A bridge too far: aid agencies and the military in humanitarian response

This paper aims to clarify the key issues of the debate over the roles of humanitarian actors and military forces and the relationship between them. The authors argue that the roles and responsibilities of these two profoundly different groups must be kept separate.Since the beginning of the 1990s, military peacekeeping forces have increasingly intervened in countries in conflict, forcing a more direct engagement than ever before between the military, local populations and humanitarian agencies. Military movement into what has traditionally been ‘humanitarian space’, raises significant issues of principle, as well as policy and operational questions, for the entire international community, including governments, the military, humanitarian agencies and the UN.Most publications on this issue conclude that increased military engagement in humanitarian assistance is inevitable, and to a certain degree welcome and acceptable. According to this view the main barrier to improved cooperation is simple misunderstanding, to be resolved through more joint training, conferences and academic programmes.This paper argues that these propositions are based on several faulty premises:first, while increased militaryengagement in humanitarian assistance activities may be a possible future trend, a number of military, political and humanitarian analysts have begun to seriously question whether this is an appropriate direction for peace support operations, concluding that the differences in approach and aims go beyond mere misunderstandingsecond, the idea that increased cooperation – and with it coordination – will itself improve humanitarian assistance is a pervasive but relatively unchallenged assumption. There is no clear evidence that indicates a significant correlation between military and humanitarian coordination in the field and the quality or effectiveness of humanitarian assistance effortsfinally, the simplistic perception that barriers between humanitarian agencies and the military are based in misunderstandings and cultural clashes glosses over much deeper, intrinsic differences between core aims and principlesIt is essential that these two roles – impartial humanitarian assistance as a response to an urgent and inalienable right, and peace operations with their inevitably partial and political mandates – are kept separate.