“The principle of humanity in war’’: a reflection on the IHSA Annual Lecture 2024

In this blog, Andrew Cunningham (Independent Humanitarian Practitioner and Board Member of the International Humanitarian Studies Association, IHSA) considers the principle of ‘humanity’ during conflict, and its interaction with other key humanitarian principles including neutrality, impartiality, and independence. He also looks at how humanitarians can integrate dignity into their work, and how these principles may develop in highly politicised and fast-moving times. This blog summarises a contribution to the roundtable that followed the inaugural IHSA Annual Lecture and is part of a series of blogs produced following the Lecture, which took place in Bergen in May 2024 under the theme of “War and Humanity”.

The principle of humanity is often overlooked when we talk about the humanitarian principles. Focus is normally placed on the ‘big three’ principles – impartiality, independence, and neutrality. The most important of these is impartiality, which is the promise of non-discrimination and lack of bias in aid provision. The idea is to help those most in need regardless of who they are. Impartiality is a central and required aspect of humanitarian’s identity.

Independence, which allows aid organisations to make their own choices outside political interference, is also a foundational principle and facilitates the adherence to impartiality. The promise made by independent humanitarian aid organisations to host governments and non-state actors is that they make their own decisions and are not political tools of foreign governments.

More problematic, and much debated, is the principle of neutrality, which at its core demands that aid organisations do not become involved in political controversies. But some organisations (for example MSF) view it as a limitation on witnessing, speaking-out, and public communications. Do aid organisation have the right, or even obligation, to affect the political situations which lead to humanitarian crises?

But at the top of the list is the principle of humanity. Humanity is the collection of humans, some have the ability to help others, and some are in need of help. For, humanitarian action is simply humans helping other humans in need. Humanity is also a term which denotes a set of characteristics which must be preserved, such as the dignity of the person and a whole set of ‘human’ rights. This may all seem self-evident, yet it is worth reflecting on this lest we stop grounding what we do in the basics.

Humanity, dignity, and solidarity

Dignity is a consequence of attending to the humanity of those caught in a crisis. We all want to be treated with dignity at all times, of course. But those caught up in conflict are even more starved of dignity as their isolation, sense of abandonment, and fear of violence grows.

Humanitarian action doesn’t always do the best job at attending to the dignity of the individual, as so often masses of people are affected by war and are engaged with by organisation as populations. One way in which people in danger can be afforded dignity is the proximity of aid workers to those being assisted. No one wants to ‘feel like a number’ and be just a recipient of material aid or a beneficiary.

A feeling of human solidarity is also important, as this example of my work in Chechnya shows: After several years working in Chechnya during the last war, I was checking-in with the staff at a hospital we had long been supporting. We had been providing a lot of medical supplies and I was asking about its usefulness. But the chief doctor stopped me at a certain point and said that yes, the material aid had been needed, and appreciated. But that was not the most crucial factor. In turns out that not being forgotten, being treated with dignity by people who cared, was the most important aspects of our intervention. Solidarity can be seen as a mix of caring enough to help and being willing to share a moral, if not always a physical, space, with those caught-up in a crisis.

Does digitalisation lack humanity?

One way in which humanitarian aid may be diverting from this idea is through the ‘digitalisation’ of aid delivery. No one wants to only deal with an app on their smart phone or be forever linked to a set of biometrics which defines one’s aid category. There is more to aid than this transactional way of providing it. Proximity to human aid workers is vital to reinforce a person’s sense of dignity. In the search for efficiency and greater outputs (as opposed to outcomes), have we gone too far? Is there still room for the proximity of humans helping other humans? And where is the locus of dignity in this version of aid?

Wars provide a difficult terrain to navigate. The threat of violence to aid actors as well as those living in the crisis makes being proximate hard. The chief doctor I mentioned above had not been visited for quite some time by anyone form my organisation due to the violence in the area. But yet he knew we were sill ‘there’.

Conclusion

Let us return to the principle of humanity which is the highest order principle from which everything else is derived. Impartiality helps guide our operational choices – who we help and why. And independence and neutrality are ways of working which help provide the space to work. Together these all help make state and non-state actors comfortable with our motivations.

At its essence, we should never forget that humanitarian aid is humans helping humans, which requires proximity, dignity and solidarity. We should all remind ourselves periodically of the importance of the principle of humanity as the foundational humanitarian principle.

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About the author

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew has thirty years’ experience in the humanitarian sector, twenty-five years of which with MSF. Andrew has worked in a wide variety of contexts and geographical locations in Africa, the Former Soviet Union, and Asia. He has a PhD in War Studies from King’s College and has published a professional book in the Routledge Humanitarian Studies series on the topic of INGO-State relations. Andrew has served as a member of the Board of MSF International and is currently a board member of the International Humanitarian Studies Association. Andrew works as a researcher, strategic and operational evaluator, and governance advisor for various humanitarian organisations.

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