The Politics of Humanity

is also clear that this particular practice within humanitarianism is the dominant
focus for international political theorists in so far as they explicitly engage with
humanitarianism.
Holzgrefe’s definition highlights four separate assumptions that render the
explicit international political theory discourse on humanitarianism at best
incomplete. First, the key agents of humanitarianism are assumed to be states.
Second, violent means are at least potentially legitimate. Third, human rights
violations form the problem to which humanitarian intervention is potentially the
answer. Fourth, a violation of sovereignty in the name of the defence of human
rights is at stake. I will briefly unpack all four.
The role of the state within humanitarianism is a complex one, and will be
examined in greater depth in Chapter 6. But there is clearly a mismatch between
the focus within the humanitarian intervention debates on what the state can or
cannot deliver for humanitarianism and the view of many professional
humanitarians that operational independence from states is a necessary
characteristic of humanitarian action. This view often holds that humanitarianism
precisely implies a lack of self-interest. Therefore, because states are self-interested
actors, they cannot act on behalf of humanitarianism. This line of argument makes
strange bedfellows of some of the more idealistic professional humanitarians and
realist scholars of international relations. Chris Brown notes the intellectual
contortions this leads to within international political theory. “Humanitarian
intervention is generally seen as a non-realist, even anti-realist, notion, but the idea
that there is, or might be, a separate category of state behaviour that can be
characterized as 'humanitarian' owes its existence to the dominance of realist
assumptions about international behaviour.”^109
The means assumed to be at stake are also precisely the most problematic,
when viewed from the perspective of say, a humanitarian aid worker. The use of
violence may be called for in response to a particular problem, but cannot be seen
as forming part of any humanitarian practice. It is often remarked that most
professional humanitarians are not pacifists, yet many still assert that even a just
109
Brown, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice , 136.