and use of relief goods, and free to have a dialogue with the people”.^10 OCHA, more
narrowly, views it as a synonym of “humanitarian operating environment”.^11
Brauman’s definition is especially broad, giving humanitarians a privileged status to
define the terms of debate, access and action.^12 For actors such as CARE, who fully
embrace a rights-based approach, the claim is even more ambitious:
The mobilisation of an emergency response requires an operating
environment that is conducive to the deployment of relief workers and
supplies, managed in line with humanitarian principles of independence and
impartiality. This operating environment is called humanitarian space.
Humanitarian space refers to geographical space in which there is physical
access to people in need, and institutional space in which positive social,
political and military conditions (including security and immunity from
attack) are ensured. This implies that aid agencies are free to assist
populations in need, and are not constrained by political or physical barriers.
For this to be the case, humanitarian agencies need to be free to make their
own choices, based solely on the criteria of need.
Humanitarian space is also defined in terms of the rights of
beneficiary populations to humanitarian assistance and protection. This
definition grounds the concept in a rights-based approach, which implies
that actors-including governments and warring parties-have obligations with
respect to their right to assist and protect.^13The claim has at times been even more transformative. In 1995, Weiss and Chopra
posited that
the identity of populations is also expanding beyond nationality to be all-
inclusive of the human species, irrespective of origin. This is the basis of a
developing global humanitarian space, which is significantly eroding the
distinction between concepts of "internal" and "external." Because
humanitarian space is not linked to territory and transcends sovereign
boundaries, it becomes increasingly difficult to speak of " inter vention"
within it. Consequently, humanitarian assistance shifts from being a
10
Johanna Grombach Wagner, "An IHL/ICRC Perspective on ‘Humanitarian Space’", in
Humanitarian Exchange Magazine 11 (2006).
12 Ibid.
Robert DeChaine sees the MSF understanding of humanitarian space as part of an
attempt to forge a global “imagined community”. DeChaine, Global Humanitarianism , 91-
- 13
CARE International, CARE International Emergency Toolkit. Available at
http://careemergencytoolkit.org/; accessed on 14 November 2008.