Search Results

Wilfred Beckerman argues that the answer to the sustainability question, ‘what to sustain?’, should not be restricted to some category of the environment, but should refer to the political and social institutions and norms that will guarantee personal liberty and respect for human rights. He is sceptical of arguments in favour of inter‐generational egalitarianism, in part because he sees no reason to invest present levels of welfare with the normative significance that supporters of sustainable development claim for them. He argues, instead, for an ‘extended humanitarianism’ that would take the suffering of the present poor seriously and would entail concern for future generations and even for animals.

Discusses one principle that has been suggested as a guide to the way we ought to take account of the interests of future generations, namely the principle of intergenerational ‘equity’ and its related claim of intergenerational equality, particularly in spheres such as the way we should share out ‘finite’ resources among generations. This chapter examines the possible arguments in favour of intergenerational egalitarianism and concludes that they are difficult to defend. It is proposed that egalitarianism should be replaced by the principle of ‘threshold prioritarianism’, so that our moral obligation to future generations should be based on a humanitarian concern to avoid policies that may impoverish them.

Some current environmental problems are global and have public good elements that raise, in an acute form, the question of how the costs of a collective effort from which the world as a whole will benefit should be shared out among poor and rich countries. This chapter discusses how far theories of justice provide guidance to this question. It argues that the answer seems to be ‘very little’ and that, in order to arrive at some ground rules for allocating the burden of global environmental protection between countries—as between generations—we are forced back on humanitarian principles of concern for the poor.

Investigates why Vietnam was so heavily sanctioned for its use of force against the murderous regime of Pol Pot. The reactions of other states reflected the domination of a pluralist conception of international society. However, I argue that Vietnam's use of force should have been legitimated on solidarist grounds as humanitarian.

The 1990s ushered in a new era in which humanitarian issues played a historically unprecedented role in international politics. Refugee movements in northern Iraq, Somalia, former Yugoslavia, and Haiti were the subject of increasing discussion in political and military fora such as the UN Security Council and NATO. Forced displacements were also at the centre of crises in the African Great Lakes region, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Albania, Kosovo, and East Timor. The eighth High Commissioner, Sadako Ogata, initiated changes within UNHCR that permitted it to respond to internal displacements in ongoing civil wars as well as to promote mass repatriation movements to countries of origin in Central America, Southeast Asia, and Africa. These events have significant implications for the protection of refugees and for the future of humanitarianism.

This chapter places Anglican missionary feminism in the broader context of internationalism and anti‐imperialism between the wars. In the wake of the destruction of the First World War, missionaries reassessed Christianity and colonialism relative to one another, and used gendered ideals of maternalism and humanitarianism to construct a discourse of material and spiritual regeneration. Informed by other supra‐national experiments of the 1920s such as the League of Nations and the ecumenical movement, missionaries and supporters construed a new world order in which ‘Christian internationalism’ would replace imperialism, and female religious authority would enact a comprehensive transformation of social relations that would mitigate hierarchical constructions of gender, class, and race. Maude Royden was among the more vocal critics of an imperialist, capitalist, patriarchal status quo; yet she also personified an uneasy balance of optimism and ambivalence about how to reconcile the mixed record of the global church as well as the empire.

This chapter takes a broad view of British POW policy‐making over the war by highlighting the part played by the Dominion governments. It shows how the Dominions came, over time, to acknowledge their individual responsibility for their nationals in enemy captivity, and how this reflected their growing maturity as independent members of the international community. Waxing concern in the Dominions over the fate of their prisoners led to demand for an increased say in Whitehall policy‐making. Particular emphasis is given to the role of the Canadian government, and the Canadian high commissioner in London, Sir Vincent Massey, in challenging British policy during the shackling crisis, and elevating humanitarianism to the centre of Canadian diplomacy over the middle years of the war.

This chapter examines the politics of childhood in the context of HIV/AIDS in South Africa. It employs the concept of “moral economy” to address the ways in which the tragedy of orphanhood became crystallized as a notion; the constellation of moral sentiments within which it has become entangled; the political debates in which orphanhood has been deployed and transformed; and the interventions that have relied on it as an orienting principle. It proposes to consider moral economies as “the production, distribution, circulation, and utilization of moral sentiments, emotions and values, norms and obligations in the social space.” Understood in this way, moral economy is constructed around social issues, such as immigration, violence, poverty—and childhood—in particular historical contexts. The chapter explores the interface between the global circulation and utilization of moral sentiments with regard to children, and their local production and distribution, as part of a larger project of a moral history of the present focused on “humanitarian reason.” The politics of childhood is particularly relevant to our understanding of humanitarianism—its aspirations and its contradictions.

This concluding chapter discusses the universal aspirations of contemporary human rights and humanitarian movements and the problems that they face. The human rights movement aims to realize the assertion in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Meanwhile, humanitarianism tends to focus on suffering and the prevention or amelioration of physical harm. Both movements, however, are predicated on ethical universality in principle and its global reach in practice. That is, since ethical values, the sentiments they should induce, and the obligations they impose pertain to all humans, so too should ethical agency be indifferent to any distinctions of culture, ethnicity, religion, gender, age, or political divisions.

This chapter introduces the “two faces of faith” discourse that shapes the contemporary global governance of religious diversity. It explains how this discourse shapes contemporary international politics and policy, and illustrates its impact on the politics of transnational humanitarian assistance in North Africa. The North African example demonstrates how the “two faces” framework shapes the lives of the Sahrawi refugees in southwestern Algeria, one of many contexts in which the global dynamics of good religion-bad religion have materialized. The discussion also develops the distinction that is central to the argument of this book between religion as construed by those in positions of power—expert religion and governed religion, of which the “two faces” is an example, and a broader field of cultural and religious practice.

The introduction presents the dominant image informing Western intervention in Africa: helpless African victims in need of external saviors. It shows how this image, as it motivates interventionist practice, gives rise to the paradox of human rights intervention: that intervention can entrench or even give rise to the very problems—the human rights violations—it claims to be resolving. The result is that, instead of fulfilling their stated liberal aspirations, human rights interventions can converge upon arbitrary power, corruption, and violence on the local, national, and international levels. The chapter then places intervention in its international political context, before going on to briefly describe the book’s methodology.

Chapter 3 addresses the politics of relief aid distribution as it has been reframed within a human rights-based approach. The chapter explicates the epistemology, techniques, and effects of relief aid in general and as evidenced in northern Uganda. It argues that, because of the Uganda government’s international political relations, relief aid has been allowed be incorporated into its counterinsurgency with highly destructive consequences, most evident in the archipelago of forced internment camps run by the Ugandan military and international aid agencies. The chapter also shows how the administrative aspect of relief aid tends to discipline the recipients of aid as helpless, passive victims and to criminalize those who refuse that aid.

This epilogue discusses the European powers' humanitarian interventions from the interwar period and since 1989. It first considers the massacres, atrocities, and other abuses committed during World War I and World War II before looking at interventions during the Cold War (1945–1989). It then compares instances of humanitarian intervention and nonintervention since 1989 with those of the nineteenth century. It also examines humanitarian intervention as a means of addressing threats to international peace and security, nineteenth-century humanitarian interventions as ex post facto events with unexceptional outcomes and unintended consequences, and the transformation of intervention from one focused on short-term rescue to one focused on long-term protection of victims of massacres and atrocities. Finally, the chapter explores public opinion regarding humanitarian intervention, the emergence of “new humanitarianism,” and the United Nations's The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) document.

This chapter takes an anthropological look at the principles, institutions, and practices of humanitarianism. The chapter finds that the ethics and norms inherent in the humanitarian encounter frequently reflect the fact that good intentions can have unintended and harmful consequences. This analysis looks at development programs, humanitarian efforts, human rights organizations, and peacemaking initiatives. It is argued that the ethics of humanitarianism may indeed be compromised as humanitarians engage with political reality. However, this engagement elevates politics overall. The principles and rules of humanitarian institutions can constrain power, and its adverse impact on philanthropy. In a case study of the Sudan, however, the chapter finds that Sudanese politics and society overwhelm and subvert humanitarian ethics and norms.