From armed conflict to urban violence: transformations in the International Committee of the Red Cross, international humanitarianism, and the laws of war

Abstract

The International Committee of the Red Cross traditionally seeks to protect and assist victims of armed conflict. Over the past 10 years, however, the International Committee of the Red Cross and several other major international humanitarian agencies have turned their attention to situations of urban violence that fall short of the international humanitarian law thresholds for armed conflict. This article examines the institutional consequences of expanding the International Committee of the Red Cross mandate to include urban violence, to make a three-fold argument. First, the incorporation of urban violence into its mandate has led to significant and surprising shifts in the organization’s humanitarian boundaries: from eschewing any effort to prevent or reduce conflict and prioritising neutrality and dialogue with all parties to conflict, the International Committee of the Red Cross has begun engaging in violence-prevention and violence-reduction activities, compromising its neutrality and limiting dialogue with some armed groups. Second, because the International Committee of the Red Cross is such an important and influential actor in international humanitarianism, these shifts in its boundaries have the potential to transform definitions of humanitarianism. Third, these shifts may serve to undermine the moral authority of the International Committee of the Red Cross to persuade combatants in international humanitarian law contexts to comply with international humanitarian law, irrespective of the rightness or wrongness of their or their opponents’ goals. Ultimately, then, they may erode the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello in the laws of war.

Laudable Relations

“…This can even expand at times to a national and international level. The Red Cross at a global level is generally seen as beyond reproach even when, from time to time, it sacrifices reporting atrocities for access and so does not tell the world about important events (Bradley 2020;Steinacher 2017).…”

A Human Security Angle of Conflicts: The Case of Farmer–Herder Conflict in Ghana

“…Conflicts increase the possibility of people being killed as there is often a breakdown of law and order. Most of the time, there are more weapons available to people during conflicts than at any other time (Bradley 2020). However, the human security challenge is that, apart from combatants who may be killed, unarmed civilians are often targeted, particularly in non-conventional wars like those between farmers and herders in conflict-prone communities (Okoli and Atelhe 2014).…”

Domestic humanitarianism: the Mission France of Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde

“…The diversity of humanitarian practices is reflected in a rich interdisciplinary literature, which has analysed the contentious boundaries and politics of humanitarianism from different angles. The distinction between humanitarianism, human rights advocacy and development (Barnett 2011), between emergency missions and longer-term engagements (Redfield 2013;Krause 2014), the forms of violence to be addressed by humanitarian NGOs (Bradley 2020), and the risk of erecting a medical government that takes over state functions (Debrix 1998;Falisse 2009) have all sparked intensive debates -both in scholarly writing and within humanitarian NGOs (Rambaud 2015).…”