Today, as we mark World Humanitarian Day, we must reflect on the state of humanitarianism. Humanitarian work has always been framed upon the collective assumption that there are lines that should never be crossed, even in wars. For a generation, we had binding international agreements that treated the act of protecting a child in need of food or a medic treating the sick and wounded as a fundamental legal right.
Today, the consensus and meaning behind these laws are gone. Too many governments are no longer consistently defending the rules-based order that they helped create. When it suits them, some are openly disregarding international law.
Others are applying it selectively, condemning their adversaries for violations while tolerating the same behaviours by their allies. Many more are simply remaining silent at times when condemnation and action are required. When governments feel that their own geopolitical and domestic interests are more important than their legal obligations, our rules-based humanitarian system becomes diminished and corrupted.
Enforcement becomes inconsistent. Tolerance of excessive civilian casualties becomes routine. And anything becomes permissible, including the unthinkable.
Today, impunity is being allowed to flourish. Bad actors feel more empowered to break the laws that exist to make us all safer because they know they won’t be held to account. This matters because humanitarian crises do not emerge in a vacuum.
Instead, they are the direct results of these kinds of transactional political choices. In this worldview, the protection of civilians and aid workers is no longer understood as a universal obligation as much as a commodity – something that can be bargained, withheld or selectively applied. Protection becomes a political investment that demands a political return.
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