Little Room to Maneuver: The Challenges to Humanitarian Action in the New Global Security Environment

The current global politico-security environment poses challenges to principled humanitarian action on three levels. Humanitarian actors are at pains to preserve a neutral stance in contested political environments, specifically those of occupation and counter-insurgency operations within the US-led Global War on Terror — a particularly difficult proposition when the major donor for humanitarian activities is also the occupying power. Their second challenge is to maintain operational independence in environments of post-conflict transition and other contexts where the life-saving work is over and political pressure increases for all international actors to operate under a unified, politically coherent peace-building strategy. Finally, humanitarians perceive a greater threat than ever before to the physical security of their own workers, as incidents of violence against aid workers appear to be on the rise.