianism, as some potential exclusions might cause us to
lose faith with our own sense of humanity. When conflict rages precisely over the
content of common humanity, there is no neutral ground for humanitarians
The real issue then becomes one of whether human rights, if they are
sometimes, in the breach, justification for military intervention, can be isolated
from other humanitarian concerns. That is, do they represent different, legitimate,
political grounds, from the political grounds on which professional humanitarians
act? Again, it is hard to see how this case can now be maintained, as professional
humanitarians want to use the claim that “you can’t stop a genocide with doctors”,
as a means to make other political actors face up to their responsibilities.^74 In
making such a call, they effectively become part of the human rights regime,
because it is hard to see, in relation to this issue, how the advocacy of an MSF in
asserting its moral authority differs qualitatively from that of Amnesty or Human
Rights Watch. Any call for political responsibility to take the form of military
reaction to human rights abuses necessarily conceptualises it as acceptable (in
response to the unacceptable) in a similar way that the action professional
humanitarians can offer is acceptable or appropriate. That is, it is acceptable on
humanitarian terms, and the potential of humanitarian intervention to honour
human rights adds coherence to professional humanitarians’ response to suffering.
It addresses the danger of humanitarianism getting into the self-undermining
position of having less and less to say, the worse the crime against humanity at
73
74 Ibid., 330.
See for instance Orbinski, "Nobel Lecture".