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Humanitarian Diplomacy: The ICRC's Neutral and Impartial Advocacy in Armed Conflicts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 March 2019

Hugo Slim
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Abstract

As part of a roundtable on “Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests,” this essay describes the humanitarian diplomacy of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by comparing it conceptually with other forms of advocacy and illustrating it with the ICRC's recent experience in the Yemen crisis. Humanitarian diplomacy is examined as one particular way of balancing legal norms, moral values, and national interests in the pursuit of greater respect for international humanitarian law (IHL) and principled humanitarian action in armed conflicts. The essay looks back to ancient history for archetypal forms of humanitarian advocacy in various cultural traditions. It then describes humanitarian diplomacy's practice of discreet diplomacy and confidential dialogue with all parties to a conflict, and compares its relatively “quiet” approach with the “loud” approach of outrage activism focused on “naming and shaming,” which tends to be the norm today. The essay argues that there is an important and complementary place for the ICRC's style of humanitarian diplomacy alongside other forms of advocacy even in the face of criticism that the ICRC is sometimes publicly silent about what it knows of atrocities and avoids naming and shaming.

Keywords

humanitarian diplomacyInternational Committee of the Red CrossconfidentialityneutralityimpartialityYemen
Type
Roundtable: Balancing Legal Norms, Moral Values, and National Interests
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , Spring 2019 , pp. 67 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 2019 

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Footnotes

*

Although this essay is written in a personal capacity and is not the official view of the ICRC, I use the pronouns “we” and “us” throughout as a shorthand for the ICRC.

References

NOTES

1 The modern human rights method can be traced back to Voltaire's early campaigns against torture in the eighteenth century, the antislavery movement in the nineteenth century, and the work of people like Roger Casement and Edmund Morel in exposing the atrocities of the Belgian Congo in the early twentieth century.

2 “Esther,” in The Bible, trans. King, Nicholas (Stowmarket, U.K.: Kevin Mayhew Ltd, 2013), pp. 879–98Google Scholar.

3 Mencius, trans. with an introduction by Lau, D. C. (London: Penguin Classics, 2004)Google Scholar.

4 Mencius, p. 38.

5 Davidson, Ian, Voltaire in Exile (London: Atlantic Books, 2004), pp. 86–114Google Scholar.

6 Roper, Lyndal, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (New York: Random House, 2016)Google Scholar.

7 Slim, Hugo, Humanitarian Ethics: A Guide to the Morality of Aid in War and Disaster (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 39–74Google Scholar.

8 International Committee of the Red Cross, “The International Committee of the Red Cross's (ICRC's) Confidential Approach,” International Review of the Red Cross 94, no. 887 (2012)Google Scholar, www.icrc.org/en/international-review/article/international-committee-red-crosss-icrcs-confidential-approach.

9 International Criminal Court, “Rule 73: Privileged Communications and Information,” Rules of Procedure and Evidence (2016), pp. 19–20.

10 Slim, Humanitarian Ethics, pp. 208–11.

11 Daniel Shepherd et al., “Influencing Policy and Civic Space: A Meta-Review of Oxfam's Policy Influence, Citizen Voice and Good Governance Effectiveness Reviews,” Oxfam Research Report (2018); and Crisis Action, Creative Coalitions: A Handbook for Change (2017), crisisaction.org/handbook/download/.

12 The image of Mona Lisa diplomacy was used to describe the cryptic demeanor of U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles during the early years of the Cold War.

13 MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Silence: A Christian History (London: Penguin, 2013), p. 34Google Scholar.

14 Zaretsky, Robert, A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2013), p. 84Google Scholar.

15 International Committee of the Red Cross, “The ICRC's External Communication Doctrine (Doctrine 7),” (2016), www.icrc.org/en/document/icrc-external-communication-doctrine.

16 International Committee of the Red Cross, “Action by the International Committee of the Red Cross in the Event of Violations of International Humanitarian Law or of Other Fundamental Rules Protecting Persons in Situations of Violence,” International Review of the Red Cross 87, no. 858 (2005)Google Scholar, www.icrc.org/en/publication/0893-action-international-committee-red-cross-event-violations-international.