response by professional humanitarians, but that does not mean that it is
adequately described by the humanitarian actions that may occur. Importantly, this
may ignore or diminish their status as victims of crimes. In brief, the value-added of
humanitarianism as an idea is best achieved by a humble and limited usage of the
term.
This sense of the danger of “humanitarian” acquiring an overly euphemistic
sheen is increasingly a concern. Recently, David Keen rejected the title “complex
humanitarian emergencies” for his book on the subject of complex emergencies
because “the word ‘humanitarian’ carries certain dangers. One is the implication
that the solution lies with humanitarian relief (rather than with tackling underlying
human rights abuses, for example)”.^21 Fiona Terry expresses anxiety about the
other part of the label. “Using terms like ‘complex emergency’ and reiterating how
much more complicated, dangerous, and ubiquitous disasters are today than they
were in the past also help to excuse by transferring blame to the nature of crises
themselves.”^22 As she and Joelle Tanguy put it: "Most ‘humanitarian crises’ are
fundamentally political crises with humanitarian consequences. All the ambiguities
of intervention lie in this essential link."^23 Here we see a logical desire to use
“humanitarian” in a rigorous manner, attaching it to emergencies only in so far as
these are framed in a manner consistent with the possibilities at hand, but without
losing sight of how the situation came about. In his Nobel lecture, James Orbinski
expands on this theme in a passage worth quoting at length:
And ours is an ethic of refusal. It will not allow any moral political failure or
injustice to be sanitized or cleansed of its meaning. The 1992 crimes against
humanity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The 1997
massacres in Zaire. The 1999 actual attacks on civilians in Chechnya. These
cannot be masked by terms like “Complex Humanitarian Emergency”, or
“Internal Security Crisis”. Or by any other such euphemism – as though they
are some random, politically undetermined event. Language is determinant.
21
The quote continues: “Another is that the word may prejudge the motives of interveners
as altruistic (when they may be much more complicated).” The status of altruism is
discussed in the next chapter. Keen, 22 Complex Emergencies , 1.
23 Terry, Condemned to Repeat? , 226.
Tanguy and Terry, "Humanitarian Responsibility and Committed Action: Response To
"Principles, Politics, and Humanitarian Action"": 33.