Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality - Chapter 14 - Humanitarianism and the military

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 14 – Humanitarianism and the military - contributed by Silke Roth. From the introduction The concept of ‘military interventions’, i.e. the use of military force to address conflicts and human rights violations, and subsequent debates about the ‘shrinking humanitarian space’ became prominent in the 1990s during the peacekeeping missions in former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq ( Chandler, 2001 ; De Torrente, 2004 ). However, the entanglement of military action and humanitarian aid has a much longer history going back to the crusades and various patterns of the militarisation of relief organisations can be distinguished ( Perouse de Montclos, 2014 ; see also Terry, 2002 ; Greenburg, 2023 ). This chapter seeks to unravel the entanglements of civilian humanitarian actors and military f...