The European Council on Foreign Relations

Why are we humanitarians?

Date: 28th July 2011  |  Author: Richard Gowan,

Categories: Rule of law, democracy and human rights, Europe and the world,
Tags: ashton, crisis management, eu, haiti

On Monday, I wrote about the political challenge of sustaining the EU’s soft power tools – international development aid and humanitarian assistance – in a period of austerity. As I emphasised, many well-intentioned arguments for providing aid to the needy that were uncontroversial before the financial crisis are now losing traction. There’s a big market for polemics like Linda Polman’s The Crisis Caravan, which argues that the humanitarian industry is inefficient and even fuels civil wars.

The politics of humanitarian aid are particularly complex in the EU, however, because it’s one of the few areas where the Union is still unquestionably a big player.  That’s one reason why Catherine Ashton, who never claimed to be an expert in disaster management, faced a great deal of unfair criticism for her handling of the Haitian earthquake last year. Ashton, the critics argued, failed to make enough political capital out of the European contribution to helping the victims. Even if that argument makes you feel uncomfortable, it’s worth asking how humanitarian assistance fits in with the EU’s faltering efforts to define a role in the world.  Do we help the needy just because it’s the right thing to do? Or do we do it to increase our overall leverage in international affairs?

I’ve explored this problem in more detail in a new piece for World Politics Review (you may need to take out a free trial subscription to access it, but WPR is full of good things, so get on and do it).  The article looks at both the EU’s response to natural disasters like the Haitian quake and last year’s monsoonal floods in Pakistan and its efforts to get aid to the suffering in Libya this year. I argue that European leaders have to decide not only whether to maintain their commitment to humanitarian aid, but also decide what sort of humanitarian player the Union is going to be in future:     

The first is to maintain the EU’s role as the primary backer of multilateral, politically neutral humanitarian operations with the U.N. in the lead. The second is to forge a stronger civilian EU-flagged humanitarian response capacity, a possibility provided for in the Lisbon Treaty. The third is to promote Europe’s gradually shrinking military capacities as humanitarian tools. Each option not only has operational implications but also reflects a different vision of the EU’s global identity: Is it a loyal member of the multilateral system, a unique type of civilian power or a self-consciously well-intentioned military power?

Check out the full piece to see which, if any, of these options makes sense…         

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