isolation from its political dimension. Even the most classical humanitarian agent
cannot exercise moral agency without simultaneously exercising political agency.
We have seen how in defining, creating and defending humanitarian space, political
acts and choices are inevitable and constitutive of the moral agency being
exercised, both within and outside of humanitarian space. Humanitarian action is
never just an “ethical act”, as many would have it, but also a political act, and
therefore moral agency is not the only quality of agency sought for in a
humanitarian actor. There may well, then, be a tension here in how these two
qualities of humanitarian agency are embodied, with individual agents more
appropriate bearers of moral agency, and collective agents ones more capacious
political actors.
Any collective agent acting within humanitarianism is necessarily acting “in
the name of humanity”, but will always be a surrogate for a collective agency of
humanity which, in the light of the argument made so far, will always remain an
impossibility. So the relative qualities of second-best agents become very important
and have to be politically negotiated.^33 The corporate identity, decision-making
structure, identity over time and conception of self need to relate plausibly to the
ways in which we generate and enact our sense of humanity. Moreover, though it
may be extremely beneficial for MSF or the ICRC to have corporate identities that
reflect a certain rigour about what kind of moral agency they need to be, they
cannot claim their humanitarian identity as its only possible expression. They can
merely make a case for what they, as actors, can do in the world.
This makes for a very strong case that we should take states very seriously
indeed as potential enactors of humanitarianism, given their hefty practical
capabilities. There are several strands to this argument, to do with processes of
collective humanitarian identity formation, the ability of “good states” to formulate
some degree of humanitarian agency related to these, and the cautionary lessons of
33
Following the logic of the same kind of anti-transcendentalist arguments made by Sen as I
used in the previous chapter.