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Humanitarian Crises and the International Politics of Selectivity

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Abstract

How has the international community responded to humanitarian crises after the end of the Cold War? While optimistic ideational perspectives on global governance stress the importance of humanitarian norms and argue that humanitarian crises have been increasingly addressed, more skeptical realist accounts point to material interests and maintain that these responses have remained highly selective. In empirical terms, however, we know very little about the actual extent of selectivity since, so far, the international community’s reaction to humanitarian crises has not been systematically examined. This article addresses this gap by empirically examining the extent and the nature of the selectivity of humanitarian crises. To do so, the most severe humanitarian crises in the post-Cold War era are identified and examined for whether and how the international community responded. This study considers different modes of crisis response (ranging from inaction to military intervention) and different actors (including states, international institutions, and nonstate actors), yielding a more precise picture of the alleged “selectivity gap” and a number of theoretical implications for contemporary global security governance.

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Notes

  1. In 1992, for example, former Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali accused western states of waging “a rich man’s war in Yugoslavia while not lifting a finger to save Somalia from disintegration” (Hirsch and Oakley 1995, 37). Pointing to the intervention in Kosovo, his successor, Kofi Annan, stated that “[i]f the new commitment to intervention in the face of extreme suffering is to retain the support of the world’s peoples, it must be—and must be seen to be—fairly and consistently applied, irrespective of region or nation. Humanity, after all, is indivisible” (Damrosch 2000, 106).

  2. Most definitions of humanitarian crises include these four dimensions: armed conflict, displacement, hunger, and disease. Some also add economic crisis or state collapse (see Natsios 1997; Chojnacki 2002; Weiss 2005).

  3. Data are drawn from the following sources: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (Harboom and Wallensteen 2005), the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants World Refugee Surveys 1992–2005, the Food and Agricultural Organization FAOSTAT database, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Reports 1991–2005, and the World Health Organization (WHO) World Health Reports 1995–2005.

  4. http://www.politicalterrorscale.org, accessed October 2008.

  5. These data are drawn from the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflicts Dataset 1946–2005 (www.pcr.uu.se/publications/UCDP_pub/Main_Conflict_Table46-05.xls, accessed October 2008).

  6. The FAO provides data on population figures that are updated annually. See http://faostat.fao.org/site/550/default.aspx, accessed October 2008.

  7. See www.fao.org/faostat/foodsecurity/Files/PrevalenceUndernourishment_en.xls, accessed October 2008, and WHO reports at www.who.int/whr/annexes/en, accessed October 2008.

  8. Calculations on the basis of FAO data for 173 countries for the years 2001 to 2003 (www.fao.org/faostat/foodsecurity/Files/PrevalenceUndernourishment_en.xls, accessed October 2008) and UNDP Human Development Report data for 177 countries in 2003 (hdr.undp.org/en/media/hdr03_HDI.pdf, accessed October 2008).

  9. Political Terror Scale (www.politicalterrorscale.org/datafiles/pts%20by%20country.xls, accessed October 2008).

  10. For coding rules, see www.unca.edu/politicalscience/images/Colloquium/faculty-staff/Gibney%20Doc/Gibney%20Political%20Terror%20Scale.pdf, accessed October 2008.

  11. http://www.politicalterrorscale.org/datafiles/PTS%20trends%201976-2006%20update.xls, accessed October 2008.

  12. India (Kashmir) and Tajikistan are included since they show a high level of armed violence but fall very slightly below the threshold for the indicator “hunger.”

  13. However, states and international organizations may sometimes use transnationally operating private military companies when they intervene in civil conflicts (Binder 2007).

  14. A comprehensive list of US unilateral sanctions is available at www.iie.com/research/topics/sanctions/sanctions-timeline.cfm, accessed October 2008.

  15. Amnesty International country reports are available at web.amnesty.org/en/library (accessed October 2008) and Human Rights Watch Country Reports at www.hrw.org/reports/world/index.html, accessed October 2008.

  16. Written statements by NGOs with consultative status can be accessed via the Human Rights Documents database of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (ap.ohchr.org/documents/mainec.aspx, accessed October 2008).

  17. The exceptions are Azerbaijan, Georgia (Abkhazia), Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and Mozambique.

  18. UNDPKO information available at www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko, accessed October 2008. SIPRI-Database on Multilateral Peace Operations available at conflict.sipri.org/SIPRI_Internet, accessed October 2008. Only the deployment of military personnel is considered here—civilian observer missions have been excluded.

  19. These reports are available at www.usaid.gov/our_work/humanitarian_assistance/disaster_assistance/publications/annual_reports/index.html, accessed October 2008. In the case of bilateral assistance, funds are allocated as “earmarked contributions” to NGOs and international institutions. Multilateral relief, in contrast, consists of “nonearmarked” contributions (MacRae 2002, 12).

  20. The Financial Tracking System records all reported international humanitarian aid, see www.reliefweb.int/arfts (accessed October 2008).

  21. The lone exception is Burundi, where neither sanctions nor enforcement occurred, and yet, a robust peacekeeping mission under Chapter VII mandate was deployed.

    Sources: Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch Country Reports (web.amnesty.org/en/library; www.hrw.org/reports/world/index.html); Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (ap.ohchr.org/documents/mainec.aspx); UNDPKO (www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/); SIPRI-Database on Multilateral Peace Operations (conflict.sipri.org/SIPRI_Internet/index.php4); Office of US Foreign Disaster Assistance Annual Reports (www.usaid.gov/our_work/humanitarian_assistance/disaster_assistance/publications/annual_reports/ind x.html); Financial Tracking System (reliefweb.int/arfts); International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) Annual Reports, Staibano 2005; Kreutz 2005; Elliott et al. 2007.

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Acknowledgements

For helpful comments and critiques, I would like to thank my colleagues at the Social Science Research Center Berlin, as well as the editors of this volume. Special thanks to Nadine Bernhard, Saskia Ellenbeck, Kristina Hartwig, and Mary Kelley-Bibra.

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    Martin Binder

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Binder, M. Humanitarian Crises and the International Politics of Selectivity. Hum Rights Rev 10, 327–348 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-009-0121-7

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