Neutrality

Abstract

Together with humanity, impartiality, and independence, neutrality is a prime humanitarian principle that lies at the center of humanitarian orthodoxy. It is so bound up with traditional definitions of what distinguishes humanitarianism that neutrality is seen as a metric that can be used to determine the humanitarian status of a person, project, action, or organization. Yet this belies the slippery nature of neutrality because it exists primarily as a claim that rests on the recognition of others for its achievement. This constitutes a major, and possibly permanent, instability for humanitarian actors and organizations. It means that whatever form, relation, or action humanitarianism takes will be shaped and limited by the need to manage the perceptions of others in order to fulfill the relevant requirements for recognition. To inquire into neutrality is to open up the contested and contingent basis of humanitarian-ness itself, and its relationship to politics. The role played by neutrality in common definitions of humanitarianism indexes the outsized influence played by the International Committee of the Red Cross (icrc) on the field of modern humanitarian action (Barnett 2011; Redfield 2010). The icrc emerged in the latter half of the 19th century as a moral response to war-related suffering. It proclaimed a neutral or apolitical position-the refusal to "take side in hostilities or engage at any time in