Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails
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Doing Bad by Doing Good: Why Humanitarian Action Fails
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Overview
In addition to Haiti, Coyne considers a wide range of interventions. He explains why the U.S. government was ineffective following Hurricane Katrina, why the international humanitarian push to remove Muammar Gaddafi in Libya may very well end up causing more problems than prosperity, and why decades of efforts to respond to crises and foster development around the world have resulted in repeated failures.
In place of the dominant approach to state-led humanitarian action, this book offers a bold alternative, focused on establishing an environment of economic freedom. If we are willing to experiment with aid—asking questions about how to foster development as a process of societal discovery, or how else we might engage the private sector, for instance—we increase the range of alternatives to help people and empower them to improve their communities. Anyone concerned with and dedicated to alleviating human suffering in the short term or for the long haul, from policymakers and activists to scholars, will find this book to be an insightful and provocative reframing of humanitarian action.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780804772280 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Stanford University Press |
| Publication date: | 05/01/2013 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
DOING BAD BY DOING GOOD
WHY HUMANITARIAN ACTION FAILS
By Christopher J. Coyne
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2013Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior UniversityAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8047-7227-3
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1The Man of the Humanitarian System
the international commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) released a report in 2001 titled The Responsibility to Protect. The origin of this report was a question posed by then secretary-general of the United Nations Kofi Annan in his Millennium Report. Within the context of ongoing debates regarding the moral responsibilities of governments to protect the citizens of other sovereign states, Annan asked, "[I]f humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica—to gross and systematic violations of human rights that affect every precept of our common humanity?" The debate over the responsibility of government to undertake humanitarian action had been raging for years, with plenty of examples of both intervention and non-intervention to fuel the discussion: for example, intervention in Somalia, Haiti, East Timor, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia, and non-intervention in Darfur, Sri Lanka, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In response to Annan's question, the Canadian government established ICISS, which introduced the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) concept in their report of the same title. R2P is a set of normative principles based on the idea that state sovereignty is a responsibility and not a right. It begins with the premise that sovereign states have a duty to protect their citizens from serious harms, and if a government is unable to provide this protection, it is the moral responsibility of other governments to fill the gap. In such cases, state sovereignty yields to the international responsibility to intervene to protect those who are suffering. Under the R2P principles, action by external governments can vary depending on the context and might include mediation, diplomacy, military intervention, or building state and security capacity in the country where citizens are suffering.
In 2005, the R2P concept was embraced at the United Nations' World Summit meeting, where member states included the doctrine in the 2005 World Summit Outcome document and indicated the applicability of the R2P principles in the case of four crimes: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The Outcome document also noted, however, that international intervention should be the last resort for dealing with these crimes. Although R2P has been the official doctrine of the United Nations since the release of this document, R2P's usefulness was questioned, as it had rarely been invoked in any meaningful way.
However, this changed when the R2P norm found new life in 2011 following the intervention by a U.S.-led coalition in Libya to enforce a no-fly zone. In his speech justifying the intervention, U.S. president Barack Obama invoked the spirit of the R2P norm when he said,
In this particular country—Libya; at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale. We had a unique ability to stop that violence: an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves. We also had the ability to stop Qaddafi's forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground. To brush aside America's responsibility as a leader and—more profoundly—our responsibilities to our fellow human beings under such circumstances would have been a betrayal of who we are. Some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different. And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.
In line with the spirit of the R2P doctrine, what Obama was indicating was that state sovereignty was not a license for government leaders to harm their citizens. No matter where one stands on the issue of international humanitarian action, one thing is clear: the debate over the issue will not end any time soon. Indeed, it is safe to say that, in the post-9/11 world, state-led humanitarian action will be one of the most important policy issues, if not the most important, in international affairs.
The purpose of this book is to shift the discussion of humanitarian action from the normative perspective—how should people behave?—to a positive analysis—how do people actually behave? As the R2P doctrine illustrates, much of the discussion surrounding humanitarian action is normative, focusing on what government coalitions and organizations ought to do either when a government is incapable of protecting its citizens or when the representatives of said government commit crimes against the country's own citizens. Instead of focusing on whether there is a responsibility for outside state actors to protect and assist in order to remove suffering, my focus is on the ability of outsiders to effectively engage in humanitarian action whether or not there is a moral imperative to do so. I seek to understand the various incentives and knowledge constraints facing the array of people involved in the humanitarian enterprise, with the goal of understanding what can realistically be expected from state-led humanitarian action in the face of crisis and suffering. Understanding these elements of humanitarian action is crucial to resolving the puzzle presented in the opening pages of this book.
My analysis focuses on the broad category of "humanitarian action," which encompasses not only the potential actions listed in the R2P declaration but also a broader array of actions, such as the delivery of short-term emergency relief and long-term assistance intended for development purposes in order to alleviate existing human suffering and to protect vulnerable people from suffering in the future. Although analysts and scholars often make categorical distinctions between these activities—such as short-term humanitarian aid versus long-term development aid—the reality is that these more specific categories fall under the general category of "humanitarianism" in that these acts are focused on alleviating human suffering. Clearly the response to an earthquake is different from a military intervention to end genocide, just as the delivery of immediate healthcare is different from construction of permanent infrastructure. However, all of these actions are motivated by humanitarian concerns, indicating that a general understanding of the limits of state-led humanitarian action is necessary. Given my broad focus on humanitarian action, my analysis is applicable to a variety of contexts, ranging from the interventions in Afghanistan and Libya to the post-earthquake situations in Chile, Haiti, and Japan to ongoing efforts in Africa to remove extreme poverty. All of these cases involve efforts by domestic and foreign governments to alleviate or prevent human suffering, and therefore all of these cases fall under the broad category I term state-led humanitarian action.
A FAILURE OF WILL?
Unfortunately, the focus on the emotionally charged normative aspects of humanitarian action often results in neglect of the critically important positive aspects. Consequently, instead of focusing on the limits of humanitarian efforts, it has become commonplace to attribute humanitarian failures to factors such as a lack of political or popular "will." Consider just a few examples:
• Writing in 2001, the authors of the Millennium Development Goals, which are driven by a variety of humanitarian concerns, indicated, "Today, we not only have the financial resources to end extreme poverty once and for all, but we have the technological knowledge and know-how to realize the Goals....
(Continues...)
Excerpted from DOING BAD BY DOING GOOD by Christopher J. Coyne. Copyright © 2013 by Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. Excerpted by permission of STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Table of Contents xi
Preface xiii
Introduction: A Living Example of the Puzzle 1
Part 1 The Here and Now
1 The Man of the Humanitarian System 11
2 The Evolution of Humanitarian Action 30
Part 2 The Realities of Humanitarian Action
3 Adaptability and the Planner's Problem 61
4 Political Competition Replaces Market Competition 90
5 The Bureaucracy of Humanitarianism 108
6 Killing People with Kindness 143
Part 3 Implications for Humanitarian Action
7 Solving the Puzzle 169
8 Rethinking the Man of the Humanitarian System 178
Notes 207
References 223
Index 247