A quarter of a century later, it was on the question of maintaining strict
neutrality and belligerent consent that a group of French Red Cross doctors split
from the organisation during the Biafran crisis, leading to the formation of MSF. The
highly influential MSF critique, still very much within the Dunantist tradition,
nevertheless reserves the right not to remain neutral and to speak out, if bearing
witness is the appropriate response to a situation.^68 During the Biafran crisis, Oxfam
and other NGOs, fearing a genocide, also abandoned neutrality and organised
airlifts of supplies. Jumping forward, neutrality has clearly been a critical principle in
terms of recent debates on military humanitarian intervention, as they can
obviously never be neutral. But with the benefit of hindsight, fears of a genocide in
Biafra were not borne out and the more cautious ICRC approach may have been
more justified. Its defenders argue that it remains effective as an operating
principle, as an enabler of access and guarantor of non-belligerent status, and that
humanitarianism still has more to lose than to gain from abandoning it.^69
But in a broader sense, David Kennedy notes that within the practice of war
“the formal status of neutrality has eroded”.^70 In the context of complex
emergencies, neutrality can appear particularly difficult to operationalise.^71 In
situations such as genocides, it is non-existent. The question then arises of whether
humanitarianism should seek to collaborate with powerful states to put a stop to
the killing.
68
On MSF and neutrality see Fiona Terry, The Principle of Neutrality: Is It Relevant to MSF?
(MSF, 2000). Available at http://www.msf.fr/drive/2000-12-01-Terry.pdf; accessed on 13
August 2010. 69
For summaries of recent debates, with particular focus on the ICRC, see Larry Minear,
"The Theory and Practice of Neutrality: Some Thoughts on the Tensions", International
Review of the Red Cross , no. 833 (1999). Barbara Ann Rieffer-Flanagan, "Is Neutral
Humanitarianism Dead? Red Cross Neutrality: Walking the Tightrope of Neutral
Humanitarianism", 70 Human Rights Quarterly 31, no. 4 (2009).
71 David Kennedy, Of War and Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 9.
Shapcott, International Ethics.