political responsibility. In such contexts, it is human solidarity that demands a
project of defining the unacceptable. Humanitarianism then becomes the discussion
about the ways in which we might characterise the limits of what can be tolerated
as acceptable, and about the political responsibility associated with that.
This prompts two observations. First, this critique of the conventional
understanding of humanitarian emergency makes the concept almost entirely
unsustainable. In emphasising the importance of identifying the human agency and
political responsibility behind human suffering, we would have to identify suffering
entirely devoid of human causes to plausibly characterise it as a humanitarian
emergency in the classical, apolitical sense. As Sen and others have shown, there is
rarely much natural about the human consequences of even apparently natural
disasters.^27 If we were to apply Orbinski’s logic to even such a diffuse problem as
climate change, which promises to deliver a myriad of “humanitarian problems”,
the key humanitarian act would be, not just to deal with those problems as they
arise, but rather to insist on the political responsibility for mitigating and alleviating
the effects of climate change. This is really a case for abandoning the idea of
“humanitarian emergency” altogether.
However, going against this somewhat, the practical utility of the vocabulary
of humanitarian emergency, summarised earlier, may still retain much that is
useful. Symptoms still demand treatment, and the more technical sense of
humanitarian emergency, with its technical account of suffering and its operating
principles, may allow access and a fast engagement with the problem, even if it is
ultimately an unsatisfactory basis for fully describing or solving it. This remains an
important qualification, especially since processes of justice with which Orbinski
clearly wishes to engage may well not take place on a timescale compatible with
saving lives.^28
27
Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1983). See also Oxfam, Rethinking Disasters: Why Death and
Destruction Is Not Nature's Fault but Human Failure (New Delhi: Oxfam International,
2008). Available at
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/conflict_disasters/oxfam_india_rethinking_disa
sters.html; accessed on 13 August 2010. 28
The role of justice in humanitarianism is discussed in Chapter 5.