Voluntary service
The Red Cross is a voluntary relief organization not prompted in any manner
by desire for gain.^75The principle of voluntary service raises particularly interesting issues. Rarely
mentioned explicitly in discussions about humanitarianism, my contention here is
that anxiety over this principle is at the very heart of the current identity crisis of
humanitarianism.^76 As Pictet notes in his commentary, Dunant himself judged that
good will was preferable to paid help in the carrying out of humanitarian work.^77
Though for reasons of clarity I will employ the term professional humanitarianism
throughout this thesis, to contrast with more diffuse actions and wider social
dispositions, many humanitarians would still baulk at the term. Avoiding paid help
has become increasingly unviable as humanitarianism has become institutionalised,
though it remains problematic when it comes to, for instance, pay discrepancies
between local and international staff. How can an endeavour like humanitarianism
discriminate against local employees? Yet either solution presents problems: if it
lowers the pay and worsens the conditions of internationals in line with local
conditions, they would lose some of the institutionalised humanitarian gains of their
home countries, if they come from liberal democracies, which they are presumably
precisely trying to spread. If they raise the salaries for local staff to international
level, they can create a distorting brain drain effect.
Simultaneously, as Hopgood points out, to sustain itself as a professional
enterprise, humanitarianism is forced to commodify its moral authority, to sell itself
to achieve its ends, to engage in ruthless competition for lucrative contracts.^78 At
this point, ring-fencing its distinctive, privileged claim to moral authority becomes
more difficult, and it becomes even more important to try to preserve the essence
of the voluntary service principle, doing the right thing for the right reason, hence
the relentless debates about right motive and right intent that have characterised,
75
76 Pictet, The Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross , unpaginated text.
77 An important exception here is Hopgood, "Saying "No" To Wal-Mart?"
78 Pictet, The Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross , unpaginated text.
Hopgood, "Saying "No" To Wal-Mart?" 99.