is in any meaningful sense a more humane place to be than that which preceded it.
They also doubt, quite simply, whether all their practical endeavours are doing
much good. They are finding it harder and harder to answer a simple question: what
is humanitarianism?
Secondly, in response to this important question, it juxtaposes these
debates with the rich discussions in contemporary international political theory on
the appropriate content and scope of human solidarity. Charles Beitz, a central
figure in the resurgence of international political theory, once wrote that: “We need
a political theory of human rights because the international practice of human
rights is problematic”.^3 In this thesis, I want to make a similar case for an
international political theory account of humanitarianism: we need one because the
international practice of humanitarianism is problematic, and because, I argue, the
paradoxes and possibilities of humanitarianism really come into focus when we look
at them through the lens of international political theory. Beyond the discussions
taking place in the context of professional humanitarian practice, I argue that we
need to train this lens both on individual acts of solidarity or rescue, and on wider
discussions about the political traction of ideas of a common humanity. The task of
international political theory here is to explore humanitarianism “as a personal
characteristic, as a relation between individuals, and as a political phenomenon”, to
3
Charles R. Beitz, "Human Rights and the Law of Peoples", in The Ethics of Assistance:
Morality and the Distant Needy , ed. Deen K. Chatterjee (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 193. Italics in original. In a recent work on human rights, Beitz recognises the
limitations, which are equally important to the present study of humanitarianism, of an
ambition to form a single unified theory of human rights: “the aspirations of a theory of
human rights should be in one way modest. To think of human rights as I have suggested is
to accept that we should understand their nature and requirements as responses to
contingent historical circumstances. So it is probably a mistake to expect to discover a basis
for human rights in one or a few clear moral ideas, to formulate a canonical list of rights, or
to devise a single authoritative means for bringing them to bear on practical choices. What
a theory of human rights might rather hope to accomplish is to clarify the uses to which
they may be put in the discourse of global political life and to identify and give structure to
the considerations it would be appropriate to take into account, in light of these uses, in
deliberating about their content and application. It would seek to interpret the normative
discipline implicit in the practice. Such a theory would not, so to speak, stand outside the
practice; it would be continuous with it.” Charles R. Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 212.