Transcriber: Leonardo Silva Reviewer: Marie-Claude Bélanger
Good afternoon.
Over the last decade,
several western governments
have introduced new legislation,
or strengthened the existing legislation,
to criminalize terrorist organizations.
And this is, you know,
a very logical measure to take,
in order to try to stop terrorism
spreading around the world.
The problem is that the laws do not make a difference
between intentional support to a terrorist group
and that which is not intentional,
so that any service or any item
which ends up in the hands of a group
which is on a terrorist list,
the people responsible for passing out that support
could be held criminally liable.
And this is causing great concern
to humanitarian aid organizations,
because, you know, many of them want to work in areas
which may be held by this terrorist group.
No aid organization is able to say
that 100% of their aid
can get to the people to whom it is intended.
So, the problem we are seeing,
for instance, in Al Shaabab regions of Somalia,
[is that] some aid organizations
are not even trying to negotiate access.
This issue raises a much bigger question and issue
of the unintended consequences of humanitarian action
and the response of this by aid organizations,
because while it's for aid organizations,
the side effects of aid,
such as contribution to their war economy
or legitimazing certain leaders in an area are unintended,
but literally parties in conflict
have often used aid very much in their own interests.
And in many ways, the criminalization of aid
to one's enemies in Somalia
is just the flip side of using aid
to win the hearts and minds of civilians in Afghanistan.
In both cases, aid is being considered
as a weapon of war,
and it is the people, who are in dire need of that aid,
who are paying the consequences,
because in Somalia
many people are without humanitarian aid
and in Afghanistan
many villages have been attacked and punished
for having been in receipt of aid
which is aimed at gaining their allegiance.
Humanitarian aid organizations
have been both willing and unwilling
accomplices in this process.
On the one hand, they tend to lament
this instrumentalization of aid in some circumstances,
but in others, they tend to become part and parcel of the issue.
But now that we are facing more and more situations
where access to people in areas
is more and more difficult, for instance, in Pakistan,
in Afghanistan and Somalia,
I suggest that aid organizations really need to start seriously thinking
about a new approach, a different approach.
And, so, there are two things I think that aid organizations
really need to think about today.
The first is that there is...
We need to recognize that there is a fundamental paradox
at the heart of humanitarian action.
It can prolong war and, with it,
the suffering it intends to alleviate.
The most obvious example of this
is in the very basic gest
of the Foundation of The Red Cross Movement,
of saving a wounded soldier, from the battlefield,
and treating him.
In this case, this is the field surgical team
that was operating in Darfur, in 2008,
of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
There are no laws to say
that those soldiers who have been healed
cannot return to conflict.
So, by saving their lives and putting them back on their feet,
they can potentially go back to conflict, thereby prolonging it.
For humanitarian actors,
this is the price we have to pay
for introducing some humanity
into the inhumanity of war.
We believe very much, very strongly, that it is better to take the risk
that a wounded soldier who's been repaired returns to battle,
than to just condemn all wounded people to die where they fell.
And, fortunately, western governments also have recognized this,
because the anti-terrorist legislation
exempts from criminal prossecution medical assistance,
which is great.
But there are many other aspects of humanitarian action
which are not exempt under this legislation,
and many different ways
in which humanitarian aid can contribute
to the prologation of war.
I think the most extreme example of this
was in the Rwandan refugee camps
that were formed on the border of Rwanda, in 1994,
in which the people responsible for genocide,
the Rwandan army and the Interahamwe militias,
used the refugee camps
as a base from which to launch attacks on Rwanda,
to try to finish the genocide
they had started in April that year.
These people took control
of the reigns of the refugee camps
and they used humanitarian aid
to completely control the population.
The population was not permitted to return to Rwanda
and they also gained enormous amounts of money
from the aid efforts.
But, fortunately,
Rwanda is the exception.
I dont think there is any other country
you can really make a case for aid prolonging war.
When you think about the military
and financial resources
that allied regimes give to belligerent parties,
when you think of the remittances
coming from the diasporas,
when we think of the contraband
and the narcotics trade and piracy,
all these things are far most significant than humanitarian aid
in contributing to the continuation of war.
Rwanda really was exceptional, these camps.
But that does not absolve
humanitarian aid organizations
from being very serious about the need
to absolutely ask who is benefitting
from the aid coming in.
And does the aid do more harm than good?
If people do realize that aid is doing more harm than good,
which Médecins sans Frontières, for instance,
fought in the Rwanda refugee camps, then it is very important to,
be able to stop that aid.
And I think if aid organizations, rather than just paying lip service
to some of the humanitarian principles,
at the foundation,
if they really followed these principles
better and had more consistency across the board,
we could find some advantages,
which brings me to my second point, which is that neutrality is an incredibly
important principle of humanitarian action.
Since the 9/11,
many aid organizations have rejected neutrality,
prefering, instead, to direct their aid
in accordance with western political agendas,
particularly, we've seen this in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And it's not the first time
aid organizations have done this.
Throughout the Cold War,
many organizations tended to help refugees
with whom they had some political affinity.
We saw right-wing aid organizations
helping the Contras,
in the Nicaraguan camps, in Honduras,
and on the other side of the country, we saw left-wing organizations
helping the Sandinistas.
So, it's certainly not a new thing,
but one of the lessons that we learned
from these 1980s of taking-sides in conflict
was that, often, the warriors
that we celebrate one day
turn out to be the warlords tomorrow,
and I think this is very much the case that aid organizations are finding
in Afghanistan today,
as they try to disassociate themselves
from their overly siding with one side,
and now they need to try open up access
with the armed opposition
to get access to people who are
in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
There's no moral...
There's nothing moraly superior
about a neutral position.
It is simply a tool
that aid organizations need to use
in order to get access to people
most in need of assistance.
And the criminalization of humanitarian action,
or the criminalization of food aid,
because some of it might end up
in the hands of the wrong people,
is immoral, but it is also very unwise,
because, if you look at The Guardian website,
recently, there's been a video put up
of Al-Qaeda, now coming in,
and starting to win hearts and minds,
of the Somali population through aid.
And so, I think we're going to see a lot of the same sorts of problems
that we see with hearts and minds programs everywhere,
that is not necessarily the interest
of the populations who are receiving this aid,
that is foremost in the minds
of the people giving it.
So, aid organizations, I think, today
really need to decide:
Do they feel that aid
should be used to influence the vulnerable,
or should aid be given
only on the basis of our shared humanity?
Aid organizations cannot lament
the instrumentalization of aid, on one hand,
and, then contribute to and participate in it, on the other.
They need to choose and they need to act
in accordance with their choice.
Thank you.
(Applause)