Brand new issue of Friedens-Warte "Humanitarian Aid in the Context of Complex Humanitarian Crises". With an article by our Managing Director Charlotte Dany on humanitarian aid and the Responsibility to Protect.

Summary of the article

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2005, aims to protect people from particularly serious crimes: war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The fact that humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should also contribute to the implementation of the R2P is often overlooked in the previously state-centric discourse of international relations. The R2P assigns humanitarian NGOs functions for the prevention of and response to crimes against humanity and thus places them in an international legal context with "humanitarian interventions". This changes the starting position of humanitarian aid by NGOs, as they are in danger of losing their neutrality and being perceived as instrumentalized. As a result, NGOs are increasingly engaging with R2P. This article presents the positions of some key humanitarian NGOs on the R2P, its impact on the practice of humanitarian aid and the role of NGOs in protecting people from serious crimes in war and conflict situations. These discussions illustrate the tension between the humanitarian principle of neutrality and the risk of instrumentalization of humanitarian aid that humanitarian NGOs face in the context of R2P. The analysis of these discussions also shows that humanitarian NGOs reflect more strongly on peace policy aspects in the context of R2P.

Brand new issue of Friedens-Warte "Humanitarian Aid in the Context of Complex Humanitarian Crises". With an article by our Managing Director Charlotte Dany on humanitarian aid and the Responsibility to Protect.

Summary of the article

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2005, aims to protect people from particularly serious crimes: war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The fact that humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) should also contribute to the implementation of the R2P is often overlooked in the previously state-centric discourse of international relations. The R2P assigns humanitarian NGOs functions for the prevention of and response to crimes against humanity and thus places them in an international legal context with "humanitarian interventions". This changes the starting position of humanitarian aid by NGOs, as they are in danger of losing their neutrality and being perceived as instrumentalized. As a result, NGOs are increasingly engaging with R2P. This article presents the positions of some key humanitarian NGOs on the R2P, its impact on the practice of humanitarian aid and the role of NGOs in protecting people from serious crimes in war and conflict situations. These discussions illustrate the tension between the humanitarian principle of neutrality and the risk of instrumentalization of humanitarian aid that humanitarian NGOs face in the context of R2P. The analysis of these discussions also shows that humanitarian NGOs reflect more strongly on peace policy aspects in the context of R2P.