Collateral Damage: Humanitarian Assistance as a Cause of Conflict

Overview

Can international humanitarian assistance organizations that provide refugee relief truly claim to be impartial? What happens when such agencies— knowingly or not— offer succor to militants dispersed among refugee populations receiving humanitarian aid, becoming in effect "tools of conflict"? Sarah Kenyon Lischer of Sweet Briar College argues that although humanitarian relief may be neutral in intent, "the effects of the humanitarian actions always have political, and sometimes even military, repercussions." Lischer discusses the political conditions that increase the likelihood that humanitarian aid will exacerbate conflict. She proposes ways in which relief organizations can leverage their resources to influence the actions of the various parties, cautioning, however, that in some cases "the least harmful outcome" might be the total withdrawal of humanitarian assistance.