More problematically, in Rwanda, Terry tells us that
The genocide against the Tutsi and those who were seen as supporting them
had continued in the camps, and bodies were frequently dragged from the
lake. In the MSF hospital we strongly suspected that Tutsi children were
given minimal care, or left to die, when we were not around to supervise.
We wondered how many of our Rwandan staff – working in the feeding
center, the hospital, even in our house – had blood on their hands.^24This paragraph sets out some disturbing themes. The absence of a robust
“humanitarian” political authority allows space for a more murderous brand of
politics. The assumed advantages of local staff with local knowledge are also shown
not to be an unbridled good. In this instance, MSF took the decision to leave the
camps they were operating in. Humanitarians were also unable later to defend
refugee camps in what was then eastern Zaire against incursions and attacks from
“Zairean rebels and their Rwandan army allies”.^25 Physical humanitarian spaces are
rarely unaffected by inter- and intra-state politics.
This was graphically illustrated in Srebrenica. A humanitarian space that is
rhetorically whole, but only enough of a physical reality to gather future slaughter
victims conveniently together in one place, is clearly a profoundly troubling
construct. Interestingly, one of the few gestures in the direction of humanitarian
“accountability” was made by a state, when the entire Dutch government
eventually resigned on the issue of Dutch peacekeepers’ failure to protect the
“safe” haven.^26
This should not be seen as a one-way argument towards massive armed
intervention by or on behalf of humanitarianism. When NATO bombed Serbia in
1999, it arguably also constructed a half-formed humanitarian space, in creating a
24
25 Ibid., 2-3.
26 Ibid., 1.
BBC News, "Dutch Government Quits over Srebrenica", BBC News (16 April 2002).
Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1933144.stm; accessed on 14
November 2008. On the UN’s responsibility, see Anthony F. Lang, Jr., "The United Nations
and the Fall of Srebrenica: Meaningful Responsibility and International Society", in Can
Institutions Have Responsibilties? Collective Moral Agency and International Relations , ed.
Toni Erskine (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).