The Politics of Humanity

In recent years, many professional humanitarians have been more willing to
acknowledge the political dimension of what they do.^89 Janice Stein likens this
recognition to humanitarians “growing up” and argues that:

Humanitarians, belatedly and with difficulty, are acknowledging that they

have been speaking prose, and have been doing so for a long time. To

pretend otherwise, to struggle to maintain the fiction that their work is

apolitical, is to do a disservice to those they seek to help.^90

The true contours of humanitarian politics, understood as a “politics of humanity”,
will gradually take shape as the argument of this thesis proceeds. It is a strong
contention of the thesis that a truly apolitical humanitarianism is both impossible
and undesirable. But within the sphere of professional humanitarianism, explicit
debates on the relationship between humanitarianism and politics have been a
particularly salient feature of the humanitarian identity crisis.
Thomas Weiss posed in his 1999 piece the important question of how the
intersection between politics and humanitarian action best “can be managed to
ensure more humanized politics and more effective humanitarian action”.^91 He
distinguished firstly between classicists, of which the ICRC is the archetypal
example, who see a constant necessity for humanitarian action to be insulated from
politics, and political humanitarians, including himself, who see the association
between humanitarian action and politics as both inevitable and desirable.^92 Within
political humanitarianism, he outlined three trends: minimalists, who aim to “do no
harm”, maximalists, who see humanitarianism as a means to more transformative
ends, such as ending conflict, and solidarists, “who choose sides and abandon
neutrality and impartiality as well as reject consent as a prerequisite for

89
See for instance Mark Duffield, Joanna Macrae and Devon Curtis, "Editorial: Politics and
Humanitarian Aid", 90 Disasters 25, no. 4 (2001): 269. Kouchner, Les Guerriers De La Paix , 484.
Janice Gross Stein, "Humanitarianism as Political Fusion", Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 4
(2005): 741. 91
Implicit in Weiss’ formulation, and explicit here, is the fact that we are dealing with
international politics. Weiss, "Principles, Politic 92 s, and Humanitarian Action": 22.
Ibid.: 2.