Diplomacy, Communication, and Peace: Selected Essays by William Maley

Author:William Maley [Maley, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Diplomacy, General, Peace, Political Science, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9781000224085
Google: MD_-DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 54063206
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-11-15T08:13:37+00:00

Some challenges for humanitarian diplomacy

This is not simply a theoretical problem. It raises practical challenges as well. Diplomatic activity works when it is nested within a framework of norms and understandings that prescribe how actors should behave, and ensure that they honour their commitments. In March 1998, following a physical attack by a Taliban leader on a UN official, the UN suspended its humanitarian activities in southern Afghanistan. As UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi put it, the ‘international community has a standard and if you want to be a member of the club you have to abide by the rules’.40 Unfortunately, humanitarian actors are routinely confronted with actors that have no understanding of such rules, and no commitment to them. In certain circumstances such actors might be socialised into acceptable forms of behaviour,41 but it would be naïve to count on this always happening.

A second, connected, challenge relates to the mandate or authority of negotiators. In many humanitarian negotiations, it can be hard to know exactly with whom one is dealing, and what they can realistically promise. Sometimes complete charlatans can insinuate their way into talks, as occurred in 2010 in Afghanistan, when a man subsequently alleged to have been a grocer from Quetta was given a place at the table.42 Yet even if this is not the case, negotiating with an actor that cannot deliver at the end of the day runs the risk of enhancing that actor’s standing (by signalling that the actor is worth engaging in the first place) without necessarily achieving any desirable outcome. This can easily prompt anger on the part of other actors, and a string of unintended consequences that can leave vulnerable individuals and communities worse off than they otherwise might have been.

A third challenge is that of having to deal with actors who are morally unappetising. This problem, which I discuss in more detail in Chapter 16, is one that crops up regularly in state-to-state relations, where the issue of how to deal with enemies is a live one.43 It occurs just as pressingly in humanitarian diplomacy. The argument in favour is consequentialist: that better results can be obtained through engagement than by keeping one’s distance. This certainly underpinned Bernadotte’s engagement with the likes of Himmler and Kaltenbrunner. Those encounters, however, occurred in unusual circumstances. The war was lost, and senior SS figures had strong reasons of self-interest to make humanitarian concessions that would have been unthinkable even shortly before. But the wider issue of Red Cross engagement with Germany before its defeat was imminent has proved far more controversial. The effective head of the German Red Cross was an active SS officer, Ernst Grawitz, who committed suicide at the war’s end, and critics have charged that the ICRC’s commitment to neutrality and impartiality caused it to squander an opportunity to expose the horrors of the Holocaust.44

A fourth challenge is how to avoid missing the wood for the trees. One danger is that humanitarian action can become an excuse for political inaction. As

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