In this iteration of the Review's “Beyond the Literature” series, we have invited Joël Glasman to introduce his recent book Humanitarianism and the Quantification of Human Needs, before then posing a series of questions to Bertrand Taithe, Léa Macias, Dennis Dijkzeul, Andrea Behrends and William Anderson. Bertrand Taithe is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. Léa Macias is an anthropologist focusing on digital humanitarianism in the Middle East, currently working as an Evaluation Officer for the French Development Agency. Dennis Dijkzeul is Professor of Organization and Conflict Studies at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. Andrea Behrends is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Leipzig University, Germany. William Anderson is the Executive Director for Sphere based in Geneva.

The Review team is grateful to all five discussants, and to Joël, for taking part in this engaging conversation.

The concept of humanity has been much discussed with respect to humanitarian work and international humanitarian law. There is today an idea of a single humanity, with each member equally valued beyond superficial differences in belief, nationality, ethnicity etc., and a global legal framework exists to prevent needless human suffering, including in war.

Dehumanization arises linguistically as the negation of a common, positive and mutually supportive humanity, though there is no single definition, and it certainly predates its opposite. Research indicates that dehumanization increases the risk of conflict/violence, increases the risk of abuses therein, and makes it harder to resolve conflict.

This paper gives an overview of how humanity is currently defined and used, notably by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as one Fundamental Principle of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, and what dehumanization means especially in relation to conflict and violence. The paper then explores why and how dehumanization happens and the real-world harm that can result when it is espoused or tacitly condoned by those in positions of power. Finally, the paper examines how global legal frameworks and the principle of humanity, bolstered by impartiality, independence and neutrality, in particular as enacted by the ICRC, work to curb and push back against some of the worst harms that dehumanization can cause.

The notion of solidarity, although not new to the humanitarian sector, has re-emerged in recent discussions about effective and ethical humanitarian action, particularly in contexts such as Ukraine and Myanmar where the traditional humanitarian principles have been facing certain pressures. Because solidarity appears as a good but can also involve selectivity and privilege, and because it risks continued militarism and normalization of civilians participating within that militarism, the notion of solidarity merits rich and rigorous thinking. This article explores how the notion of solidarity is being utilized by those currently re-emphasizing its importance and what it might mean in practice in today's humanitarian contexts. The article argues that if solidary action involves not only a political stance but solidary working methods, the recent calls for solidarity demand respect for the variety of principles and practices within the humanitarian ecosystem, while nevertheless upholding mutual obligations owed within that professional community – that is, within careful limits as to what is considered humanitarian action.

This article seeks to make sense of the rise of global religious philanthropy in relation to disaster. Global religious philanthropy refers to the transnational activities of religious organizations to respond to humanitarian crisis. These organizations can be faith-based initiatives or religious groups or denominations that have created humanitarian services for the specific purpose of relief and recovery in other countries. The first part spells out what we mean by the rise of global religious philanthropy in disaster response. It is not so much a shift as it is a rediscovery of the religious roots of humanitarian work. But at the same time, it is also a contemporary development that is part of the globalization of risk, humanitarian aid, and religion itself. The second part will explain the rise in two ways. First, faith-based and religious organizations hold what we describe as a global imaginary. In this imaginary, the world is in crisis and it offers an opportunity to demonstrate global compassion. Second, the rise of global religious philanthropy is also tied to the expansion of religious movements, some of which are in emerging economies. The expansion renders the religious field competitive. This is why, in a paradoxical manner, their humanitarian activities are also acts of strength and power that contend with the state and other players in the religious field.

Since its launch in 2021, the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations (the Charter) has been signed by hundreds of humanitarian actors across the world, including local and national organizations, United Nations agencies, National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and large international NGOs. The Charter's development grew out of a sector-wide recognition that humanitarians have a role to play in addressing the crises of climate change and environmental degradation, and that fulfilling this role would entail changing how they work. Two years into its existence, the Charter has helped build momentum towards this change and has provided a useful measurement tool for how much remains to be done.

This paper traces the origins, inspiration and process of the Charter from the perspective of the present authors, who co-led the Charter's development. The article highlights some of the challenges that we faced and how these were addressed. In taking stock of progress towards the Charter's goals, the article flags areas where further effort is needed to adequately strengthen the humanitarian response to the climate and environmental crises.

Analyses of the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence often focus on the principles’ meanings and/or the challenges of applying them in practice. This article, by contrast, steps back to address foundational but somewhat neglected questions about whether these principles can accurately be designated “the” humanitarian principles; about how they came to govern the whole humanitarian sector; about their legal character and normative content; and, more fundamentally, about whether the principles can even have objective character and content. It begins by defining “humanitarian principles” and determining whether and on what basis certain principles constitute “the” humanitarian principles. The article then traces the history of how the principles came to govern the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and diffused from there to non-governmental organizations and the United Nations system. It then analyzes the principles’ legal character and normative content for each of the above-mentioned categories of actor plus States, demonstrating that the principles do not – and, legally, cannot – have fixed legal character and normative content. While humanitarian actors share common understandings of the principles, legally the character and content of each principle flows from its source for the actor in question.

Mental disorders have high prevalence for disability and almost 80% of the global burden occurs in low- and middle-income countries. The impacts of mental health conditions can affect many sectors of society and threaten peace, human rights and development. However, international law jurisprudence has not sufficiently developed to guide mental health governance. This paper reviews the international legal protections for people who experience mental health conditions, including mental disorders and psychosocial disabilities. It focuses on State application of legal instruments in particularly vulnerable contexts, namely, least developed countries and situations of armed conflict. It argues that relying on existing treaties and soft-law instruments from the health and human rights angles is inadequate, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is not the right fit. New hard- and soft-law instruments are urgently needed to meet positive obligations and safeguard rights in these vulnerable contexts. Some suggestions for the contents of future instruments are made.

The United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy establishes the first-ever framework for the United Nations system to advance disability inclusion across all pillars of the Organization's work, including the peace and security pillar, and to measure the progress made across the system. Evidence reported since the launch of the Strategy in 2019 demonstrates that the Strategy has provided a clear impetus among United Nations entities and peace operations working in the sector to address the rights of persons with disabilities, who are among the most marginalized in any crisis-affected community. However, the evidence also reveals that while humanitarian entities have made progress since the launch of the Strategy, disability inclusion remains an emerging area of work for peace operations in the field. The article argues that the Strategy's accountability framework has provided a much-needed blueprint and ability to monitor progress across the system, yet far more needs to be done to ensure that the United Nations system is equipped to respond to complex situations and reach the furthest behind first.

This study analyses the situation of persons with disabilities caught up in armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in particular in North Kivu Province. The study goes beyond the few statistics available – which show the vulnerability of persons with disabilities during humanitarian crises – to identify the obstacles to taking persons with disabilities into account in humanitarian action in North Kivu. As a result, the study provides practical recommendations to overcome these obstacles, fill in the gaps in humanitarian action and improve the situation of persons with disabilities by ensuring efficient and effective protection in times of armed conflict.

Disability inclusion has become a crucial issue for humanitarian action, at least at the international policy level. However, little is known about how humanitarian actors are “doing inclusion” in practice. With a case study on South Sudan, this article examines whether the increase in publications, policy tools and guidelines has made humanitarian action more inclusive for persons with disabilities, and how stakeholders can overcome persisting barriers for persons with disabilities. The article demonstrates noticeable progress in data collection, capacity-building, the removal of barriers and meaningful participation, but humanitarians still lack the skills, confidence and resources to address many persisting barriers. To advance inclusion, donors and humanitarian organizations must invest more time and resources in capacity-building and coordination.

The challenge faced by Somalia's newly established National Disability Agency (NDA), along with other emerging actors in the disability arena, is how to address the perception that disability is primarily a humanitarian issue in a country that not only is in conflict but also faces cyclical humanitarian crises. A further challenge for the NDA is how to ensure that the humanitarian architecture put in place facilitates non-discrimination, as well as the inclusion of and participation by persons with disabilities. While a typical humanitarian architecture can inadvertently reinforce an already stigmatizing charity or welfare approach towards persons with disabilities, Somalia's experience demonstrates that humanitarian actors can do a lot with leadership, a willingness to leave agency branding behind, and an active committed partner such as the NDA. Nevertheless, genuine inclusion in Somalia's overall State-building project needs also to be the remit of development, reconciliation and similar actors, with access to and participation of persons with disabilities guaranteed in their range of processes and frameworks.

Data-driven artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are progressively transforming the humanitarian field, but these technologies bring about significant risks for the protection of vulnerable individuals and populations in situations of conflict and crisis. This article investigates the opportunities and risks of using AI in humanitarian action. It examines whether and under what circumstances AI can be safely deployed to support the work of humanitarian actors in the field. The article argues that AI has the potential to support humanitarian actors as they implement a paradigm shift from reactive to anticipatory approaches to humanitarian action. However, it recommends that the existing risks, including those relating to algorithmic bias and data privacy concerns, must be addressed as a priority if AI is to be put at the service of humanitarian action and not to be deployed at the expense of humanitarianism. In doing so, the article contributes to the current debates on whether it is possible to harness the potential of AI for responsible use in humanitarian action.

As humanitarian organizations become more active in the digital domain and reliant upon new technologies, they evolve from simple bystanders to full-fledged stakeholders in cyberspace, able to build on the advantages of new technologies but also vulnerable to adverse cyber operations that can impact their capacity to protect and assist people affected by armed conflict or other situations of violence. The recent hack of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement's Restoring Family Links network tools, potentially exposing the personal data of half a million vulnerable individuals to unauthorized access by unknown hackers, is a stark reminder that this is not just a theoretical risk but a very real one.1

The 2020 cyber operation affecting SolarWinds, a major US information technology company, demonstrated the chaos that a hack can cause by targeting digital supply chain components. What does the hack mean for the humanitarian cyberspace, and what can we learn from it? In this article, Massimo Marelli, Head of the International Committee of the Red Cross's Data Protection Office, draws out some possible lessons and considers the way forward by drawing on the notion of “digital sovereignty”.

While challenges may persist with respect to the relationship between counterterrorism (CT) and humanitarian action, it is at least understood that CT measures must comply with international humanitarian law (IHL). Clarifying the relationship between this body of law and CT measures is one of the modest but important innovations of United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 2462. At a minimum, references to IHL in this resolution leave a pathway for States to take measures to preserve impartial humanitarian action from the effects of CT, and at most, they prescribe that States should take such measures. Progress in clarifying the relationship between UN sanctions obligations and IHL obligations appears to be lacking with respect to non-CT-related UN sanctions. As will be discussed in this paper, this leads to questions regarding the application of the so-called “supremacy clause” contained in Article 103 of the UN Charter vis-à-vis IHL obligations.

This article examines the presence of 605 armed groups in today's conflict environment by bringing new evidence based on internal research. It looks in particular at the way these non-State entities provide varying degrees of services to the population in the spaces that they control, and how this might impact the way a humanitarian organization like the ICRC engages with them in a dialogue over time. This model of analysis is then used to situate and better explain armed groups’ positions on the COVID crisis.

United Nations, regional and domestic counterterrorism measures have generated a cascade of adverse effects for impartial humanitarian activities in areas where designated groups are present. Certain humanitarian activities, diverted supplies and incidental payments can fall foul of broadly worded counterterrorism regulation proscribing or criminalizing financial and other support to designated groups. Donors to humanitarian organizations set strict conditions and financial institutions decline transactions, hampering impartial humanitarian activities in the very instances in which international humanitarian law (IHL) requires that they be allowed. Recognizing this, United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions 2462 and 2482 adopted in 2019 have spelled out more explicitly than ever before the need for counterterrorism measures to comply with IHL and safeguard impartial humanitarian action in line with IHL. This article sets out those IHL obligations that govern humanitarian and medical activities and the types of safeguards that States have put in place to ensure their counterterrorism measures comply with IHL and allow for these activities. The UNSC's latest steer in resolutions 2462 and 2482 provides a foundation for States’ exclusion of impartial humanitarian and medical activities from the scope of application of their counterterrorism measures. This can be an effective way of averting adverse consequences for these activities where designated entities are present.

Digitalization and new technologies have an increasingly important role in today's humanitarian activities. As humanitarian organizations become more active in and reliant on new and digital technologies, they evolve from being simple bystanders to being fully fledged stakeholders in cyberspace, vulnerable to adverse cyber operations that could impact on their capacity to protect and assist people affected by armed conflict or other situations of violence.

This shift makes it essential for humanitarian organizations to understand and properly map their resulting cyber perimeter. Humanitarian organizations can protect themselves and their activities by devising appropriate cyber strategies for the digital environment. Clearly defining the digital boundaries within which they carry out operations lays the groundwork for humanitarian organizations to develop a strategy to support and protect humanitarian action in the digital environment, channel available resources to where they are most needed, and understand the areas in which their operational dialogue and working modalities need to be adapted for cyberspace.

The purpose of this article is to identify the unique problems facing international humanitarian organizations operating in cyberspace and to suggest ways to address them. More specifically, the article identifies the key elements that an international humanitarian organization should consider in developing a cyber security strategy. Throughout, the International Committee of the Red Cross and its specificities are used as an example to illustrate the problems identified and the possible ways to address them.

This article considers the key data protection challenges facing humanitarian organizations providing assistance to refugees, internally displaced persons and migrants. These challenges are particularly significant for several reasons: because data protection has come relatively late to the humanitarian sector; because humanitarian organizations are under pressure to innovate rapidly; because the global communications architecture on which many of these innovations depend is inherently vulnerable to State surveillance; and because States are deploying increasingly sophisticated and coercive means to prevent irregular forms of migration and/or subjecting humanitarian organizations to surveillance and disruption. The first part of the article outlines the fundamental rights challenges presented by contemporary data-driven migration control paradigms. The second outlines concerns about “data-driven humanitarianism” and “mass surveillance” to show how humanitarian organizations risk inadvertently exacerbating these problems. The third assesses specific data protection challenges that humanitarian organizations face and the policies and practices they have developed in response. The article concludes with some brief observations on the technical and political dynamics shaping their efforts to comply with their legal and ethical obligations, and calls for the sector to work together to extend data protection norms and outlaw cyber-attacks by State actors.

How do the dynamics of contemporary armed conflict shape, and constrain, humanitarian action? Is the international humanitarian “system”1 really at breaking point, as is often claimed? Or will it adapt to the changing realities not just of warfare but of global geopolitical shifts – as it has done repeatedly in the past – and evolve into something different? By way of response, the first part of this article offers a snapshot of today's armed conflicts and other situations of violence, focusing initially on the trends and features apparent in the Syrian conflict – which has in many ways come to define twenty-first-century warfare – and moving on to other countries and regions, many of which share at least some of these features, albeit in varying degrees. It considers the humanitarian consequences of today's armed conflicts and other situations of violence, and the implications for humanitarian response – which, at least on an international level, is indeed facing a watershed. The second part aims to show that even a glance back at key aspects of the evolution of humanitarian action over the past century – largely in response to the evolving nature of warfare and the developing international system – will remind us of quite radical changes in the face of major upheavals and challenges, not all of them dissimilar to those of today. The third part suggests that in today's global environment, international humanitarian response will continue to evolve and ultimately take on a different shape: one that reflects the changing nature of conflict and the geopolitical power shifts that go with it. With the rise of the global South, and the increasing recognition of the importance of local actors to humanitarian action, particular attention is given to the evolving relationship between local and international actors. In conclusion, the article reiterates some of the main reasons why humanitarian action – and international humanitarian actors in particular – will likely continue to adapt (albeit with varying degrees of success) to a changing world.

The Charter of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the guiding document for all of the organization's members, states in the final paragraph that volunteers “understand the risks and dangers of the missions they carry out”. Through a review of the different periods in the history of MSF, this article analyzes the changing interpretations that the organization's successive leaders have given to this reference to the acceptance of risk by individuals. The professionalization and expansion of MSF, coupled with its diversifying volunteer base and the changing international environment, have required constant renegotiation of the balance between institutional and individual responsibility for the dangers faced in the field. No doubt this process is far from over.