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Saving ourselves? On rescue and humanitarian action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2019

Henry Radice
Henry Radice*
Affiliation:
Department of International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science
*
*Corresponding author. Email: h.radice@lse.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article contributes to the international political theory of humanitarianism by unpicking the politics of humanitarian action’s simplest expression: saving human lives in the name of humanity. Both saving lives and defining notions of common humanity are closely interrelated acts of power. What saving a life means depends on a prior definition of humanity; humanitarians’ acts of rescue are the measure of their commitment to humanity. The politics of rescue and the politics of humanity are inextricably linked. The article explores four facets of this nexus. First, it considers the meanings of rescue, from saving bodies to saving lives, linked to contingent understandings of humanity. Second, it turns to the rescuers, for whom rescue performs particular functions, not least the need to preserve a sense of self. Third, it situates their often narcissistic motives in relation to the consequences of humanitarian action. Fourth, it addresses the power imbalance inherent in rescue and the problem of causing harm. It concludes that rescue is always an act of presumption, but one that can be tempered by humanitarian actors willing to embrace their role as ‘moral politicians’ (Walzer), aware of their power and their dirty hands, and open to contrasting understandings of humanity.

Keywords

International Political TheoryHumanitarianismHumanityRescueAltruismHumanitarian Intervention
Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 431 - 448
Copyright
© British International Studies Association 2019 

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References

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6 Malkki, The Need to Help, p. 205.

7 In her major study of the political ethics of humanitarian INGOs, Jennifer Rubenstein argues plausibly that the social role of rescuer is both normatively problematic and too narrow to describe the actions of such agencies. However, my aim here is to focus on concepts, roles, and practices that are constitutive of the very idea of humanitarianism, and not to present an exhaustive account of the varied social roles humanitarians and humanitarian agencies embody. Rubenstein, Jennifer C., Between Samaritans and States: The Political Ethics of Humanitarian INGOs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 29–33 CrossRefGoogle Scholar . It is also important to note the title of one of the foundational texts of the international political theory of humanitarian intervention, by Michael Walzer. It does not, however, really engage with the actual relationship of rescue – focusing instead on the decision to intervene or not. Michael Walzer, ‘The politics of rescue’, Social Research, 62:1 (1995).

8 A much-cited quote from IR’s urtext on military humanitarian intervention is: ‘humanitarian intervention exposes the conflict between order and justice at its starkest’. Wheeler, Nicholas J., Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 11 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

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