Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality - Chapter 04 - Humanitarianism and the new wars: humanitarianism, security, and securitisation

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 04 - Humanitarianism and the new wars: humanitarianism, security, and securitisation - contributed by Michael Magcamit and Anastassiya Mahon.

From the introduction
This chapter demonstrates and probes the idea of ‘humanitarian securitisation’ propelled by humanitarianism amidst the emergence of new wars linked to inequality. Humanitarian securitisation is defined here as the process of securitising the humanitarian crises brought about by the new wars – specifically, internal conflicts and terrorism – to justify the use and implementation of humanitarian intervention in the target states. As the foremost authority on ‘new wars’, Mary Kaldor (2016: 147), describes these phenomena as the ‘combination of political violence, organised crime and massive violations of human rights’ happening in different parts of the world. Although these wars are not empirically new, in the post-Cold War era (i.e., from 1991 to the present), Kaldor (1999) asserts that they are primarily about the breakdown of legitimacy and, therefore, should be viewed as political rather than military challenges (see also, Shaw, 2000). Defining new wars as an act of organised violence framed in political terms suggests that the logic of war cannot be reduced simply as ‘the clash of wills’ that tends to the extreme (see Von Clausewitz,1968), but are more accurately understood as a ‘mutual enterprise in which various armed groups have more to gain from war itself, from fighting, than from winning or losing’ either for political or economic reasons (Kaldor, 2016: 147). Consequently, such wars are more likely to persist and protract and, therefore, are more difficult to resolve than the traditional ‘old wars’ (Kaldor, 2012; 2016).
Building on Kaldor’s definition of new wars, we view these phenomena as being inherently tied to varying kinds and layers of inequality. Several scholars have probed and tested the linkages between inequality and new wars and found growing evidence suggesting a strong correlation between them.

Note on contributors
Michael Magcamit is lecturer (assistant professor) in Global Politics at The University of Manchester in the United Kingdom.
He is the author of, among others, Ethnoreligious Otherings and Passionate Conflicts (Oxford University Press, 2022) and Small Power and Trading Security (Palgrave/Springer, 2016).

Anastassiya Mahon was an associate lecturer in Security Studies at Aberystwyth University, specialising in the intricate dynamics of global security. Her research primarily focuses on the interplay of (in)security in shaping policy, particularly in the context of illiberal regimes, such as Russia and Central Asian countries.
Her works on security, terrorism, and policy analysis have been published in International Studies Perspectives, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Studies of Transition States and Societies, and the Foreign Policy Centre.

Overviews are already available for the following chapters:
Introduction: humanitarianism and inequality – a re-orientation

Humanitarianism and colonialism

Humanitarianism and the global Cold War, 1945–1991