No Room For Humanitarianism in 3D Policies: Have Forcible Humanitarian Interventions and Integrated Approaches Lost Their Way?
Authors
Stephen Cornish
Abstract
This paper will review the evolution of integrated and 3D approaches and seek to highlight the different responses to such approaches shown by classic humanitarian organizations and multi-mandate development organizations. By providing an overview of past forcible humanitarian interventions and with a particular focus on Afghanistan, we will trace the practical and ethical challenges faced by aid agencies attempting to maintain programming in such contexts.
In so doing it will be suggested that the 3D approach emphasizing coherence between different instruments, while motivated by good intentions, has resulted in humanitarian and development aid programming becoming subordinated to political interests in counterproductive ways. In fact, in Afghanistan the co-optation of soft power for political and military ends has led to reduced humanitarian assistance for populations in danger and to increased insecurity for humanitarians trying to assist them – thereby effectively exposing clear limits to the deeper integration strategies currently being promoted for stabilizing failed states.
Author Biography
Stephen Cornish
Stephen Cornish has spent more than a decade working with humanitarian organizations including Médecins Sans Frontières and the Canadian Red Cross, and is currently serving as Policy & Advocacy Advisor at CARE Canada. He has been involved in creating humanitarian space and in delivering humanitarian aid in Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Rwanda, Colombia and Haiti among others. Recently he completed a brief mission to Afghanistan and was able not only to witness the current situation but to compare it to his previous experience of carrying out humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan under the Taliban in 1987. In addition to his field experience, he has an MA in Global Risk and Crisis Management from the Sorbonne in Paris and is completing another MA in Conflict Resolution at the University of Bradford in the UK. Stephen now lives in Ottawa with his wife Madina.
